AI-based job application selection process may present legal risks

ABC NEWS (Australia)

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.

Transcript

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.

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