AI in Hiring | The Fast Forward

Employers are increasingly automating the hiring process through the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools. While these tools may be appealing to hiring teams for their potential to streamline and speed up the hiring process, and to identify superior and more diverse candidates, they can also perpetuate existing biases. Now, local governments are responding with proposed regulations—for companies using such technologies and those developing them—to guard against discriminatory practices.

What’s New

More and more, employers are using artificial intelligence (AI) tools to automate key parts of the hiring process. Hiring algorithms have gained popularity in recent years—across all industries and job types—as a result of employers’ desires to increase efficiency in the hiring process and improve the quality and, in some cases, diversity of candidates. Automation in hiring has become even more widely adopted as a result of COVID-19 and the pivot to remote work, which has made business increasingly dependent on virtual systems for previously in-person interactions such as job applications and interviews. The use of hiring AI will likely continue to proliferate as the economy recovers and companies enter a phase of new hiring.

However, this deployment of AI may prove to be problematic as algorithms can reproduce human bias in surprising and insidious ways.

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