Humans have preferences, including the humans in charge of recruiting or promoting employees. As time has passed those who felt discriminated against were more able to make their voices heard on this unfairness.
This led some employers to look for alternative, fairer ways of recruiting. Ones that could eliminate an individual’s bias for or against certain categories of applicants. First, they turned to computer programs and then to AI.
Research shows it’s not as effective as hoped
The selling point of decisions made by AI is that they are data-driven. Proponents claimed that decisions AI made would be based only on facts only. As the world is learning fast, AI may not like or dislike certain groups of people in the same way a human might, but it is certainly not bias-free.
The results AI puts out depend on the data people feed it. Feed it biased information and the biases that existed in that information will live on. And that is what is happening. Take, for example, a company that has traditionally favored male employees over female ones for management positions. Someone in the company decides to try and change this by bringing AI to the recruitment process. The problem is that the information they feed the machine already favors male employees.
AI can only work with the data it receives, and if that data is biased in a particular direction, that bias will remain and perhaps become even more entrenched in the company’s recruitment system. While no one actually tells AI that men are better managers than women, as far as it can see most successful managers to date in the company have been men (because females were rarely given a chance to prove their worth).
If you feel discriminated against in the recruitment or promotion process, don’t accept someone’s argument that it could not possibly be so because they used AI. Rather, seek legal guidance from someone who can help you show it up for what it was.