Brave new world of AI

[Rick Law]

And, I thought hiring by Web-based application forms using with drop-down choices for you to tell them complex things like: "experience you have" and "accomplishments" was bad...  We know this is coming, but if I am in the job market, this AI stuff will really make me squirm a bit...


Article from Wall Street Journal By Kate Crawford, Oct. 17, 2017 11:05 a.m. ET

Artificial Intelligence—With Very Real Biases
_{According to Microsoft researcher Kate Crawford, digital brains can be just as error-prone and biased as ours}


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Early-stage AI technologies are filtering into everything from driving directions to job and loan applications.
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A good example is today’s workplace, where hundreds of new AI technologies are already influencing hiring processes, often without proper testing or notice to candidates. New AI recruitment companies offer to analyze video interviews of job candidates so that employers can “compare” an applicant’s facial movements, vocabulary and body language with the expressions of their best employees.
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New systems are also being advertised that use AI to analyze young job applicants’ social media for signs of “excessive drinking” that could affect workplace performance. This is completely unscientific correlation thinking, which stigmatizes particular types of self-expression without any evidence that it detects real problems. Even worse, it normalizes the surveillance of job applicants without their knowledge before they get in the door.
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These systems “learn” from social data that reflects human history, with all its biases and prejudices intact. Algorithms can unintentionally boost those biases, as many computer scientists have shown. Last year, a ProPublica expose on “Machine Bias” showed how algorithmic risk-assessment systems are spreading bias within our criminal-justice system.
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I added the bold to quoted text.   Link to original article:
_{https://www.wsj.com/articles/artificial-intelligencewith-very-real-biases-1508252717}

[Zero999]

General artificial intelligence hasn't been invented yet. The problem is many people don't know that and believe a computer can understand everything, when in reality its understands next to nothing.

Recruitment hasn't been pretty dumb for a long time. Teams of HR droids, who know next to nothing about what the job applicant's actual roll, looking through a pile of CVs, performing box ticking exercises to select which one goes to the top of the pile. This is just a step in making it even dummer.

The key is to be aware of this bullshit. When I was last looking for a job, I attended  a course on CVs and we were told that one had to use certain keywords and set the CV out in a certain manner, in order to get the highest chance of being accepted. This makes it more difficult because how these programs work, is unknown.

[cdev]

The biggest and most disruptive impacts on engineering and similar professions short term will likely be from deregulation of cross border data flows..  not AI.


"The 11th Ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) will be held in Buenos Aires, Argentina on December 10–13, 2017..."