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Comment by jonnycat | Hacker News Reader

What's funny about this (legit) criticism is that non-AI HR people have been doing this for years.

The article points out:

> She worries the negative effects will spread as the technology does. "One biased human hiring manager can harm a lot of people in a year, and that's not great," she says. "But an algorithm that is maybe used in all incoming applications at a large company… that could harm hundreds of thousands of applicants."

Ah, but it is not one, all of the humans are biased. But maybe the difference is that each human is biased in a different way, whereas the algorithm applies the uniform bias to all. So maybe the humans are like an ensemble method.

That’s an extremely interesting (and concerning) point. If one human doesn’t like your resume, another somewhere else might. But if a widely used AI resume screen doesn’t like it, you won’t get hired anywhere.

This can happen today, but it could get much worse.

(On the other hand, it’s possible this turns into an arms race where you benchmark and craft your resume against a clone of the AI before submitting it)

Now to continue this line of thinking - if HR professionals all go to different colleges / schools / training centers with different curricula and are all taught to value different aspects of an applicant, then if someone passes you up someone else might not. But if a widely used textbook or HR principle is taught to everyone everywhere, you might not get hired anywhere.

I'm not saying I necessarily believe this to he an actual issue, just attempting to point out the parallels I see.

Yeah, it’s not new, it just could accelerate homogenization, as with how social media is (claimed) to be homogenizing culture. Planes, cars, and ships started it, but the internet (allegedly) turbocharges it.

I agree but algorithms are magnifying bias and work at incredible speeds. So bias is being applied more broadly and more intensely as the application of AIs expand.

I think we (as humans) are simply surprised by our own inherent bias and how this can be magnified by AI.

If good candidates are being rejected, that harms the company more than the candidate. Presumably someone is getting hired, presumably someone less qualified than the erroneously rejected candidate? And presumably that rejected candidate is applying to other companies, including competitors - the result being the company that doesn't use those faulty tools will get a better candidate with less negotiation power.

Seems like an issue that will work itself out to a certain extent.

I began to wonder how the BBC or the authors even know that the best candidate was rejected? Sure they have several individual examples but they don't have any solid numbers - or I missed something.

So what does it actually mean "best candidate" as you point out. Perhaps the best candidate would have gotten bored with the position and have left to do their own thing while the "right candidate" stays and becomes a solid part of the company.

Yes, but nearly monopolistic tools will have nearly homogeneous biases, and thus whoever happens to not be on the "not hire" side of those tools will have a really hard time.

People don't all act the same, but widely distributed software does.

Most of the HR people do not first think about the long term company plans when selecting candidates, legal stuff or anything else when it comes to hiring. Most of these problems are related to breaking the necessity for formal education, thus making this position open to kakistocracy and hurting the company in the long turn.

TLDR; The decision of managers in general to have HR from all forms of education, except from legal, has been the main reason for HR ineffectiveness, bias, discrimination and other problem among them prejudice that HR is on the side of the company. When you don't have knowledge, and you work in HR, you need to prove loyalty to the management and be executioner of a lot unpopular decisions, and obedient. They don't understand the legal background for a lot of stuff or managerial, especially when it comes to layoffs. So they only option is to either listen or get replace. And, this will stay the same, since any HR will not allow any HR candidate to get hired in the company that has more knowledge. Those that do not have the knowledge will fight tooth and nail to keep their job despite their lack of knowledge.

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