The advances of artificial intelligence have expanded so far that AI is being used in the hiring process. Analyzing the potential of candidates applying for a job, however, is a complicated task. There are some areas where AI poses a few ethical risks when hiring.
Privacy
Web technology has the potential to access information from the private lives of applicants, and this is a breach of privacy laws. Employers can’t legally use an applying candidate’s personal data to judge them as they’re applying. The consideration here is whether AI understands the difference between private and public data. How will artificial intelligence then make a choice based on the data it receives?
Legitimacy
When speaking of legitimacy, we speak of accuracy. Making judgments on the character of a human being requires complex algorithms that haven’t been invented yet. Therapists, as well as hiring managers, spend a great deal of time when psychoanalyzing someone. AI’s legitimacy is questioned within the hiring process because AI has no physiological profiling mechanism beyond detecting behavior patterns.
Morality
As it relates to AI hiring, the question of morality arises due to competition among employers. The companies that are using AI will have an advantage over the ones that don’t. That can create an imbalance in job markets, hurting employers who don’t use AI. Additionally, AI methods pose a debate regarding jobs being replaced by computers, such as human resources and head hunters no longer being staffed by humans.
Equality
The laws of equality in the workplace deal with how we approach all disabilities, including, but not limited to, gender and educational differences. AI may show an involuntary bias when analyzing a person’s education level, housing location, or family income. While these may not be qualifiers with a human interviewer, AI might collect information that is technically irrelevant to the job and then use it either for or against a potential applicant.
The larger industry erected by artificial intelligence reveals to us that this technology isn’t going away. How it will improve the hiring process, however, remains to be seen. There are clear advantages to gain from AI, but we face an ethical battle before AI’s hiring capacity is perfected.
This article was originally published at: https://jeremyrobertsonmachinelearning.org/