Claims AI can boost workplace diversity are 'spurious and dangerous,' researchers argue - Technology Org

Recent years have seen the emergence of AI tools marketed as an answer to the lack of diversity in the workforce, from use of chatbots and CV scrapers to line up prospective candidates 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 requiring investment and company culture changes. The'Personality Machine' demonstrates how arbitrary changes in facial expression, clothing, lighting and background can give radically different personality readings – and so could make the difference between rejection and progression for a generation of job seekers vying for graduate positions.