CONCEPT
Fair Equality of Opportunity
The first component of
Rawls's second principle of justice — that positions must be open to all who possess relevant talents, and that individuals with similar talents and willingness should have similar life prospects regardless of their social starting position.
Fair equality of opportunity is stronger than formal equality of opportunity. Formal equality requires only that positions be legally open to all — that no one be excluded from competition by law or official policy. Fair equality requires something more: that
the background institutions of society — the educational system, the family structure, the economic arrangements — do not produce differences in life prospects
between individuals of similar talent and motivation based merely on the accident of their social starting position. Fair equality is demanding because it looks beyond the formal rules of competition to the conditions under which competition actually occurs, and it holds those conditions to a standard of justice. Applied to the AI transition, fair equality of opportunity requires that access to AI tools and the benefits flowing from them not be determined by the accident of where one happens to be born, what family one happens to be born into,