California suggests taking aim at AI-powered hiring software

A newly proposed amendment to California's hiring discrimination laws would make AI-powered employment decision-making software a source of legal liability. The proposal would make it illegal for businesses and employment agencies to use automated-decision systems to screen out applicants who are considered a protected class by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing. Broad language, however, means the law could be easily applied to "applications or systems that may only be tangentially related to employment decisions," lawyers Brent Hamilton and Jeffrey Bosley of Davis Wright Tremaine wrote. Automated-decision systems and algorithms, both fundamental to the law, are broadly defined in the draft, Hamilton and Bosley said. The lack of specificity means that technologies designed to aid human decision-making in small, subtle ways could end up being lumped together with hiring software, as could third-party vendors who provide the code.