Your Next Job Interview Could Be With a Racist Bot (thedailybeast.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Daily Beast: Companies across the nation are now using some rudimentary artificial intelligence, or AI, systems to screen out applicants before interviews commence and for the interviews themselves. As a Guardian article from March explained, many of these companies are having people interview in front of a camera that is connected to AI that analyzes their facial expressions, their voice and more. One of the top recruiting companies doing this, Hirevue, has large customers like Hilton and Unilever. Their AI scores people using thousands of data points and compares it to the scores of the best current employees. But that can be unintentionally problematic. As Recode pointed out, because most programmers are white men, these AI are actually often trained using white male faces and male voices. That can lead to misperceptions of black faces or female voices, which can lead to the AI making negative judgments about those people. The results could trend sexist or racist, but the employer who is using this AI would be able to shift the blame to a supposedly neutral technology. Companies are also having people do their first interview with an AI chatbot. "One popular AI that does this is called Mya, which promises a 70 percent decrease in hiring time," reports The Daily Beast. "Any number of questions these chatbots could ask could be proxies for race, gender or other factors."

Comments

Blind hiring

[Anonymous Coward]

We have sexist hiring now. What about all those blind hiring trials that ended up hiring more men... and then got cancelled and the result buried ASAP.

So we do have sexist hiring now... just not the kind feminists want to talk about.

Re:Blind hiring

[AmiMoJo]

I'm a feminist and I do want to talk about this. Sorry to so bluntly prove you wrong.

Anyway, yes, that was an interesting but not entirely unexpected result, and one which feminists have been studying for a long time. Doesn't just affect women, it affects people with disabilities, people who didn't go to university, older/younger people (depending on the job) etc.

For example, say you have a degree in "Mathematics (Computing)". Even though your age was hidden and work history truncated to hide how long it is, the fact that you got your degree back before Computer Science was even a thing gives the game away. Even just the phrasing you use can give away that you graduated long before more recent trends.

This has been understood for a while now, and it's a difficult problem to solve. And even if you can somehow obfuscate CVs effectively, eventually there is going to be a face-to-face. When you think that even things like a bad Skype connection can scupper your interview, you start to see how arriving in a wheelchair could throw people off or how subtle differences in the way women (and many men) talk can make them seem less "confident" or whatever.

The only real solution anyone has found is to normalize those things until they stop becoming a subconscious issue. Nordic countries are leading the way but it is very hard to do in some cultures.

Re:Blind hiring

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't normalize the abnormal.

Re:Blind hiring

[Anonymous Coward]

People aren't equal. Social science is rife with poor statistics, awful controls, unrepeatable experiments and outright fraud. The Nordic countries have tried this experiment and demonstrated conclusively that when you remove barriers, biology maximises and women avoid science and maths.

Add all that lot up, and feminists have to either admit they are completely wrong or slander and insult anyone who dares point out reality.

P.S. Blind hiring demonstrated that we discriminate against men and in favour of women - by any/all of the measures that feminists routinely employ. It's tell you want to ignore them when they aren't in your favour.

Re:Blind hiring

[denzacar]

On the other side of that...
If you are forced to talk to a bot at an interview - might as well keep on looking for a job.

Cause a company won't use a bot on account of a "more just" hiring process.
They'll use a bot cause it is cheaper and more efficient to buy or rent a software tool than to hire another human tool.
Which is what they are looking for. Disposable tools, needed to solve their current problem. Not employees.
They want things, not people.

Also, it indicates that the company is held afloat on bullshit and buzzwords.
Cause it's clearly not running on the strength of its teams - or someone running a team or working in a team would be interviewing you, to see how you fit into their team.
Unless the teams and the company are also run by chatbots. In which case at least the daily meetings would be more productive.

TRANSLATION:

[Anonymous Coward]

Translation: The sick freaks of the left are concerned that AI's will not be front-loaded with the politically-correct amount of anti-white bias, as defined by shrieking fascist moron SJW's.

Re: TRANSLATION:

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm quite left on politics scale, but I'm concerned as well with positive discrimination. Discrimination is never positive, it always causes victims. If I was female with the same set of skills, it would be easy for me to get an extra 50K salary.

It's absolutely ridiculous and dehumanizing

[ZorinLynx]

I know somebody looking for a retail job. She would walk into stores and ask if they're hiring, only to be directed to a website where you have to fill out some massive 100 question test and hope that your name is picked by some algorithm for the manager to call and arrange an interview.

She must not fit the computerized profile that the tests are looking for, because she rarely got called back. It's been a frustrating and dehumanizing experience.

My mother said that when she was looking for retail jobs in the 60s and 70s, it was easy as hell. See a "Help Wanted" sign, walk inside, talk to the manager, have a quick interview, and if they liked you, you were hired. You didn't even need a freaking resume. It was a much more sensible experience.

I work in IT and I think computers are neat and have changed the world in many ways for the better. But holy shit have they totally fucked up other things.

Re: It's absolutely ridiculous and dehumanizing

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, those personality tests are designed to hire liars.

Re:It's absolutely ridiculous and dehumanizing

[ooloorie]

My mother said that when she was looking for retail jobs in the 60s and 70s, it was easy as hell.

We have let in 20-30 million low skilled workers since then. That's why the supply of low skilled workers is high and exceeds demand.

Another reason for computerizing these hires is to remove the possibility of bias and to comply with regulations. Companies don't want to be accused of civil rights violations, illegal questions, or sexual harassment, and computerized interviews avoid that.

But holy shit have they totally fucked up other things.

This isn't the fault of computers, it's the fault of progressive government policies that backfired.

You want one-on-one interviews? Reduce the supply of low-skilled workers and reduce the stifling regulations and legal risks that surround hiring.

Re:It's absolutely ridiculous and dehumanizing

[AmiMoJo]

These forms are often used to actively discriminate, because their operation is opaque and it is extremely difficult to prove anything when the computer says no.

For example, they often ask what your highest level of education is. Never mind if you have decades of experience and professional certifications, if you didn't get an undergraduate degree you get instantly declined. That can make it very hard for people who have the skills but didn't go the traditional university+debt mountain route. You can't even write a cover letter to get your foot in the door.

Re:It's absolutely ridiculous and dehumanizing

[ooloorie]

These forms are often used to actively discriminate, because their operation is opaque and it is extremely difficult to prove anything when the computer says no.

You are probably right: these forms are probably used to avoid being accused of racial discrimination and to meet diversity quotas and affirmative action goals. That is, they actively discriminate, precisely in order to ensure that they are complying with the law.

For example, they often ask what your highest level of education is. Never mind if you have decades of experience and professional certifications, That can make it very hard for people who have the skills but didn't go the traditional university+debt mountain route.

If you have decades of experience, you have referrals; you don't need to answer computerized questions or forms. If you have neither a degree nor referrals, you are indeed not interesting to most companies.

Re:It's absolutely ridiculous and dehumanizing

[burtosis]

Free college for all would solve the low skilled worker crisis for 1/3 the cost of a single petty war we carry out on nations who never attacked us or are guilty of anything but having natural resources.

Re: It's absolutely ridiculous and dehumanizing

[kenh]

The competition for retail jobs has changed since the 60s.

There was an article a few years ago about a McDonald's franchisee that made the comment that he was hiring only college graduates for counter/other jobs. The press twisted the story to be "you need to have a college degree to get a job at McDonalds". The reality was that when he was hiring he was swamped with applications, the easiest filter was to weed out folks without college degrees, because they earned the wage as an employee without a degree, and a candidate with a degree could work out better (remain with restaurant and work into management) than one without.

You can argue the franchisee should consider all applicants equally, but ina society that values a college degree, isn't a college graduate better qualified?

Should he have gone out of his way to only hire candidates without a degree? How is that fair?

Re:It's absolutely ridiculous and dehumanizing

[ooloorie]

There is also just straight up laziness. Retain management jobs that list a degree as a requirement because they can't be bothered to determine if you can do basic arithmetic or check your reading comprehension.

Yes, they can't be bothered, because hiring itself takes time and money, and hiring managers have better things to do than to look for people who are qualified despite having inferior credentials.

Re:It's absolutely ridiculous and dehumanizing

[ooloorie]

Free college for all would solve the low skilled worker crisis for 1/3 the cost of a single petty war we carry out on nations who never attacked us or are guilty of anything but having natural resources.

Free college doesn't turn low skilled workers into high skilled workers.

Re:It's absolutely ridiculous and dehumanizing

[RandomFactor]

College isn't free. Wars end.

Entitlements are forever.

Making University a part of public education would be funded by increasing the multi-generational debt incurred by all the "free" things the taxpayer is already on the hook for. It would also push much skilled hiring to the graduate school level thereby delaying entry into the workforce. If everyone has a batchelor's degree, then noone does. This would have the effect of reducing the working lifetime of employees in skilled labor markets making the country less competitive and potentially offsetting any gains.

Re:It's absolutely ridiculous and dehumanizing

[avandesande]

Americans will work in a meat packing plant if you pay the enough.

This why we shouldn't live together ...

[Pinky's Brain]

White men program it, so it can't be fair ... god fucking damn hypocritical sexist, racist twat.

PS. I have no problem with the sexist and racist part, I think everyone should have complete freedom of association, I only take exception with the hypocrisy.

Re:This why we shouldn't live together ...

[demon driver]

This isn't even about biases. It is about data, and about the fact that those who develop and train the AI often have to resort to white males to train it with, because that's what is predominantly to be found in those fields.

Funny how reliably antifeminists make fools of themselves in these discussions.

Re:This why we shouldn't live together ...

[fafalone]

In this case the implication is clear. It is saying that representative training data exists, and that white male programmers purposefully choose training data that is not representative. Otherwise, this would be a straight criticism of the training data, where the race of the programmer (which, let's be honest, is just as likely to be Asian or Indian) didn't matter. Who makes the training data source? What's the available composition? It's a huge leap to 'white men are only picking pictures of other white men'.
People like you are the other side of the problem, excusing comments that clearly are calling white men racist/sexist when there's no cause. Keep it up, I'm sure it won't have any consequences say, 2 years from now.

Re:This why we shouldn't live together ...

[AmiMoJo]

In this case the implication is clear.

Apparently not. You seem to think that the author is implying this was deliberate. It's not, it's just a known issue caused by centuries old systemic problems that we need to carefully avoid perpetuating with bad AI.

Racist? Don't know the meaning of the word.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, it seems the term "Racist" doesn't actually mean anything anymore except a generic bad-word mud-slinging.

Doesn't matter what you do, you are racist these days.
Take for example, this test I had in public school on diversity:
Question: You are a hiring manager and you have two candidates for a job. One black, one white. Whom do you hire?
My answer: Interview both candidates and choose the candidate most qualified for the job.
My answer was marked incorrect. The correct answer is: "You hire the black man"

The whole test was like that. I scored 100% racist. Take that into perspective - I'm a racist because I REFUSE to treat anyone differently by their race. One of the great misinterpretations of Martian Luther King comes from the quote, "...[african americans] are not judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character" gets warped into "...[african americans] are not judged."

Don't forget that in the last Olympics a coin toss was considered racist because it didn't favor the right race.

So is the chat-bot racist? 100% yes, because it can't see skin color and therefore can't give preferential treatment.

Merit based employment is not racism

[Karmashock]

the robots in many cases aren't even aware of your race or gender so how are they going to select against your race and gender?

They're clearly NOT deciding on that factor as they literally can't because they're literally not given that variable most of the time.

What they decide upon are your qualifications. Now if the most qulaified people tend to be from group X or Y then that isn't racism to predominantly hire people from those groups. Statistically if you limit the population being examined to those with the qualifications there is no statistical variance in hiring patterns. You only see a statistical variance if you IGNORE qualifications. Which is idiotic because the entire point of setting an AI on hiring people or hiring someone to hire people is to have them filter the people hired based on relevant criteria.

What these "robot HR is racist" arguments ultimately are requesting is lottery based hiring. Where in random people in society are randomly hired for given jobs indifferent to qualifications.

Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut is a dystopian society where this concept was applied to its logical conclusion. Everyone is forced to be equal. The clever are made to be stupid so they enjoy no advantage over the stupid. The strong are made to be weak. The graceful are made to be clumsy. The beautiful are made to be ugly. Employment in everything is determined by literal lottery. Total chance. Everything from the police to the president to your doctors to whatever.

It is a nightmare society.

The robots are not racists. The plaintiffs are equalitarian intersectional communists in most cases. The sort of people that advocate bad ideas that if applied lead to the society starving to death.

Any group that votes for that deserves the consequences without mercy. And to be very clear... that happens properly anywhere and those able to do better will leave. You'll be left with an incompetent rabble that simply couldn't do better anywhere else. Poverty and failure is the best you can expect. Literally starving to death is quite likely. Cannibalism is not off the table.

Re:Merit based employment is not racism

[Karmashock]

So the argument is that its determining race based on address, name, previous employment history, and education history...

Explain this to me.

Are you saying it doesn't hire people from a certain neighborhood?

Are you saying the program is not hiring people based on their name?

Because either of those seems unlikely frankly.

Now, not hiring someone for lacking job experience is not racism or racial proxy data. Its merely a sensible criteria to hire someone. You want the best employees you can get. An experienced employee is generally better. No?

As to educational background... I'm a little confused about this one. Are you suggesting that hiring or not hiring someone using education data is racist? Because if it is... then why bother with education at all? We'll just hire anyone.

Do you want a doctor with no medical education? A lawyer with no law degree?

Because apparently hiring or not hiring someone on the basis of their education is apparently racist now.

Try again. They do not use address or name information to choose who to hire or not to hire. The algorithms have been examined actually. They have been demanded in court cases. And on examination they didn't do any of that.

What they did was look at job experience and education. Its a bot. Is your argument seriously that the program looks up a name and address, does a look up on the address to find out if it is in a demographically black or whatever area... and then just doesn't hire if it gets a hit?

Is that honestly your argument? Because that can be easily disproven and then you have to eat crow.

Here is the cold grim reality... The "ai" is just filtering on work experience and education. That isn't racist. And again, if you presume to say it is... then please accept medical treatment by this guy with no medical degree.

Everyone wants competent workers except people like YOU that neither care about other people having to deal with incompetent workers nor have the empathy to appreciate how annoying you'd find it if you were saddled with that same situation.

The evidence of your hypocrisy is that you wouldn't tolerate an incompetent worker IF they were serving you. Would you like an electrician with no training or a plumber with no training? How about a vet to take care of your sick dog that knows nothing about how to treat sick animals?

You wouldn't even tolerate it to treat your dog.

That is your "real" position. Everything else is pathetic virtue signaling and hypocrisy.

proxies

[ooloorie]

Companies are also having people do their first interview with an AI chatbot. "One popular AI that does this is called Mya, which promises a 70 percent decrease in hiring time," reports The Daily Beast. "Any number of questions these chatbots could ask could be proxies for race, gender or other factors."

A computer science Ph.D. is a "proxy for race, gender and other factors". Exceptionally test scores are a "proxy for race, gender, and other factors". Are you going to eliminate all objective measures of performance because it correlates with "race, gender, and other factors" in ways that you disapprove?

Clickbait

[liefer]

Stop posting these Reddit-level stories that are designed to get people riled up

Re:95% Certain

[Karmashock]

You missed the point.

Having problems at point of employment isn't a reason to hire you anyway.

Do you want a doctor that didn't get decent grades in medical school? Most people never go to medical school at all.. would you like a doctor that spent ZERO time studying medicine?

If you would prefer competent doctors then you desire merit based employment.

I'm not saying anywhere that I think we shouldn't try to help communities with problems. However, I think it is also racist to look at these communities racially. Rather you should focus on other more important factors.

Did they come from a single parent house hold? Did they come from a troubled neighborhood? Was there drug abuse in the house hold? Was there positive reinforcement of good study habits etc in the child's household.

These things ultimately determine if there will be problems. Not the race of the individual. To suggest otherwise is to presume that given races are inferior.

I made the point above that your position is actually inherently racist. You wish to classify people on the basis of race.

Are there f'ups from every race? Yep. Are there high achievers from every race? Yep.

Focus on what separates the one from the other and you might actually help people.

Focusing on race will help no one. You will doom those you presume to help to continuing poverty by not addressing the underlying problems in given communities that lead to failure. What is more, your entire concept requires that we hire empirically incompetent people to do jobs. Which you will hypocritically assign to other people or other jobs you don't care about whilst betraying your supposed values by requiring merit based employment when it might actually affect you.

I like that you tried to start your argument with an ad hominem.

Let me try one on you which would be only fair.

I think you're also white, spoiled, feel inferior to your peers, and are attempting to play these pathetically constructed moralistic games as some sort of ploy to claw your way up a social hierarchy.

People like you hurt the people you presume to defend. You're a parasite. You feed upon the suffering of others and use it to humble your opposition and aggrandize yourself. You have nothing positive to offer this situation. And your insecurity is likely very well deserved.

I want everyone to succeed and for society to work. You didn't even read my argument before you dogmatically responded to it. You are no better than the foaming fundamentalists of bygone times that would thump the cover of a book they couldn't even read.

See? I can play this game too... and I'm better at it.

F***k /. stop the SJW bullshit

[bongey]

Tired of the constant clickbait stories and titles, /. is no longer going to be a tech site eventually.

Re:Colleges are going bankrupt

[burtosis]

Liberal arts degrees are a waste of money, like psychology or music degrees. Get them only if you want to lower the barrier of entry to low paying jobs you might find attractive I've personally. A 4 year liberal arts degree will get you that 11 dollar an hour office job before a high school diploma, that is what hiring managers look for in young people. Try getting the office job earlier and you will find upward mobility restricted with your lack of skilled labor due to lack of education as the reason. I got an engineering degree and founded a successful robotics company, something that wouldn't have been possible outside a graduate engineering college setting. I now make nearly 10x the minimum wage worker and have no problem getting jobs despite being in my 40s. Incidentally, most of my undergrad and all of my graduate school was free because I was employed by the university and have no debt. I'm rich, I want others to have the same opportunity.