Based on exclusive information from whistleblowers, internal documents, and real world test results, Emmy-award winning Wall Street Journal contributor. Hilke Schellmann delivers a shocking and illuminating expose on the next civil rights issue of our time: how AI has already taken over the workplace and shapes our future.
Hilke Schellmann, is an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter, Wall Street Journal and Guardian contributor and Journalism Professor at NYU.
In The Algorithm, she investigates the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) in the world of work.
AI is now being used to decide who has access to an education, who gets hired, who gets fired, and who receives a promotion.
Drawing on exclusive information from whistleblowers, internal documents and real-world tests, Schellmann discovers that many of the algorithms making high-stakes decisions are biased, racist, and do more harm than good.
Algorithms are on the brink of dominating our lives and threaten our human future--if we don't fight back. Schellmann takes readers on a journalistic detective story testing algorithms that have secretly analyzed job candidates' facial expressions and tone of voice. She investigates algorithms that scan our online activity including Twitter and LinkedIn to construct personality profiles à la Cambridge Analytica.
Her reporting reveals how employers track the location of their employees, the keystrokes they make, access everything on their screens and, during meetings, analyze group discussions to diagnose problems in a team. Even universities are now using predictive analytics for admission offers and financial aid.
A REVIEW IN THE GUARDIAN
The AI tools that might stop you getting hired
One-way video interviews, CV screeners and digital monitoring are among the ways employers are using tech to save time and money on recruitment. But do they work?
Sat 3 Feb 2024 08.00 EST
". . .“If simple tests can show these tools may not work, we really need to be thinking long and hard about whether we should be using them for hiring,” says Schellmann, an assistant professor of journalism at New York University and investigative reporter.
The experiment, conducted in 2021, is detailed in Schellmann’s new book, The Algorithm. It explores how AI and complex algorithms are increasingly being used to help hire employees and then subsequently monitor and evaluate them, including for firing and promotion. Schellmann, who has previously reported for the Guardian on the topic, not only experiments with the tools, but speaks to experts who have investigated them – and those on the receiving end.
The tools – which aim to cut the time and cost of filtering mountains of job applications and drive workplace efficiency – are enticing to employers. But Schellmann concludes they are doing more harm than good. Not only are many of the hiring tools based on troubling pseudoscience (for example, the idea that the intonation of our voice can predict how successful we will be in a job doesn’t stand up, says Schellmann), they can also discriminate. . ."Schellmann calls on HR departments to be more sceptical of the hiring and workplace monitoring software they are deploying – asking questions and testing products. She also wants regulation: ideally a government body to check the tools to ensure they work and don’t discriminate before they are allowed to hit the market. But even mandating that vendors release technical reports about how they have built and validated their tools so others could check them would be a good first step. “These tools aren’t going away so we have to push back,” she says.
In the meantime, jobseekers do have ChatGPT at their disposal to help them write cover letters, polish CVs and formulate answers to potential interview questions.
“It is AI against AI,” says Schellmann.
“And it is shifting power away from employers a little bit.”
