Amazon has reportedly scrapped a recruitment tool powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that showed a clear bias against women.
“Everyone wanted this holy grail”, one of the sources said. The system was designed to sift through 100 job applications and “spit out” the top five results.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The machine gave each applicant a rating out of five, “much like shoppers rate products on Amazon”, says the news site.
The AI was trained to use a method known as machine learning. This allowed researchers to feed the program old CVs from the past ten years to use as reference material so the AI could accurately grade real-life job applications, the BBC says.
But the data submitted came primarily from former male applicants, meaning the “sexist” AI taught itself that “male candidates were preferable”, the broadcaster reports.
The bias was discovered in 2015 when recruiters found that the AI system wasn’t rating applicants in a gender-neutral way. The program was penalising CVs with the word “women” in them, putting female applicants who had studied at women’s colleges, for example, or written “women’s chess club captain” in their list of achievements at a disadvantage.
Programmers subsequently amended the system to remove the bias but this was not a complete success, according to Fortune. The AI was abandoned last year.
Amazon declined to comment on the technology, but said the tool “was never used by Amazon recruiters to evaluate candidates.”
Has the AI hindered female job applicants?
Amazon insiders insist it hasn’t.
Speaking to The Sun, Amazon sources said the retail giant “never based recruitment decisions on the tool's ratings alone”, but recruiters did examine the AI’s recommendations when sifting through applications.
This isn’t the first time an AI programme has been shown to favour men over women.
Facebook came under fire last month after it emerged that AI systems had been preventing women from seeing certain job advertisements, the newspaper says.
-
Political cartoons for October 17Cartoons Friday's editorial cartoons include Tomahawk missile talk, the price of red meat, and the bestest boy reports from the Pentagon press room
-
The ‘swag gap’: are you better than your partner?In The Spotlight The viral terminology sheds light on power dynamics in modern relationships
-
Climate change is getting under our skinUnder the radar Skin conditions are worsening because of warming temperatures
-
Your therapist, the chatbotFeature Americans are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence for mental health support. Is that sensible?
-
Supersized: The no-limit AI data center build-outFeature Tech firms are investing billions to build massive AI data centers across the U.S.
-
Digital addiction: the compulsion to stay onlineIn depth What it is and how to stop it
-
AI workslop is muddying the American workplaceThe explainer Using AI may create more work for others
-
Prayer apps: is AI playing God?Under The Radar New chatbots are aimed at creating a new generation of believers
-
Is the UK government getting too close to Big Tech?Today’s Big Question US-UK tech pact, supported by Nvidia and OpenAI, is part of Silicon Valley drive to ‘lock in’ American AI with US allies
-
Google: A monopoly past its prime?Feature Google’s antitrust case ends with a slap on the wrist as courts struggle to keep up with the tech industry’s rapid changes
-
Albania’s AI government minister: a portent of things to come?In The Spotlight A bot called Diella has been tasked with tackling the country's notorious corruption problem
