AI hiring tools may be filtering out the best job applicants::As firms increasingly rely on artificial intelligence-driven hiring platforms, many highly qualified candidates are finding themselves on the cutting room floor.
AI hiring tools may be filtering out the best job applicants::As firms increasingly rely on artificial intelligence-driven hiring platforms, many highly qualified candidates are finding themselves on the cutting room floor.
Damn, that’s an angle i hadn’t been considering–the “AI did it, not me!” accountability loophole. Air Canada was just attempting to pull that on a customer that was given wrong info by a customer service bot. They only managed to get Air Canada to make good on their offer for bereavement rates when they were taken to court. Thanks AI!
Two categories of issues at play here:
Companies will miss good talent when AI doesn’t prioritize the way they would otherwise have wanted, doesn’t understand candidate data, or AI hasn’t been trained how to prioritize on the areas a candidate has. With how quickly job markets can change it’s realistic a piece of software or website could rise in popularity and fall over the period of a few years and it might take that long to update and correctly test the damn AI models to recognize and prioritize. All of this should hurt the company and it’s their fault and will helpfully limit incentives to use AI or black box AI at least as was said above.
Accountability - In the US, it’s illegal now if you have an employment practice (hiring, promotions, firing, etc.) that while it can’t be proven directly or evidence doesn’t exist for a specific case to win in court (prima facie) it can be shown on aggregate to have discriminatory outcomes for protected classes(race, sex, ethnicity, religion, etc.). It’s often impossible to find a smoking gun of “we don’t hire Protected Class X”, but if it can be shown that your employment practices lead to a protected class having much worse outcomes in a company or group, something can be shown to have disparate impact which is illegal and must be remedied.
I fully expect many shittily-trained, poorly or not tested “tools” to be sold and implemented by companies who will eventually be sued for disparate impact. There will be a frenzy of related suits between companies and the AI tool companies.
Creative destruction indeed.