Analysis

December 17, 2018

Will AI take human bias out of hiring?

Britain's Applied says "No". France's Clustree says "Yes". And America's Pymetrics has ploughed into Europe anyway.


Kitty Knowles

6 min read

Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash

Designing algorithms is easy to do badly—just look at Amazon. The American retail giant failed spectacularly this year when its AI introduced bias against female job applicants. This happens when a machine inadvertently learns to mechanise bias already existent in employee data, explains British entrepreneur Kate Glazebrook. “It is easy to come up with something which appears to deliver the outcome you're looking for but has phenomenally bad unintended consequences,” she says.

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Kate Glazebrook presenting Applied at the DWP-led Women In Digital conference.
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Bénédicte de Raphélis Soissan, founder Clustree.
Bénédicte de Raphélis Soissan, founder Clustree.
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