Could an AI program be preventing you from landing a dream job? New York’s city council wants to make sure that’s not the case for people looking for work in the Big Apple. The council recently passed a bill that would require providers of automated employment decision tools to recruiters in the city to have their underlying AI algorithms audited each year and share the results with companies using their services.
Now the platforms say they’re seeing growing interest in programs that reward ethical hackers and researchers for flagging unforeseen algorithmic biases. As well as leading to prejudices in hiring, such biases can affect everything from loan applications to policing strategies. They can be deliberately or inadvertently introduced by developers themselves or by the choice of data sets algorithms are trained on.
Although Twitter hasn’t committed to run another program yet, tech research firm Forrester predicts that at least five major companies, including banks and healthcare businesses, will launch their own AI bias bounty offerings next year. Brandon Purcell, one of the firm’s analysts, thinks that within a few years, the number of programs will start growing exponentially and says CIOs will likely be key promoters of them, along with human resources directors.
People with deep industry expertise in areas such as credit assessment and health screening but who don’t yet have AI skills could help to close the talent gap. Bugcrowd’s Ellis points out that some of the most accomplished security bug hunters in the automotive field are car enthusiasts who got so interested in the safety issues facing the industry that they taught themselves to use coding tools.