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How do you define a better employee though ? I mean employers might want to hire people they like, not people who are better at their job. Skill can also be sub

by jokoon 11y ago

How do you define a better employee though ? I mean employers might want to hire people they like, not people who are better at their job. Skill can also be subjective. Sometimes it's about having a good relationship inside a company. I'm all for hiring people based on their skill, experience and potential, but don't think employers will want to let algorithm do the job of HR. Many hires are based on social contact and first impression, and I don't think anyone want to change that idea of a company being a group of people getting along. Being able to hire whoever you want is am important liberty. If people were letting algorithms do the job, they might not like it. I guess it's part of the "machine will decide for us" debate. Anyway, I'm unemployed, so by no mean I could be against change of any sort.

wolfgke 11y ago
> Being able to hire whoever you want is am important liberty. Being an important liberty does not mean that it is necessarily a good idea. What (kind of "scientific") experiment would convince you that computers are better at hiring than people?
- analog31 11y ago
  Honestly the only experiment I can think of is to put the software on the market and let it compete with traditional hiring. Companies already buy a variety of HR services, and don't need to know whether the job on the other end is being done by a person or a computer. The better service will win the market in the long run.
- zeidrich 11y ago
  Hiring who you want is agency and power. Being powerless hurts, and giving us less agency makes us more powerless. Applying to a position to a human similarly gives us agency and power. It's a bit of competition. If we pass or fail, it's based on how we did at the interview. We give these things up, and that harms us. One of the big fears about Communism in the post war era was that the Party would dictate what you did for work and how you would get paid. This fear came from this loss of agency, but communism still had support in some situations because of the idea that at least in this case everyone would get paid. Algorithmic hiring at its extreme would lead to the same loss of agency in the hiring and applying process. The algorithm would be the one that dictated whether you would get a job, and if your ability to get future jobs are dictated by your past jobs, and your past jobs are dictated by the algorithm, you are powerless. If you're really interested in computers but you worked a few summers doing mechanical work in college because that was the work that was available, well, maybe you're better qualified to be a mechanic now, so you'll never get an opportunity to work on computers. Maybe it is strictly better for the mechanic shop to hire you than get a new junior mechanic, and maybe it's strictly better for the company to hire a person who has more experience in IT. But what if the person that they hire for IT actually wants to be a mechanic, they just had jobs doing IT work? In the same way, the company keeps you on as a mechanic because you've got experience, and it's still better for the company to hire someone like him for the IT position. This might be more efficient for companies. But is it better for people. My question is really, how do you define 'better'? It's certainly easy to say that it's more efficient. But cold efficiency is the stuff that scared us in the cold war, luckily Communism failed to really take hold because that cold 'efficiency' was actually inefficient and people were starving. However, implementing it in a Capitalist society is even worse, because you get all of the bad that comes with a cold uncaring hand dictating your fate, it probably IS going to be efficient, and you've got no promise that the people left behind after this efficient system is done allocating all the labor that's necessary will be cared for. How will an algorithm rate a person who is 25 and has been unemployed since college? They'd certainly be a high risk compared to someone who has been working steadily. Bottom of the pile. What if that person has been unemployed because the algorithm filtered them out of jobs just because at the time other applicants were better or more suited for the task? As humans, we can take a chance on people like that. We might even know that they're not the perfect person for the position, but maybe we'll have "a good feeling" about them. We might make a poor hiring decision, but we might elevate a human because of it at the expense of company profits.
- jokoon 11y ago
  I think it exactly is what Elon Musk was talking about. I disagree that AI can be dangerous, but in this case I completely agree, human judgement is better, because what employees you choose should be a human decision, not an algorithmic one. Although I think AI should give suggestions AND be able to explain why such or such candidates is better. What I'm worried, is letting AI black boxes determine the best candidates and not letting HR understand why, based on previous statistics about hiring. > Being an important liberty does not mean that it is necessarily a good idea. Well it's how society have been working until today. Would you let science decide instead of people ? I would certainly not. I agree that politicians and people in general don't listen to enough science, but letting science drive us seems like an other extreme alternative. I personally think AI is great, what I'm worried is if people use it without understanding it, and in history it has happened very often.

by jokoon 11y ago

wolfgke 11y ago

> Being able to hire whoever you want is am important liberty. Being an important liberty does not mean that it is necessarily a good idea. What (kind of "scientific") experiment would convince you that computers are better at hiring than people?

analog31 11y ago
Honestly the only experiment I can think of is to put the software on the market and let it compete with traditional hiring. Companies already buy a variety of HR services, and don't need to know whether the job on the other end is being done by a person or a computer. The better service will win the market in the long run.
zeidrich 11y ago
Hiring who you want is agency and power. Being powerless hurts, and giving us less agency makes us more powerless. Applying to a position to a human similarly gives us agency and power. It's a bit of competition. If we pass or fail, it's based on how we did at the interview. We give these things up, and that harms us. One of the big fears about Communism in the post war era was that the Party would dictate what you did for work and how you would get paid. This fear came from this loss of agency, but communism still had support in some situations because of the idea that at least in this case everyone would get paid. Algorithmic hiring at its extreme would lead to the same loss of agency in the hiring and applying process. The algorithm would be the one that dictated whether you would get a job, and if your ability to get future jobs are dictated by your past jobs, and your past jobs are dictated by the algorithm, you are powerless. If you're really interested in computers but you worked a few summers doing mechanical work in college because that was the work that was available, well, maybe you're better qualified to be a mechanic now, so you'll never get an opportunity to work on computers. Maybe it is strictly better for the mechanic shop to hire you than get a new junior mechanic, and maybe it's strictly better for the company to hire a person who has more experience in IT. But what if the person that they hire for IT actually wants to be a mechanic, they just had jobs doing IT work? In the same way, the company keeps you on as a mechanic because you've got experience, and it's still better for the company to hire someone like him for the IT position. This might be more efficient for companies. But is it better for people. My question is really, how do you define 'better'? It's certainly easy to say that it's more efficient. But cold efficiency is the stuff that scared us in the cold war, luckily Communism failed to really take hold because that cold 'efficiency' was actually inefficient and people were starving. However, implementing it in a Capitalist society is even worse, because you get all of the bad that comes with a cold uncaring hand dictating your fate, it probably IS going to be efficient, and you've got no promise that the people left behind after this efficient system is done allocating all the labor that's necessary will be cared for. How will an algorithm rate a person who is 25 and has been unemployed since college? They'd certainly be a high risk compared to someone who has been working steadily. Bottom of the pile. What if that person has been unemployed because the algorithm filtered them out of jobs just because at the time other applicants were better or more suited for the task? As humans, we can take a chance on people like that. We might even know that they're not the perfect person for the position, but maybe we'll have "a good feeling" about them. We might make a poor hiring decision, but we might elevate a human because of it at the expense of company profits.
jokoon 11y ago
I think it exactly is what Elon Musk was talking about. I disagree that AI can be dangerous, but in this case I completely agree, human judgement is better, because what employees you choose should be a human decision, not an algorithmic one. Although I think AI should give suggestions AND be able to explain why such or such candidates is better. What I'm worried, is letting AI black boxes determine the best candidates and not letting HR understand why, based on previous statistics about hiring. > Being an important liberty does not mean that it is necessarily a good idea. Well it's how society have been working until today. Would you let science decide instead of people ? I would certainly not. I agree that politicians and people in general don't listen to enough science, but letting science drive us seems like an other extreme alternative. I personally think AI is great, what I'm worried is if people use it without understanding it, and in history it has happened very often.