Can we rely on AI to eliminate workplace bias?
A report by Accenture reveals that AI could double annual economic growth rates in 2035 by changing the nature of work and creating a new relationship between man and machine. Among all the benefits the technology offers, what grabbed our attention was its ability to eliminate workplace bias. According to leading media houses and technology dailies, AI can drop unconscious bias at workplaces. By deploying machine learning, AI can identify potential bias in job descriptions and HR communication which can help in eliminating the bias at work. Technologists also claim that AI will not only protect the company from discrimination litigation, but it will further improve the balance of gender and demographics within the workplace.
Instance1: Unilever North America partnered with Pymetrics and HireVue to completely digitized their hiring process. Pymetrics and HireVue are AI enabled platforms that enable screening and interviews of potential candidates. Unilever reported that they hired their most diverse class to date. They reported a 10% increase in hires of non-white applicants and an increase from 840 to 2,600 universities. There was an undisclosed balancing of socioeconomic class and gender hiring.
Akshay, Marketing Consultant at inFeedo shares, “People often contaminate facts with their biases to represent a distorted version of the truth. While companies work hard to train their leaders and managers from acting on their biases, some unconscious biases nevertheless slip in. On the other hand, AI programs can generate insights from data at a higher accuracy because these programs aren’t affected by any cognitive biases.”
Bias at the workplace has always been a challenge in the workplace and has been unresolved until today. And the ability of a machine to solve workplace bias is intriguing.