These days it's quite possible that no actual person reads your carefully curated job application. The documents may be thrown onto the reject pile by an AI-based selection process.
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00:00The research has found that interviews with a bunch of AI experts and professionals and
00:10also human resources and recruiters, and the research has found that if you are an already
00:18disadvantaged person in the workforce, maybe living with a disability, maybe a woman, maybe
00:25a racial minority, maybe somebody who is middle-aged to elderly, there are real grave risks with
00:33this AI system, with these AI systems that can kind of score and classify your attributes
00:39based on a machine understanding of what you might bring to the role.
00:44So do we know then how widespread the use of AI is in selection processes and how it's
00:49being used?
00:49Ros, very interestingly, there are figures that around 62% of Australian organisations
00:57are using AI in their recruitment processes, so a very high percentage, and a lot of those
01:04AI recruitment processes do do that classification and scoring of a person's attributes. So again,
01:12machine understanding of what you or I might bring to the role.
01:15So has there been then litigation where job applicants have claimed that they've been
01:20discriminated against by these AI recruitment processes?
01:24Not here in Australia, but there have been a number of cases in the USA. There are a number
01:30of cases which are now up and running. One of them, which recently settled, involved a company
01:36called the iTutor Group. And what it does is it provides English language tutoring by tutors
01:45based in the USA to students or kids based in China. And it has a tutor application process,
01:53which is run by AI. And a number of people, about 200, commenced an action against the iTutor
02:01group because they alleged discrimination on the basis of age, because this automatic AI process
02:09knocked out every female applicant over age 55 and every male applicant age over 60. So that recently
02:17settled. And there was a sort of a compensation settlement for those 200 people and an acknowledgement
02:23that really there was sort of a basic key word situation where people were being knocked out
02:30on the basis of their age.
02:32And other employers, Damien, are now using what are known as robo-interviews to select candidates.
02:38What are robo-interviews? They sound terrifying.
02:40Yeah, they are terrifying. I've been learning a lot this week. So robo-interviews are job applicant
02:47assessments where a candidate self-records a video interview with a computer and that computer
02:55records this interview with nobody, just with the screen. And then that interview is assessed
03:04by AI tools. So they will analyse your personality, your behaviour and your abilities.
03:16So it's not just picking up key words. The AI isn't just picking up key words. It's making an
03:21assessment about someone's demeanour and their use of language. So much more complex than just
03:28picking up on a key word. It's really making an assessment about you as a person.
03:33And any legal disputes involving robo-interviews?
03:36Yes. There's a big one in the USA right now. It's just started a few months ago. It's a case in
03:42Colorado and it's between a person known as DK and a company known as Higher View. Now,
03:49DK is a deaf person and also an Indigenous American woman. And she is suing her employer and also this
03:58company, Higher View, which supplied her employer with the assessment software that processed her
04:06application for a promotion. Now, DK is a very interesting person because obviously she was
04:13performing very well in her role and she was asked by her employer to apply for a promotion.
04:20Okay. But when she applies for this promotion, she takes part in this video interview platform,
04:27this robo-interview system, and it features automated speech recognition systems, right?
04:37Now, these types of systems are known to preference people with certain speech patterns, word choices,
04:45and accents. And DK, she flunks this system, right? She flunks this process and she receives all this
04:52feedback that she needs to work on effective communications, provide concise and direct answers,
04:58to adapt her communication style to different audiences, and to practice active listening.
05:03Now, she looks at her job performance in her work day to day and how this system
05:13looks and decides on her abilities. And there's clearly a disjunction there. And she claims that
05:20she's denied a promotion on the basis of her disability and on the basis of her race. And it's not an
05:26explicit ban on a particular group, but rather these AI systems being stacked against members of particular
05:34groups. So it'll be very interesting to see how the courts decide this kind of dispute.