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Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc’s (AMZN.O) 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 mechanizing 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 shoppers rate products on Amazon, some of the people said.
[...] But by 2015, the company realized 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 penalized 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.
rinciples.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Thursday October 11 2018, @09:10AM (5 children)
You know, I'm not even sure if I meant Human Resource Departments, or humans in general as a resource. Either works.
Thanks but it wouldn't make any difference.* My karma is only ever 49 or 50 regardless. Damn karma cap!
Hey, feature request: I'd love a Karma Reset button that sets your own karma to zero. I'd use it. It would make things more interesting once in a while.
*Perhaps you were being ironic.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday October 11 2018, @09:52AM (4 children)
I meant HR as in Resource Dept and no, I wasn't being ironic. I've never seen anything but biologic stupidity from any HR dept I worked with.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Thursday October 11 2018, @09:56AM
Good, me neither. Unless ass-covering by rote counts as a form intelligence.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Thursday October 11 2018, @10:12AM (2 children)
Ah, there'd have been a grin, wouldn't there?
This is totally inconsequential but in case you were wondering, I was thinking the irony might've been that all humans exhibit nothing but biological stupidity, therefore both my post and your reply could only be examples of that stupidity (hence exaggerated +1000). Over-thinking things, as usual. ;)
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday October 11 2018, @10:52AM (1 child)
In that case, an act of defiance [soylentnews.org] against the mysteries of the Universe.
In this case, (grin) [soylentnews.org]
Too much free time in you hand, eh?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Thursday October 11 2018, @11:12AM
Pretty much. There's a longer explanation, but my hand's too, uh, busy to go into it right now.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?