What if AI Was Made Incharge Of Recruitment?

Although Artificial Intelligence is not at the level where it can be used to fully distinguish between prospective job applicants, it is still used by recruiters at the initial stages of assessments, and even decide whether a job advert should be advertised to specific people. According to data from LinkedIn, 67% of recruiters have begun integrating AI in the selection process for job applicants. Often trained on data collected by previous applicants, AI can effortlessly assess different candidates.

However it’s not all that simple. Many believe that the implementation of AI in recruitment can introduce issues like discrimination, lack of accountability and transparency. A key example of this is HireVue, a job interview video platform that uses AI to assess candidates and predict thier prospects of landing a job. The algorithm analyses how prospective applicants answer certain predefined question through a recorded video interview. Factors such as facial movements and verbal responses are taken into account. HireVue is currently used by over 100 clients, including Hilton and Unilever.

But Lawyers at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a privacy rights nonprofit, filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, pushing the agency to investigate the company for potential bias, inaccuracy, and lack of transparency. It also accused HireVue of engaging in “deceptive trade practices” because the company claims it doesn’t use facial recognition. This led to the introduction of the Algorithm Accountability Act, which allowed the FTC to launch investigations and create regulations to prevent automated systems from making biased decisions.

Artificial Intelligence could result in racial, gender and age based bias in the hiring process.

Artificial Intelligence could result in racial, gender and age based bias in the hiring process.

Although AI may replace humans as recruiters, it would still inherit the traits of the humans who were in charge of the process before AI because it bases its decisions on the trends and associations from actions in the past, which were performed by humans. The system will therefore follow thier conscious and subconscious preferences. This can have its ups and downs, on one hand, it could mean that AI could do a better job at picking out qualified candidates. On the other, it could result in bias and discrimination if there is such a trend in the past data.

One potential upside for applicants is that if lawmakers one day force companies to release the results of their AI hiring selection systems, job candidates could gain new insight into how to improve their applications. But whether or not AI will make the final call, might be unclear for the years to come.

Enterprise, EthicsVinay Gadagoju