Workday sued for discrimination over AI candidate screening tool
- Reference: 1677173529
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/02/23/workday_discrimination_lawsuit/
- Source link:
Launched earlier this week in the Northern District Court of California, the case alleges that the HR and payroll SaaS firm "unlawfully offers an algorithm-based applicant screening system that determines whether an employer should accept or reject an application for employment based on the individual's race, age, and/or disability."
The Register has asked Workday to comment.
[1]
The class action [2]complaint [PDF] – which seeks to represent other applicants who may have been affected – stems from the alleged experience of Derek Mobley, a Black man over 40 who suffers from anxiety and depression. Court documents state that since 2018, Mobley has applied for 80-100 positions at companies that use Workday as a recruitment screening tool.
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He was denied employment on every occasion, even though he holds a bachelor's degree in finance from Morehouse College, a private historically Black men's liberal arts college in Atlanta, Georgia, the documents state. He also has an associate's degree in network systems administration from ITT Technical Institute, Indianna.
"The selection tools marketed by Workday to its customers allows these customers to manipulate and configure them in a discriminatory manner to recruit, hire, and onboard employees. Workday's products process and interpret an applicant's qualifications and recommend whether the applicant should be accepted or rejected," the documents add.
[5]I was reasonable to ask to WFH in early days of COVID, says fired engineer
[6]Airbnb hosts less likely to accept bookings from Black people than Whites
[7]Man wins court case against employer that fired him for not liking boozy, forced 'fun' culture
[8]Dinobabies latest: IBM settles with widow of exec who killed himself after layoff
The court papers allege that Workday's tools rely on subjective practices which result in biases against African-American applicants, those over 40 years of age, and those with disabilities.
The plaintiff claims that Workday's AI systems and screening tools rely on algorithms and inputs created by humans who often have "built-in motivations, conscious and unconscious, to discriminate."
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In a statement to Bloomberg Law, [10]Workday said the lawsuit was without merit. It said it was "committed to trustworthy AI" and acts "responsibly and transparently in the design and delivery" of its AI solutions.
"We engage in a risk-based review process throughout our product lifecycle to help mitigate any unintended consequences, as well as extensive legal reviews to help ensure compliance with regulations," a spokesperson said. ®
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[2] https://regmedia.co.uk/2023/02/23/complaint_mobley_class_action.pdf
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[10] https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/workday-ai-biased-against-black-disabled-applicants-suit-says
[11] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Prove it
Any of it.
Offer up 1 fact to support any of your claims.
There is no reason to "trust" that AIs and their corporate users aren't biased, if not arbitrary.
...trustworthy AI...
Spot the oxymoron.
Alternative headline
"AI trained to select white, 30s males does not select black man in 40s"
Re: Alternative headline
Clearly the AI was written by a [1]Bag O Wire
[1] https://youtu.be/oGN3R49-CAE?t=147
Little more than "automated pseudoscience"
Surprised I did not see the link to an article from the Register last October in this one:
Admittedly this refers to AI analysis of images of applicants' faces rather than CV scans:
"a paper published in the journal Philosophy and Technology by a pair of researchers at the University of Cambridge, however, demonstrates that the software is little more than "automated pseudoscience". Six computer science undergraduates replicated a commercial model used in industry to examine how AI recruitment software predicts people's personalities using images of their faces. "
https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/13/ai_recruitment_software_diversity/
I do recall, years ago reading an article which claimed interviewing was pointless. Just get the names of each candidate with adequate qualifications for the job, put them in a hat and select the desired number at random.
Re: Little more than "automated pseudoscience"
You are missing the key step when someone gives you a pile of 50+ CVs and tells you to pick 2 for interviews. You first remove at least half of them by only selecting the lucky ones - divide the pile into 2 without reading any of the CVs and put one pile in the bin. You are now left with the lucky ones.
> We ... mitigate any unintended consequences
So you're intentionally baking in the racism. Gotcha.
I'm at the point where if I see that the company uses Workday for part of the recruitment process, I don't bother applying.
Funny that, I held one of those Guido Fawkes masks in front of my face for the interview and got the job!
computer says no
Workday job application “portals” are quite terrible. Every time I applied it was necessary to fill in all of my details along with the job experience. The futuristic “import my cv” would always trip over in some places and I would need to fix the mistakes. Now if there is AI somewhere, I can only imagine how great it is.
This chap had to deal with such crazy user experience for 80-100 times.
Oxymoron Alert!
[Workday] said it was "committed to trustworthy AI" [...]
Let's assume that this is not the patently obvious oxymoron that, on its face, it is. What constitutes "trustworthy" AI? Is there a certification for such a thing. I mean, we all know that ChatGPT can be "trained" to spew bullshit, racist epithets and so on. And such "training" was done with the best of intentions. 1 Such a "commitment" is right up there with, "the safety and security of our customers data is of the upmost importance to us".
1 We've been told time and time again that ChatGPT "training" was supposed to be neutral, done under "strict supervision", yadda, yadda, yadda...
You don't need AI for this
This is just someone climbing aboard the "band waggon du jour". Resumes are routinely scanned by "artificially unintelligent" software, software notorious for weeding any but the most carefully written resumes that are designed to skirt around this filtering process. Certainly in the technical field we've learned to bypass the resume submission and use either personal contacts or headhunters, just submitting a resume to HR will get it roundfiled.
My guess is that in my state (CA) many companies would jump at the opportunity to employ a "black, over 40" person, especially if they were doing government work since it helps with the HR box checking. This particular case doesn't look promising as an example since in HR speak he'd be a weak/marginal candidate with likely 'issues' with his work history.
(Incidentally, although its popular to use the word 'disability' for all sorts of nuisances from a federal disability perspective you have to be pretty much dead to qualify. Being depressed because you can't get a job definitely doesn't qualify.) (Also, only 80 - 100 applications? A week? The EDD isn't quite as brutal as the UK's DWP but they shares quite a bit of DNA.)