AI-Powered Hiring Tools Have Failed To Reduce Bias, New Study Claims - AI Summary

Users of such tools claim that it eliminates gender and ethnic biases in hiring by utilizing algorithms that analyze job applicants through their speech patterns, expressions, and other aspects. However, researchers from Cambridge's Centre for Gender Studies contend that AI recruiting tools are superficial and equivalent to "automated pseudoscience" in a recent report published in Philosophy and Technology. The Cambridge team asserts that because AI is programmed to look for the employer's ideal applicant, it may eventually encourage uniformity rather than variety in the workforce when it is utilized to reduce candidate pools. "By claiming that racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination can be stripped away from the hiring process using artificial intelligence, these companies reduce race and gender down to insignificant data points, rather than systems of power that shape how we move through the world," co-author Dr. Eleanor Drage said in a statement. The researchers noted many businesses now analyze candidate videos using AI, evaluating applicants for the "big five" personality traits: extroversion, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism.