After several delays, a New York City law requiring companies to vet their automated employee hiring or promotion tools went into effect Wednesday in an attempt to thwart biases baked into software used by HR offices.
New York City Local Law 144, also known as the Bias Audit Law, will require hiring organizations to inform job applicants that algorithms automating the process are being used and have a third-party perform an audit of the software to check for any bias.
Some experts believe the law governing the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in hiring could become a blueprint for reforms across the country.
The Bias Audit Law covers any automated hiring or employee assessment algorithm including machine learning, statistical modeling, data analytics, or AI that generates a prediction. The algorithms are defined as those used to assess a candidate’s fitness or likelihood of success, or that generate a classification of that person.
Companies that don’t comply with the law will face penalties of $375 for a first violation, $1,350 for a second violation and $1,500 for a third or more violations. Each day an automated employment decision tool is used in violation of the law will be considered another separate violation.
While New York City’s is the broadest law governing automated hiring tools to go into effect, states, including California, Illinois, Maryland, and Washington, have or are considering legislating rules around using AI for talent acquisition. The European Union’s EU AI Act is also aimed at addressing issues surrounding automated hiring software. The text of the EU AI Act was passed in June and it’s currently being written into a proposal that can be voted on as a law.
Organizations use automation in hiring because weeding through candidates manually can take weeks, if not months. Simply scheduling next-phase interviews can take days to get on the books — not to mention delays caused by rescheduling. A hiring manager also may not have enough time to fully prepare for an interview. Hiring algorithms can cull the field of candidates quickly based on experience, skills, and other metrics to produce a smaller, more manageable and (theoretically) better suited list of candidates. Knowledge workers, in particular, can be difficult to sift through because of the amount of experience and skillsets required for their tasks.
The requirements contained in New York Local Law 144 could also easily bleed over into enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications and workforce planning in general, according to Cliff Jurkiewicz, vice president of Global Strategy at Phenom, an AI-enabled hiring platform provider.
For example, ERP applications have workforce management components that can play into how people are hired and trained and what competencies and skills are needed. “All those things AI will affect. The reality is the reach of AI is going to make the extensibility of that law — which…
2023-07-07 15:00:06
Post from www.computerworld.com