Wired UK has a very good article by Alex Lee that was published on November 26th titled “An AI to stop hiring bias could be bad news for disabled people.” The technology that helps recruiters cut through the CV pile might be pushing disabled candidates out of the running “
Alex Lee provides a very good example of what can happen when an interviewee has to undertake the daunting task of a video recruitment system. This may cut time for the company but when you read the article you will find that the process would be tough for most people, let alone someone with a visual impairment.
The data collected and the algorithms used for these processes are meant to be more and more accurate as time passes, but as Professor Mike Wald has reminded us all…
“To train the algorithm, you’re going to have to give it past data,” explains Mike Wald, professor of electronics and computer science at the University of Southampton and a fellow of the Turing Institute. “if you say, here are the characteristics of all our good employees. We want more people like them. You’re going to get more people like them. And if they haven’t got any disabled people in there, you’re probably not going to get disabled people. […] ” “Disability is a very heterogeneous characteristic. Every person with a disability has a slightly different disability. And so, there is a huge issue in how to classify disabilities,” says Wald. “If you try and classify someone, until you meet that actual person and find out what they can and can’t do, then it’s not really fair to do that.”
Wired Magazine, November 26th 2019
Many more people seem to be writing about this issue and discuss where things can go wrong with AI, such an article published today called “Artificial Intelligence and Inclusion” by Mollie Lombardi. These articles and many more like ours are talking about the problem and making it clear that we need to sort it out.
If you have an answer do let us know!
We are still searching for a freely available recipe to ensure AI is inclusive and would enable us to take account of the very complex mix of disabilities and how they affect so many people in very different ways and to varying degrees; even at different times during the journey of life.