Should Tech Decide Who to Hire or Fire?

Hire or Fire: Tech Calls the Shots

By Francesca Siow

Hello peeps – I am back. Since the last, I’ve landed a job with one of the world’s leading Artificial Intelligence (AI) firms. How exciting is that?

And that’s not even the coolest part. AI was encoded into every stage of my recruitment – from the screening to the interviewing process. I was – and still am – in awe.

THE GOOD

Like did you know? It was the headhunter AI that found me – my words and my works (good ones, soso ones and even the bad ones). It’s creepy but also amazing, and (mostly) a relief that there wasn’t anything really dark picked up – except this picture of me eating dark chocolate ice-cream and dripping everywhere.

I wasn’t the only one who found the AI recruiting tool awesome. More than one peer shared how they wouldn’t have scored a chance at their new workplace if they had sent in their resume good and proper to these companies.

On the other side of the fence, the AI tool also has a fan base. My HR colleague was all praise and smiles when she talked about the quality and speed the AI was able to shortlist candidates – a contrast to her comments about the prior human executive.

THE BAD

Except, few know that AI is actually just as biased as humans. We’ve learnt to question other humans and their bias over the course of human history. But not machines. We trust our machines – even when logic tells us that our conscientious colleague doesn’t deserve a poor performance rating or to be fired. Well, I guess it’s hard to blame the machine. Even if we do, no good comes out of it. Can it apologise? Maybe. But trust me, it’s “sorry”, but not sorry. Can it correct its own bias? No.

How about going back to the source company or the original programmer to resolve that? Easier said than done. Because the AI could have learnt and evolved so much from the beginning that it’s also a black box to these folks. So eventually, the only solution is to “fire” the AI and “hire” more humans to build a new one.

THE UNCERTAIN

Now, I am confused. Is AI great because it helped me and my friends nab great jobs? Or is AI bad because just like how it got me hired, it can also get me fired?

Whatever. I’ve decided. I can call the shots – by playing a part in correcting these coded bias.