This deep learning goes a little too deep
AI in the workplace
It seems like the use of AI is a badge of honor for companies trying to recruit fresh talent and yet 2019 saw a consistent flow of warnings that the technology is simply not sophisticated enough to be reliable or ethical.
Now, companies are touting their use of AI or “deep learning” (which is a subset of AI) in the hiring process. They hope to use algorithms to find patterns in employment data and the results of games and tests to determine the best candidates to fill their positions. And despite years of concern about algorithmic bias, they’re even claiming that AI can help make companies more diverse!
There’s a lot of information available online about each and every one of us and companies are already incorporating what they can into their detailed assessments. But there’s a big difference between what a company can learn about a candidate and what they should know about them. How much data is a company entitled to gather about a (potential) worker anyway? If HR can already look at your social media accounts and credit history, is scraping the web for your data and using it to quantify your fitness for a job really pushing the boundary? Well, yes.
Are you your data?
Gamification in recruitment
More questions arise when companies employ neurological games or emotion-sensing facial recognition as part of their assessments, claiming that they can give deeper insight into a person’s abilities and personality. But how deep do they go? Gamification is already being trialed in health assessments, so if it can give us insight into, say, someone’s mental health, a company theoretically can’t use that information in hiring without violating the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Click here to see our 2018 entry on emotion-sensing facial recognition.
Can machines really do a better job of determining a “good fit” for a company than humans can? Are we really just a set of data points to be gathered and crunched instead of the full context of our resumes and interviews? And if so, isn’t that kind of depressing?
Further reading:
Can AI help us create a more diverse workforce or will it reinforce the status quo? (Diversity Jobs, 2019)
Artificial intelligence will help determine if you get your next job (Vox, 2019)
Considering AI In Hiring? As Its Use Grows, So Do The Legal Implications For Employers (Forbes, 2019)
AI might be the reason you didn’t get the job (Fortune, 2019)
Emotion-detecting tech should be restricted by law – AI Now (BBC, 2019)
The AI Now Annual Report 2019 (AI Now, 2019)
People are terrible judges of talent. Can algorithms do better? (Quartz, 2019)
Building Ethical AI for Talent Management (Harvard Business Review, 2019)
AI won’t eliminate bias in hiring (The Washington Post, 2019)