Invisible obstacles: some AI recruiter tools are biased against working moms
For all of its undeniable benefits in the workplace, AI could be the ultimate frenemy of certain cohorts, among them working mothers.
Recent research at New York University (NYU) raised eyebrows late last year when it unveiled AI’s uncomfortable secret: it has been weeding out and binning the applications of candidates who have an extended gap on their resumé, a move that disproportionately punishes those who have taken maternity leave or leave for other parental reasons.
The study examined bias in advanced AI systems known as Large Language Models (LLMs) when used in the hiring process, specifically Chat GPT3.5, Google Bard and Anthropic’s Claude.
And while AI is efficient and effective at recruitment screening – and ironically its use was intended to democratize the hiring process – it’s far from neutral in practice.
AI has excluded qualified female candidates
In fact, not only do some algorithms show the sort of gender bias that would be borderline illegal if demonstrated by a human hiring manager, AI has been demonstrated to exclude qualified female candidates if their resumé shows a recent gap.
And as all carers and working mothers know, noticeable career gaps are unavoidable, often due to family- or maternity-related responsibilities. As if moms returning to work didn’t have it hard enough; now even AI is imposing a motherhood penalty.
This inequality, if unaddressed, could become endemic to the hiring process, because almost overnight AI has become the default first-round judge in job candidate assessment. It is estimated that in the U.S., roughly 75% of all resumés are “read” by a bot first.
An earlier survey by Harvard Business School had already found that excellent candidates were often rejected by AI due to “knockout criteria” – in half of cases, these included a gap on a resumé of longer than six months.
AI domination of resumé screening happened so quickly that only now are laws being enacted to limit its damage. In the U.S. late last year, legislators introduced the Algorithmic Accountability Act, a bill originally introduced back in 2019 and now resurrected. It aims to identify and prevent bias in gender, race and other factors when AI is used as a screening tool.
In October 2023, meanwhile, President Biden issued a pioneering Executive Order that aims to manage the risks of artificial intelligence (AI), while New York State was first to bring in a law requiring AI tools used in hiring to be audited for bias.
It means that as lawmakers catch on, employers will have to begin to exercise caution in their use of automated language-model recruiting tools, and be more transparent about their use. All of which is good news for workers… and for women.
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