AI tools fail to reduce recruitment bias - Uk Tech News Blog
AI tools fail to reduce recruitment bias - Uk Tech News Blog
Artificially intelligent hiring tools do not reduce bias or improve diversity, researchers say in a study.
"There is growing interest in new ways of solving problems such as interview bias," the Cambridge University researchers say, in the journal Philosophy and Technology
The use of AI is becoming widespread - but its analysis of candidate videos or applications is "pseudoscience".
A professional body for human resources told BBC News AI could counter bias.
In 2020, the study notes, an international survey of 500 human-resources professionals suggested nearly a quarter were using AI for "talent acquisition, in the form of automation".
But using it to reduce bias is counter-productive and, University of Cambridge's Centre for Gender Studies post-doctoral researcher Dr Kerry Mackereth told BBC News, based on "a myth".
"These tools can't be trained to only identify job-related characteristics and strip out gender and race from the hiring process, because the kinds of attributes we think are essential for being a good employee are inherently bound up with gender and race," she said.
Some companies have also found these tools problematic, the study notes.
In 2018, for example, Amazon announced it had scrapped the development of an AI-powered recruitment engine because it could detect gender from CVs and discriminated against female applicants.
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