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That study about hiring algorithms blew up my opinion last week

I was totally against any regulation on AI hiring tools, thought it was just tech bashing. Then I read a paper from the University of Washington that found one algorithm penalized women with gaps in their resumes by 40% more than men with the same gaps. The stat came from their 2023 analysis of real job applications across 5 companies. Has anyone else seen numbers that made them flip sides on this stuff?

2 comments

2 Comments

eric_murray265d ago

Idk 40% is a wild number. I mean, I'm an electrician not a data guy but even I can see that's pretty blatant. Just last week I was telling my buddy how these algorithms were probably fine, just tools like any other. Then I read about a different study that showed an AI docked points for resumes that used the word "women's" in any group or club they volunteered for. Guess I was wrong about the whole thing, not the first time and definitely won't be the last.

lily_singh24d ago

Wait, so it's not just flagging women's sports or something? It's literally any group or club with the word "women's" in it? That's wild to me. I mean I knew bias was a problem with these things but that's so specific and obvious once you hear it. Makes you wonder what other little patterns they've learned from bad training data. Its not like the algorithm woke up one day and decided to hate the word, it just copied whatever garbage it was fed. And 40% is a huge number, you're right about that. Feels like we're letting computers make life changing decisions based on broken logic and nobody is checking the math.