HUMAN CAPITAL
“ Freedom from bias and discrimination is not a standing goal post , but an ever-moving target ”
SHASHIN MISHRA PUBLICIS SAPIENT
help . If robots can undertake a significant volume of the manual work required within the recruitment process , then prospective employees can be identified and onboarded efficiently .”
Counteractive to efforts for hiring diverse talent Shashin Mishra is Director of Data Science and Analytics at digital consultancy Publicis Sapient , and his colleague Sray Agarwal is the Associate Director of Data Science and
Analytics and co-author of the business book ‘ Responsible AI : Implementing Ethical and Unbiased Algorithms ’.
Agarwal believes that companies tend to hire in their own image and much work is required to ensure more diverse candidates are hired .
“ There was a case where a top technology firm was using AI for screening applications and the system taught itself that male candidates were preferable for a particular role , thus ending up penalising applications that included the any female applicant , any applicant with words related to females , and all applications that came from universities that had “ female ” words in their titles ( so , for example , anyone who attended St Mary ’ s University , or St Hilda ’ s College , Oxford , would be eliminated ). Finally , the tech company edited the AI application and made it free from stereotypical patterns . The problem was not
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