Artificially Unintelligent
Authors know they cannot, unfortunately, ignore Amazon, where eighty percent of the books are sold. Imaging our surprise, however, when we looked at the presale page for The Big Book of HR, 10th Anniversary Edition, on Amazon and noticed it’s high rank in the category Managerial Accounting (Books). Uh, Amazon, it’s The Big Book of HR, as in Human Resources, not the big book of accounting.
When we spoke to our publisher, he advised that the categories listed have little to do with the submitted information. Rather, its all about Amazon’s algorithm and how people are finding the book which can be all over the place in the early release phase. I’ll spare you the rest of the details he shared, but are machines really intelligent?
Authors aren’t the only ones being challenged by artificial intelligence (AI). HR and business leaders are challenged as well, especially in the hiring process. Applicant tracking systems (ATS) searching for key words often overlooks viable candidates. If a submission does not contain the right terms or the ATS detects gaps in employment history or lack of a college degree, it is rejected. An unintended consequence—discrimination. In one study conducted by ATS developer Headstart it was noted that “Black candidates were 18% less likely to proceed past the screen stage.”
Employers beware. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has taken note and announced in October 2021 that it will launch an initiative aimed at rooting out bias created by artificial intelligence and other technologies used in hiring. Commissioner Keith Sonderling warned employers that hiring tech tools create discrimination risks.
Beyond discrimination risks, in a hot job market, millions of job seekers—people who want to work despite current myths—aren’t getting hired. One of the reasons: with ATS and online applications they are not getting past the algorithms that scan applicants—there’s that “A” word again. In some cases, it’s because there are pandemic-related gaps in employment.
Like so much in the HR profession, there’s an art and science to the hiring process, and AI lacks the artistry. Add to that the lack of accountability—some employers don’t hold the systems and their developers accountable for the results the systems turn out such as inherent bias.
Since technology plays such an important role in the HR function, The Big Book of HR, 10th Anniversary Edition, has a chapter devoted to HR and Technology. In it, we discuss the role AI plays, but provide a word of caution to our readers: AI depends on algorithms and algorithms can be faulty. So, it is important for humans to be in the loop to work in partnership with AI to ensure fairness and accountability.
The book is available for preorder at https://tinyurl.com/ejjbkp69. To ensure you receive it by its official publication date of January 1, 2022 or sooner, pre-order your copy soon. If enough people search for it on Amazon, maybe the algorithm will correct itself.