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

[Pinky's Brain]

More so, this won't change anything. Anyone who thinks these algorithms won't be tweaked by the females in HR and Asian males in management to satisfy the Jewish men who own the media is silly.

Don't worry your silly little heads liberals, affirmative action won't go away ...

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.

Re:Blind hiring

[AmiMoJo]

Indeed. I'm lucky that I can be picky about what job I accept, and using bots, silly tests or other daft interviewing techniques is a sure sign that I don't want to work there.

Unfortunately, for some people that's a luxury they don't have, and they are the ones who need protection the most.

Re:Blind hiring

[bane2571]

This is basically what I thought. I really don't want to work with/for an idiot that thinks facial recognition on a bot is a good way to screen for anything. What if the candidate is disfigured or has some other non-normal facial structure, let alone maybe the connection is bad and the visuals get scrambled or any number of other factors.

Sure humans are biased and a "mathematical" way of finding the best new candidate would be nice but even the idea of comparing to an existing workforce is god awful - the best new employee you hire is often the one that is different from your existing team because new ideas and processes tend to promote efficiency.

Re:Blind hiring

[vlad30]

They said it in the summary they used there best employees to make the template for what they want in an employee lets guess what the best employees were.

And today, One of my supervisors sent a worker home likely not to return after starting a disgraceful shouting fit that had nothing to do with work (more to do with conspiracy theories go figure) Last week was a no show on 3 days (didn't wake up to go to work) and his parting words he was sent home due to favouritism and racism he is 1/8 aboriginal and quite honestly no-one knew until he told us. Now I know full blood aborigines that do better, however truth they are rarer. 2 weeks ago I let go a 19 year old white male also didn't show and when he did his facebooking,snapchatting, instagramming phone would be constantly going and this is something that more and more white kids are failing at

So no we don't have racist views we expect a certain level of work, decorum, and respect on the job leave your crap at home, The AI I assume is probably working out the same and can pick this nuances from there answers to be honest I'm starting to pick this up better as well but as the turnover rate increases the most common complaint I hear from employers is the quantity of applicants you go through now to find a good one

Re:Blind hiring

[thesupraman]

Oh for fuck sake Ami, stop peddling your lies here.

What the blind hiring trials showed is that, when a sign of GENDER was completely erased, more men still got hired.
Peraps, just perhaps, they appeared to be better and more professional candidates, and were then selected.
But no, you have to try and change the concept to age for some reason, and then, with zero actual evidence, claim we need things 'normalised'.

But, on to your largest screwup.
Go and have a look at the employment stats for your loved Nordic countries.
You will find the 'bias' in employment is even HIGHER than the US.
VERY few males in nursing, VERY few males in teaching, VERY few women in engineering or technology.
You know why? Because men are less interesting in some careers, and women are less interested in others.

Yes, I know you would like to force them all to be 50/50, because you believe in totalitarian force, but remember, that means you will be forcing
women to take jobs they dont actually WANT. I would call that highly sexist.
What about the huge number of women you will have to displace from nursing and teaching? I guess you can 'help' them by pushing them in to
construction and garbage disposal? Huge male bias in those areas.

So no, I wont accept your totalitarian dream of controling everyone elses lives, because I actually believe in personal freedom and equality, not
enforced quotas.

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.

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

[PopeRatzo]

Unemployment is the lowest in 67 years.

Unemployment was lower during the Clinton administration, which I'm pretty sure was less than 67 years ago.

See September of 2000, for example:

http://www.macrotrends.net/137...

And that the three main measurements of unemployment, the official overall, the U5 and the U6.

Re:It's absolutely ridiculous and dehumanizing

[AmiMoJo]

If you have decades of experience, you have referrals

Not so much in retail and many other sectors, and especially if you have to move.

It's also hard if you switched careers at some point, or if you just didn't go the usual university route into something like software development but are still able to do it and demonstrate that knowledge. University is not the only way to acquire that knowledge.

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.

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

[edtice1559]

Although your comment is quite valid in that the markets for various low-skilled labor do have an effect on each other, very few low-skilled immigrants work retail where English/Spanish language skills are fairly important. They may stock the shelves, though. Most low-skill immigrants work physically demanding jobs that natives won't take like meat processing and agriculture.

Re:It's absolutely ridiculous and dehumanizing

[bungo]

fill out some massive 100 question test and hope that your name is picked

I went for a highly skilled position that also had to jump through hoops on the application form like that. First off, they wanted proof of 20 years experience with the technology. I had more than that, but it doesn't even make any sense, as most things past 10-15 years ago are no longer that relevant (like HP MPE/ix administration, or DEC VAX/VMS 5.0 installation and configuration).

I had to rate around 30 skills on a 1-10 rating, and if I didn't score high enough, I wouldn't get through. The end result of the skills matrix was a single number, and the number had to be higher than a specific value to get to the next stage. Luckily the agent representing me knew this, and knew the client well. She 'updated' my skills matrix, adding in high ratings for skills that I left at zero. When she gave me a copy of my skills matrix, she said not to worry, as otherwise I wouldn't get past the selection process.

In the interview, no-one was surprised that my skills didn't match what was on the paper. It appears that the HR system insisted in having around 30 skills listed, and would normally reject good people.

I didn't get that contract, as they were looking for someone with some more specific skills in a area that I wasn't that strong in - and the difference between me and the other candidate could have been as little as 3 points out of 300, as it was only one specific skill, but one that was more important than most of the others. They kept my CV and said they would consider me for other positions later. I can only assume that no-one would have had a high enough rating to get through HR.

I don't know it the hiring process was automated, or just an HR drone adding up numbers. The whole procedure didn't make sense. The manager that I would have reported to knew the process was terrible, but appeared to have no choice but accept it, but he also did his best to subvert it.

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

[ooloorie]

What are these horrible, scary regulations that you speak of? Name some.

Regulations that make it illegal to ask questions about children, marital status, gender, ethnic origin, etc. Legal practice that gets companies sued simply for not hiring enough minorities.

Oh, fuck you

Thanks for the offer, but I prefer my men a little smarter than you are.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not illegal to ask candidates about children or marital status. That's a lie.

Wrong.

As usual, DogDude displaying his arrogance, ignorance, and ineptitude as a business owner.

Re: It's absolutely ridiculous and dehumanizing

[Anonymous Coward]

Free college would be embarassing. A shocking majority of the public would refuse because they are too stupid and/or lazy to attempt it. I moved to a more-rust-belt area of the country about 17 years ago. There are really beligerant stupid people here, and a weird sort of calvinism where the work ethic is strong, but ambition is viewed with suspicion. Most of my in-laws have only a high school education. One nephew who got a full athletic scolarship dropped out when it became clear he'd not become a sports pro after college.

Free college would be great for some, but it would mean nothing to a depressingly large group of people.

Re:It's absolutely ridiculous and dehumanizing

[DNS-and-BIND]

Natives "won't take" such jobs because they're underpaid and dangerous, due to the massive number of illegals working for less than minimum wage. If industry had to pay prevailing wages and adhere to all US laws, magically people would appear out of the woodwork to staff those jobs.

If we actually have a shortage of workers, let Congress determine that this is so and make a guest worker program for them. Apply for the visa in Mexico City, enter America legally, employers pay fair wages, workers receive all US legal protections. Everybody wins. Well, except the shit industries that operate illegal, dangerous work environments, they'd lose. But fuck them.

Re:It's absolutely ridiculous and dehumanizing

[blind biker]

Most low-skill immigrants work physically demanding jobs that natives won't take like meat processing and agriculture.

This is a logical fallacy repeated everywhere around the world, no doubt helped by those with money and power: physically demanding jobs would be gladly taken by "natives" if the pay were attractive. The main reason the pay hasn't been attractive, though, is because of low-skilled immigrant workers accepting lower pay for those jobs.

Logically, there is no actual reason for such jobs not to be paid well, especially if it's hard to find people willing to do them. Simple supply and demand. This is now changing because those jobs will be automatized/robotized, but up until very recently and in many cases still today, the only reason the jobs are paid poorly is because of a large supply of people willing to do them for less money.

Re:It's absolutely ridiculous and dehumanizing

[suutar]

the trick, I think, is that you can do that with places that aren't chains, which are unfortunately getting rarer.

Re: It's absolutely ridiculous and dehumanizing

[serviscope_minor]

Unemployment was lower during the Clinton administration, which I'm pretty sure was less than 67 years ago.

Not if you add all of the record number of people who were at the most recent presedential inaugration. We may as well assume they were all employed.

Re:It's absolutely ridiculous and dehumanizing

[burtosis]

Here is an example from today. 97 workers arrested by ICE from a meat packing plant, jobs no American wants because of how brutal they are, yet we all depend on their labor for cheap meat.

Re:It's absolutely ridiculous and dehumanizing

[avandesande]

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

Re:It's absolutely ridiculous and dehumanizing

[mjwx]

Most low-skill immigrants work physically demanding jobs that natives won't take like meat processing and agriculture.

This is a logical fallacy repeated everywhere around the world, no doubt helped by those with money and power: physically demanding jobs would be gladly taken by "natives" if the pay were attractive. The main reason the pay hasn't been attractive, though, is because of low-skilled immigrant workers accepting lower pay for those jobs.

It isn't a logical fallacy.

Immigrants tend to take jobs that otherwise wouldn't exist. Tories in the UK love to complain about Johnny Foreigner coming over here to take jobs and strangle the NHS but dont ever think twice about paying the Polish lady to clean their house for them, the Romanian to wash their car and the Bulgarian who does mows their lawn far less than a Briton would accept. What many of these slightly upper middle class complainers fail to realise as they talk out one side of their mouths about the evil immigrunts, is that were all the Romanians, Poles and Bulgarians were to suddenly up sticks and go home because they cant work here any more, they'll have to start cleaning their own homes, washing their own cars and mowing their own lawns.

I'm an Australian who lives in the UK. In Australia we're free of these evil foreigners who are willing to work for less than an Australian would. So I used to wash my own car because an Australian asked A$50 p/h, vacuum my own floors because an Australian charged A$30 p/h and mercifully, the housemate did the gardens (claims he enjoyed it). Now I live in the UK, a housekeeper once a week is included in the rent, I can pay a paltry £7 to get my car washed and gardening is someone else's problem too (the landlords). Point in short, British people wont start doing these jobs, the jobs will simply disappear because most people cant afford to pay what a British person will ask.

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 ...

[Pinky's Brain]

"because most programmers are white men, these AI are actually often trained using white male faces and male voices"

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

[AmiMoJo]

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

"because most programmers are white men, these AI are actually often trained using white male faces and male voices"

They identified an issue with the data and it's likely cause... and you somehow took that to mean that the author was blaming the developer's race and gender, rather than the poor quality of their work.

Anyone who understands AI will tell you that your training data needs to be representative of the data the AI will operate on and the decision making criteria. The people building these things are incompetent and made ridiculous assumptions, and the author is calling that out by explaining their mistakes.

It seems like criticising a white male these days will instantly bring out people screaming sexism and racism and hypocrisy, which is rather ironic.

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

[AmiMoJo]

Actually, we do. Studies have found that even having a female dominated HR division still tends to favour men in most instances. Counter-intuitive if you are the kind of person who assumes genders will "stick together" and are inherently biased in favour of their own, but anyone familiar with the past century of academic work on the subject will be unsurprised.

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

[JaredOfEuropa]

Sounds like the author doesn't know a great deal about this issue, which is real. The problem isn't training on or by white men. The problem is that the program is being trained to find good employees from the available candidates using whatever data it has at its disposal, regardless of whether any individual data point actually has any causal relationship with the candidate's fit. For instance: it knows that the majority of applicants from troubled neighborhoods score poorly, and it also was given (or even collected by itself) data on the demographics of such neighborhoods. It may then decide: "if skin tone > x, don't bother". Even without a causal relationship, that can still be a valid conclusion from a statistical standpoint, but it's one that we as a society deem "not ok". The problem is that such a rule wouldn't be programmed explicitly, it would be inferred form the data and it might not even be possible to find out if such a bias is being applied.

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 ...

[burtosis]

I think you just described how bias works in human minds as well. That's why statistical correlation can be racist, it's often a statistical fact that applies generally. However if the algorithm can't evaluate an individual in a nuanced way based on thier specific abilities and attributes it's no better than just using racism, sexism, and general stereotypes.

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.

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

[liefer]

I'm curious what makes you say that? Most ML devs I know use standard "face packages" that contain men, women, black, white etc. Nobody uses their colleagues faces

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.

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

[c6gunner]

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

I thought for sure that you were just making shit up, so I googled it. And laughed my ass off. Thanks.

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.

Re:Merit based employment is not racism

[Karmashock]

To weigh them in the manner you suggest they would have to have built in associations between places and these racial groups.

For your concept to work they would have to do that. Do you have any evidence what so ever that they do this or are you just making things up?

Answer... but we both already know you're full of crap.

Cite proof. The source code can be audited. Surely court cases could demand it. Where is the evidence?

What we both know is that that isn't what is happening. There have been a million studies on this issue. There have been endless fishing expeditions. They have all come up bust. You can show a hiring pattern but the hiring pattern every time is supported by the actual presence of the people with the skills they want to hire.

That means the correlating element is not race... its ability.

Provide a link to one of these programs being set up in the manner you suggest they're all being set up.

You are creating a presumption of guilt environment where the accused must prove their innocence simply on your accusation.

If this is the direction you want to go with law, then you're going to suffer literal witch trials before long. And you'll deserve them.

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:Clickbait

[sinij]

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

Unfortunately, engagement optimization algorithms figured out that trolling people with clickbait is the optimal strategy for increasing engagement as measured by participation.

Algorithmically, showing you this mindless drivel intentionally designed to upset you, would show the most ads. So this will continue happening until we improve algorithms.

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.

Colleges are going bankrupt

[Anonymous Coward]

That's NOT what companies want. Have you ever been a hiring manager? The vast majority of people coming out of colleges these days are totally useless in the work force; that's why so many of them (even with PhDs) are unemployed.

I have a B.A. and M.A., both in liberal arts. Both degrees are completely useless on the job market. As a hiring manager, I couldn't care less what degrees someone has. A person trained by the academic guild (and often very poorly, with little critical thinking) doesn't help me sell product, cut costs, or innovate against the competition.

College is a waste for 95% of people, and it has been propped up by student loans. The student loan debt bubble in the U.S. exceeds consumer credit card debt. It's going to implode spectacularly.

The people who are actually intelligent know enough to build skills rather than relying on college to get them a job or make a living.

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.

Re:Colleges are going bankrupt

[mjwx]

Liberal arts degrees are a waste of money, like psychology or music degrees.

Psychology degrees open doors into teaching and therapy jobs to name just two.
Music degrees open doors into all manner of production jobs like audio editing, sound recordist, post production, score writing, so on and so forth and this is beyond actually playing for a living (think less American Idle and more a paying gig in a philharmonic orchestra).

But I bet you're one of those knuckle dragging, mouth breathing, Fox News/Daily Mail subscribers that think these people just fall out of trees. I've worked for universities that provide both of these courses. A huge amount of usable research came out of psychology such as treatments for mental disorders, teaching methods for autistic people not to mention the less ethical routes of marketing, journalism and politics (a lot of those massaging the data from the likes of Cambridge Analytica will have physiology degrees). Music degrees, students were taught how to produce music from writing to mastering and release, so they were taught all manner of skills that can land a decent job.

Liberal arts... maybe, I've never researched one of those (and neither have you) but comparing them to degrees that produce actual jobs, you've got no clue.

Re: 95% Certain

[Karmashock]

First, I don't argue that AI "cannot" be programmed to have a racial bias. My argument rather is that there is no evidence that anyone has actually implemented such a hiring system anywhere... certainly not amoungst the major multi national corporations. And those are generally the targets for legal and political agitation probably because slimy people think they can get a fat settlement simply by being annoying.

Second, racial diversity is not actually hugely helpful for innovation. This is one of the odd logical contradictions you get from PC politics. This notion that "we're all human" but "if you have different pigment then you have different ideas"... its nonsense. You can have a more monolithic set of ideas with a very racially diverse group or a very diverse set of ideas with a single race or even a single race and gender. To say otherwise is to suggest that races have different mental processes biologically which if you don't contradict the position opens the door for saying given races will be better or worse at given tasks. Since we all agree that all races are generally equally able to do the same things at the same level... you can't contradict that position and then say that mixing the races offers some kind of intellectual advantage. This is a "x=2, x=3" argument. X cannot equal 2 and 3 at the same time. How this sort of patently absurd logic gets through our cultural filters is pretty terrifying really.

Third, your point about Google is well taken and reveals the double standards that are at play here. Google is naturally openly discouraging certain races from applying to jobs whilst these people here seem convinced that phantom discrimination exists despite their inability to actually present any evidence.

MS technology

[stooo]

Hey, That's a new way big companies can throw money at MS: Use Tay for their job interviews.
What. could. possibly. go. wrong?
Tay is cool