Companies are using artificial intelligence (AI) technology to discern job seekers’ employability score based on a candidates facial movements, word choice, and speaking voice (among other data points). Here’s the problem.
It’s not efficient - though that trait is its maker’s major selling point. It’s disturbing and some experts are saying it’s “snake oil”.
“It’s pseudoscience. It’s a license to discriminate,” Meredith Whitaker of research center AI Now Institute argues. “And the people whose lives and opportunities are literally being shaped by these systems don’t have any chance to weigh in.”
So if we already know that facial recognition software technology is intrusive and ineffective in policing, and that algorithms used in healthcare cost Black patients millions of dollars and quality of care, why are hundreds of companies so confident in semi-automated corporate recruiting?
“Humans are inconsistent by nature. They inject their subjectivity into the evaluations,” argues HireVue psychologist Nathan Mondragon. AI engineers claim their technology is ethical and unbiased. But that’s impossible as the engineers themselves are not without prejudice.
Now that companies are eagerly deploying AI technology to do everything from writing job descriptions to reviewing resumes and evaluating interviews, how will Black job seekers cope? After all, who gets to decide what the “right” look is for a star applicant anyway?