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According to a 2022 survey by the talent acquisition platform Eightfold, AI has already made major inroads in various HR processes. Of the 259 surveyed HR leaders, 73% said that they have embraced AI as a tool in recruitment and hiring, and 92% plan to increase the use of AI technology in at least one part of their work in the future, including internal tasks like retraining employees and managing performance.

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) conducted similar research, which found that while there was real enthusiasm about the potential for AI to impact HR in general and recruitment in particular, many managers are still seeking information about automation and AI tools. In their survey of 1,688 current HR professionals, 46% of respondents said they want more resources that will help them identify potential bias in AI tools.

According to Diane Mokriski, an attorney at the Connecticut Business and Industry Association (CBIA), questions about AI-generated bias are already percolating.

“It’s getting more and more common for Connecticut businesses to use AI, whether that’s in recruiting or hiring, or for current employees,” Mokriski said. “But I think what a lot of people aren’t appreciating is that it can have a disparate impact on certain applicants.”

Mokriski said that AI applications may expose companies that use them to legal action pertaining to discrimination, intentional or not. If AI is used to make hiring or screening decisions, the company faces full legal liability.

“People don’t quite appreciate the power of AI. They think that it’s neutral, because of course a robot is going to be, but the effect that it has is actually often not neutral,” she added.

Mokriski warned that a company could create self-inflicted problems by misusing AI. For example, if an AI solution is used to screen for applicants who are similar to current staff, this could harm the company by screening out candidates who are able to provide valuable new perspectives while creating a risk exposure if the instructions wind up ensuring the staff are all from the same demographic.

“The AI is really only as good as the person who programmed it, and the people who program it are humans, and they’re using data also provided by humans” said Mokriski. “If you’re running a business and have been using AI for recruiting take a look at who your successful applicants are, if more than one type of person can get past that first level of AI.”

Chris Russell, the managing director of RecTech Media, a Trumbull consulting firm and media outlet centered on the latest developments in the field of recruiting technology, was less pessimistic.

“At the end of the day, recruiting is still people who hire people,” he said. “I don’t think AI is going to change that part of it. I think AI is going to just help us uncover people for recruiters and help surface the top ones, maybe automate setting up the interview process.”

Russell believed that HR use of AI was still at a very early stage, noting that it may prove most useful in HR tasks that aren’t focused on screening applicants.

“Right now, it’s more of the generative AI that we’re seeing, so companies with applicant tracking systems are inserting it into places where it helps to automate stuff,” Russell said. “A number of vendors in the space have now introduced generative AI to help automatically write a job description for an employer and make that process easy and automated for them. It’s also being used to summarize stuff.”

David Lewis, the founder and CEO of Operations Inc., a Norwalk-based HR consulting practice, anticipates an increasing demand for AI in the workplace despite potential risks. He believed AI can be useful both for companies dealing with substantial numbers of candidates for few spots and those seeking good hires when market conditions make qualified hires difficult to find in the first place.

Lewis also emphasized that the technology has already been in place longer than many people realize.

“Artificial intelligence has been present in the HR space for well over 12 years now,” Lewis said. “Earlier iterations really came in the form of applicant tracking systems. Companies that have some type of volume of recruiting are looking for efficient ways to be able to take the pipeline of candidates and turn that into a more manageable pile.”

Across most industries, Lewis indicated that a low unemployment rate has driven the need for active recruiting of people already in jobs, but he foresees a future where those dealing with large numbers of candidates might be queuing for work. In those situations, he predicted, AI will be heavily used.

“In the next few years, you are going to hear about candidates being interviewed by AI,” Lewis said. “If we can filter down the candidates the way we are and we have AI that allows us to interact through text and ask questions and get responses, there’s going to be more of that in the first level of screening. Entities that are doing hiring at a high volume absolutely will use AI tools to move that process along and reduce the amount of human intervention that’s needed.”

On the other hand, Krista Bradford, the Westport-based CEO of retained executive search firm The Good Search, had doubts about the transformational impact on recruiting in the executive sphere.

“I worked as a recruiter in technology for two decades, and before that I leveraged technology as an investigative reporter,” Bradford said, recalling that she grew up in a community well within Silicon Valley’s sphere of influence. “AI requires massive data sets, and the data needs to be relatively clean. And the algorithms need to be made devoid of human flaws such as biases, or else you get into trouble.”

Bradford noted that work with tech companies building out their AI capacity had taught her that it was important to interrogate claims about AI. “Usually the salespeople don’t know, then you have to drill down to the product team, the engineering team.”

“AI is tricky business in terms of analyzing who makes a great candidate,” Bradford said. “Past behavior is typically the best predictor of future behavior, but not always. Was somebody a hugely successful executive because they were amazing and a genius? Or was the company very well-funded and launched at exactly the right time?”

Bradford believed AI can help answer those questions but as the technology becomes widespread it will stop providing a competitive advantage. She added her company emphasized something she employed in her journalistic days: “Good old-fashioned shoe leather takes you a long way – especially if you’re the only one doing it.”