I always do qualify — it’s not going to just automatically discriminate by itself. It’s on the design of the systems and the use of the systems.
Right now, we know how to investigate employment decisions. We know how to investigate bias in employment. And it doesn’t matter if it’s coming from an AI tool or if it’s coming from a human.
Whether we can ever have the skills and the resources to actually investigate the technology and investigate algorithms — [that] would be a much broader discussion for Congress, for all agencies. Congress [would be the one] to give us more authority. Or more funding to hire more investigators or hire tech-specific experts — that is one thing that all agencies would welcome. Or if they’re going to create a new agency that’s going to work side by side with other agencies, that’s really the prerogative of Congress, of which direction they’re gonna go to skill these law enforcement agencies to deal with the changing technology.
But right now, I feel very confident that if we got any kind of discrimination, whether it’s AI or by human, we can get to the bottom of it. We can use the long-standing laws.
OK, speaking as an employee — because I know one of the places we’re seeing AI the most is in hiring decisions — is there any way for me to know right now if I didn’t get a job because of AI in hiring discrimination?
Without consent requirements, without employers saying, “You’re going to be subject to this tool, and here’s what the tool is going to be doing during the interview,” you have no idea, right? I mean, you just have no idea what’s being run in an interview. Especially now with interviews going online, you’re on Zoom. You have no idea what’s going on in the background, if your face is being analyzed, if your voice is being analyzed.
Take a step back, this is how it’s been for a long time. You don’t know who’s making an employment decision, generally. You don’t know what factors are going on when a human makes an employment decision and what’s actually in their brain.
We’ve been dealing with the black box of human decisionmaking since we’ve been around, since the 1960s. You don’t really know what factors are going into lawful or unlawful employment decisions or when there is bias. Those are hard to discern to begin with.