Studying AI recruitment tools: race, gender, and AI's "eradication of difference"

Philipp Schmitt & AT&T Laboratories Cambridge / Better Images of AI / Data flock (faces) / Licenced by CC-BY 4.0 Recent years have seen the emergence of AI tools marketed as an answer to lack of diversity in the workforce, from use of chatbots and CV scrapers to line up prospective candidates, through to analysis software for video interviews. Those behind the technology claim it cancels out human biases against gender and ethnicity during recruitment, instead using algorithms that read vocabulary, speech patterns and even facial micro-expressions to assess huge pools of job applicants for the right personality type and'culture fit'. However, in a new report published in Philosophy and Technology, researchers from Cambridge's Centre for Gender Studies argue these claims make some uses of AI in hiring little better than an'automated pseudoscience' reminiscent of physiognomy or phrenology: the discredited beliefs that personality can be deduced from facial features or skull shape. They say it is a dangerous example of'technosolutionism': turning to technology to provide quick fixes for deep-rooted discrimination issues that require investment and changes to company culture. In fact, the researchers have worked with a team of Cambridge computer science undergraduates to debunk these new hiring techniques by building an AI tool modelled on the technology, available online.