Amazon Scraps AI Recruiting Tool That Showed Bias Against Women

Amazon Scraps AI Recruiting Tool That Showed Bias Against Women after  their machine-learning specialists uncovered a big problem: their new recruiting engine did not like women.

The team had been building computer programs since 2014 to review job applicants’ resumes with the aim of mechanising the search for top talent, five people familiar with the effort told Reuters. 

Automation has been key to Amazon’s e-commerce dominance, be it inside warehouses or driving pricing decisions. The company’s experimental hiring tool used artificial intelligence to give job candidates scores ranging from one to five stars, much like shopper’s rate products on Amazon, some of the people said. 

“Everyone wanted this holy grail,” one of the people said. “They literally wanted it to be an engine where I’m going to give you 100 resumes, it will spit out the top five, and we’ll hire those.” 

But by 2015, the company realised its new system was not rating candidates for software developer jobs and other technical posts in a gender-neutral way. 

That is because Amazon’s computer models were trained to vet applicants by observing patterns in resumes submitted to the company over a 10-year period. Most came from men, a reflection of male dominance across the tech industry. 

In effect, Amazon’s system taught itself that male candidates were preferable. It penalised resumes that included the word “women’s,” as in “women’s chess club captain.” And it downgraded graduates of two all-women’s colleges, according to people familiar with the matter. They did not specify the names of the schools. 

Amazon edited the programs to make them neutral to these particular terms. But that was no guarantee that the machines would not devise other ways of sorting candidates that could prove discriminatory, the people said.

The Seattle company ultimately disbanded the team by the start of last year because executives lost hope for the project, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Amazon’s recruiters looked at the recommendations generated by the tool when searching for new hires, but never relied solely on those rankings, they said.

Amazon declined to comment on the technology’s challenges, but said the tool “was never used by Amazon recruiters to evaluate candidates.” The company did not elaborate further. It did not dispute that recruiters looked at the recommendations generated by the recruiting engine.

The company’s experiment, which Reuters is first to report, offers a case study in the limitations of machine learning. It also serves as a lesson to the growing list of large companies including Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc (HLT.N) and Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) that are looking to automate portions of the hiring process.

Some 55 percent of U.S. human resources managers said artificial intelligence, or AI, would be a regular part of their work within the next five years, according to a 2017 survey by talent software firm CareerBuilder.

Employers have long dreamed of harnessing technology to widen the hiring net and reduce reliance on subjective opinions of human recruiters. But computer scientists such as Nihar Shah, who teaches machine learning at Carnegie Mellon University, say there is still much work to do.

“How to ensure that the algorithm is fair, how to make sure the algorithm is really interpretable and explainable - that’s still quite far off,” he said.

Masculine Language

Amazon’s experiment began at a pivotal moment for the world’s largest online retailer. Machine learning was gaining traction in the technology world, thanks to a surge in low-cost computing power. And Amazon’s Human Resources department was about to embark on a hiring spree: Since June 2015, the company’s global headcount has more than tripled to 575,700 workers, regulatory filings show.

So it set up a team in Amazon’s Edinburgh engineering hub that grew to around a dozen people. Their goal was to develop AI that could rapidly crawl the web and spot candidates worth recruiting, the people familiar with the matter said.

The group created 500 computer models focused on specific job functions and locations. They taught each to recognize some 50,000 terms that showed up on past candidates’ resumes. The algorithms learned to assign little significance to skills that were common across IT applicants, such as the ability to write various computer codes, the people said.

Instead, the technology favored candidates who described themselves using verbs more commonly found on male engineers’ resumes, such as “executed” and “captured,” one person said.

Gender bias was not the only issue. Problems with the data that underpinned the models’ judgments meant that unqualified candidates were often recommended for all manner of jobs, the people said. With the technology returning results almost at random, Amazon shut down the project, they said.

The Problem, or the Cure?

Other companies are forging ahead, underscoring the eagerness of employers to harness AI for hiring.

Kevin Parker, chief executive of HireVue, a startup near Salt Lake City, said automation is helping firms look beyond the same recruiting networks upon which they have long relied. His firm analyzes candidates’ speech and facial expressions in video interviews to reduce reliance on resumes.

“You weren’t going back to the same old places; you weren’t going back to just Ivy League schools,” Parker said. His company’s customers include Unilever PLC (ULVR.L) and Hilton.

Goldman Sachs has created its own resume analysis tool that tries to match candidates with the division where they would be the “best fit,” the company said.

Microsoft Corp’s (MSFT.O) LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network, has gone further. It offers employers algorithmic rankings of candidates based on their fit for job postings on its site.

Still, John Jersin, vice president of LinkedIn Talent Solutions, said the service is not a replacement for traditional recruiters.

“I certainly would not trust any AI system today to make a hiring decision on its own,” he said. “The technology is just not ready yet.”

Some activists say they are concerned about transparency in AI. The American Civil Liberties Union is currently challenging a law that allows criminal prosecution of researchers and journalists who test hiring websites’ algorithms for discrimination.

“We are increasingly focusing on algorithmic fairness as an issue,” said Rachel Goodman, a staff attorney with the Racial Justice Program at the ACLU.

Still, Goodman and other critics of AI acknowledged it could be exceedingly difficult to sue an employer over automated hiring: Job candidates might never know it was being used.

As for Amazon, the company managed to salvage some of what it learned from its failed AI experiment. It now uses a “much-watered down version” of the recruiting engine to help with some rudimentary chores, including culling duplicate candidate profiles from databases, one of the people familiar with the project said.

Another said a new team in Edinburgh has been formed to give automated employment screening another try, this time with a focus on diversity.

Reuters:

You Might Also read:

Why Are So Few Women In Cybersecurity?

« Arrest Of Intelligence Officer Sparks Fears Of Chinese Hacking Attack
The Haunting Horror Story Of Cybercrime »

CyberSecurity Jobsite
Perimeter 81

Directory of Suppliers

Authentic8

Authentic8

Authentic8 transforms how organizations secure and control the use of the web with Silo, its patented cloud browser.

Resecurity, Inc.

Resecurity, Inc.

Resecurity is a cybersecurity company that delivers a unified platform for endpoint protection, risk management, and cyber threat intelligence.

North Infosec Testing (North IT)

North Infosec Testing (North IT)

North IT (North Infosec Testing) are an award-winning provider of web, software, and application penetration testing.

NordLayer

NordLayer

NordLayer is an adaptive network access security solution for modern businesses — from the world’s most trusted cybersecurity brand, Nord Security. 

DigitalStakeout

DigitalStakeout

DigitalStakeout enables cyber security professionals to reduce cyber risk to their organization with proactive security solutions, providing immediate improvement in security posture and ROI.

EfficientIP

EfficientIP

EfficientIP helps organizations drive business efficiency through agile, secure and reliable network infrastructures.

Sonatype

Sonatype

Sonatype protects the world's enterprise software from security, compliance, licensing risks, while reducing application development and deployment time.

MaxMind

MaxMind

MaxMind is an industry-leading provider of IP intelligence and online fraud detection tools.

Guardea Cyberdefense

Guardea Cyberdefense

Guardea Cyberdefense is an IT services company specializing in the management of security projects, with a pool of skills selected from a network of specialized partners.

Adroit Technologies

Adroit Technologies

Adroit Technologies has been developing award winning real-time software for the industrial automation markets for over 25 years.

EIT Digital

EIT Digital

EIT Digital is a leading digital innovation and entrepreneurial education organisation driving Europe’s digital transformation. Areas of focus include digital infrastructure and cyber security.

Shadowserver Foundation

Shadowserver Foundation

Shadowserver Foundation aims to improve internet security by raising awareness of compromised servers, malicious attackers and the spread of malware.

High Sec Labs (HSL)

High Sec Labs (HSL)

High Sec Labs develops high-quality, cyber-defense solutions in the field of network and peripheral isolation.

MER Group

MER Group

MER Group is a world-leading integrator in the areas of communications and security. MER cyber solutions cover the entire range of cyber and intelligence related products and services.

Polish Centre for Accreditation (PCA)

Polish Centre for Accreditation (PCA)

PCA is the national accreditation body for Poland. The directory of members provides details of organisations offering certification services for ISO 27001.

OXO Cybersecurity Lab

OXO Cybersecurity Lab

OXO Cybersecurity Lab is the first dedicated cybersecurity incubator in the Central & Eastern Europe region.

Cyber Security Operations Consulting (CyberSecOp)

Cyber Security Operations Consulting (CyberSecOp)

CyberSecOp is an ISO 27001 Certified Organization which provides cyber security operations services and risk management consulting.

AdronH

AdronH

AdronH is a company of Cyber Security consultants. We support companies and public institutions with their digital transformation to new and secure business platforms.

Spera Security

Spera Security

Spera helps identity security professionals effectively and confidently measure, prioritize and reduce identity risk to better protect the organization from identity-based attacks.

LaScala

LaScala

LaScala is an IT Managed Services provider delivering technical, security, and compliance solutions with dedication, compassion, and agility.

Data Computer Services

Data Computer Services

Data Computer Services provides professional tailored IT Support and IT Services for businesses throughout Edinburgh and the Lothians.