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Artificial Intelligence is Coming for Hiring, and It Might Not Be That Bad (bloomberg.com)

Even with all of its problems, AI is a step up from the notoriously biased recruiting process, a report argues. From the report: Artificial intelligence promises to make hiring an unbiased utopia. There's certainly plenty of room for improvement. Employee referrals, a process that tends to leave underrepresented groups out, still make up a bulk of companies' hires. Recruiters and hiring managers also bring their own biases to the process, studies have found, often choosing people with the "right-sounding" names and educational background. Across the pipeline, companies lack racial and gender diversity, with the ranks of underrepresented people thinning at the highest levels of the corporate ladder. "Identifying high-potential candidates is very subjective," said Alan Todd, CEO of CorpU, a technology platform for leadership development. "People pick who they like based on unconscious biases."

AI advocates argue the technology can eliminate some of these biases. Instead of relying on people's feelings to make hiring decisions, companies such as Entelo and Stella.ai use machine learning to detect the skills needed for certain jobs. The AI then matches candidates who have those skills with open positions. The companies claim not only to find better candidates, but also to pinpoint those who may have previously gone unrecognized in the traditional process.

4 of 149 comments (clear)

  1. meritocracy? by sittingnut · · Score: 3, Insightful

    the important question is, will the so called "artificial intelligence" (in reality, a data analysis algorithm running on fast computing infrastructure, using fuzzy logic to arrive at faster good enough probabilistic solution, rather than harder best solution, to a problem) look at only data relating to candidates' competency about the job allied to? or will it look at other data too? "diversity" quotas of the employer, personal appearance and tact, social interaction and team work skills, etc? and how exactly?

  2. Garbage in... by Thelasko · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...garbage out.

    If the training data is biased, the AI will learn to be biased. There have been numerous reports on this.

    --
    One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
  3. Re:Will they have the same stupid requirements? by CanHasDIY · · Score: 4, Informative

    Generally speaking, those "searching for unicorns" requirements are all about giving corporations an excuse to replace American workers with H1-B foreigners for pennies on the dollar.

    --
    An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
  4. Re:More applicants than jobs by im_thatoneguy · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yeah the trend definitely moved with Trump taking office.
    https://tinyurl.com/y72ty3u3 /Sarcasm