7 ms·

New app scans your face and tells companies whether you’re worth hiring

49 points by Futurebot 9y ago

vbuwivbiu 9y ago
can we rename machine learning to "Prejudice Amplifier" now ?
- jschwartzi 9y ago
  I will certainly start calling it that informally.
Rjevski 9y ago
I'm curious as to how this judges the skillset of a particular candidate. To me the only skill this would be able to judge is confidence, which also makes it very easy to trick - simply believe in your bullshit and you'll get through, no matter whether you actually have the skills.
- OtterCoder 9y ago
  It says right in the article. You train it on your 'top performers' and then use it to increase groupthink and tribalism in your company.
  - blunte 9y ago
    Well, according to US political polls, 35% of the population is very happy with groupthink and tribalism despite any arguments. So there obviously is some room in business for a product like this.
    - OtterCoder 9y ago
      35%? I think you underestimate the bad blood and ill faith in the US political system. Both major parties are mere parodies of genuine debate. I will concede that 35%, being Trump's approval rating, I assume, is an easy and valid lower bound.
bogomipz 9y ago
Accessing this page results in an instant pop up box that says "Thanks for reading, like us on Facebook", even before you've had a chance to read a word in the article. What a fail. Won't read, pass.
- hardlianotion 9y ago
  popup blocking does still work, after all.
  - bogomipz 9y ago
    Really? How do you block an HTML5 element?
rainbowmverse 9y ago
I'm sure this won't instantly fail anyone with gender dysphoria that kicks into overdrive at seeing their own face. /s
Brakenshire 9y ago
Looking forward to 3D mapping of the skull, it will surely open up a utopia of completely unobjectionable, final judgment of character.
- Broken_Hippo 9y ago
  Yay, phrenology for the digital age... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology
braxxox 9y ago
Fuck this. A whole company whose business model is to increase the current diversity gap in a field.
- blunte 9y ago
  This would, if allowed to run for generations, play out like incest - a dead end. Fortunately for US-based companies, the quarterly earnings-per-share cycle creates so many decision changes within a year that a system like this wouldn't survive more than two years max. And that's about the tenure of the average employee, so it will wash out. Meanwhile, a boss will get a bonus for implementing it, and the vendor will make some cash. All is well, right?
diimdeep 9y ago
Great plot for Black Mirror episode.
- andrei_says_ 9y ago
  May I recommend rewatching the Waldo episode, especially if you live in the US?
rayiner 9y ago
Incredible that they can now get phrenological measurements from a video capture.
- bostik 9y ago
  Hell, if this system starts spreading[0], retrophrenology might actually become a thing in job interview prep. 0: Think of the plague
colbyh 9y ago
To put skepticism aside for a second - I could see this working (maybe) in a field where face to face communication is incredibly important (e.g. sales). But the vast majority of roles in a modern company don't need people that are good at communicating verbally, not to mention in front of a camera. Can you imagine putting a scientist through this process? A janitor? No way.
- hardlianotion 9y ago
  I think it's hard to avoid a lawsuit. An interview process that uses visual input to help it decide who to hire? It almost doesn't matter what else it considers - you'll have difficulty explaining to folk how it is not discriminating in some nefarious way.
justinjlynn 9y ago
Holy shit, what HR department would ever approve such a thing?! Photographs on resumes are discouraged - can you imagine the risk involved asking for a biometric scan and doing feature analysis on video interviews? How would this interact with GINA and polygraph laws? It raises far, far too many questions - unless the app makers are providing indemnity I can't see any reasonably competent hiring process professional adopting such a risky tool openly.
- Myrmornis 9y ago
  According to the article, > Goldman Sachs, Under Armour, Unilever, and Vodafone are also among the companies that have used the platform.
  - snissn 9y ago
    According to the article they've used the HireVue platform, but not necessarily this new (and weird) feature
    - justinjlynn 9y ago
      Lawsuits flying and discovery/settlement processes commencing in 3.. 2.. 1..
  - Rjevski 9y ago
    I remember Vodafone UK using this (at least the HireVue video interview thing, not sure if the AI-based approach described here was used). I turned it down straight away - if they can't bother allocating one hour of an interviewer's time for me then I shouldn't spend one of my own time for them.
gchapiewski 9y ago
"Judging a book by the cover" taken to the extreme? And I'm sure this leads to great diversity in the workplace too :)
electic 9y ago
This invariably will identify and rate characteristics like race. It will judge their vocabulary and identify if you are a native or an immigrant. Probably also identify your upbringing and class from language and grammar composition. Let the lawsuits begin.
- blunte 9y ago
  Reminds me of this problem: https://gizmodo.com/5431190/hp-face-tracking-webcams-dont-recognize-black-people https://gizmodo.com/5431190/hp-face-tracking-webcams-dont-re... There are a thousand reasons why this is probably a garbage system. And chances are, it's just another AI-hype-driven thing to sell to ignorant companies/"decision-makers" who should be out of business already.
jorgemf 9y ago
I always though that if the skills of a person are highly shaped by the genes, that would have a reflection in body traits. So basically you could have a good idea of the mental skills and personality of anyone just analyzing the body and other external features. One of the things that lead me to this theory is how mental illness do affect the body features. But even if I am right in this theory, this only gives you one part of the person. Because the environment and the own decisions of a person shapes them. For example, even if a person if the perfect fit for the job position based on the analysis, and the analysis is right, the succeed of that person also depends in the attitude. If the person has developed a natural laziness over the life it wont be productive at the job. And the opposite can be true, a less genetical predisposed person which has work hard during all the life could be a much better match for the job. EDIT: when I said the skills are encoded in genes and also expressed in body traits it doesn't mean gender or race, it could irrelevant things as the length of the fingers, or the way you walk.
- whateverman3 9y ago
  This is only true if the two genes are correlated in success. I have faith such traits do exist, and many of them, but I am not immediately convinced most traits interesting to businesses would be revealed this way. Also, your example of laziness is classic thinking yourself out of quality employees: laziness is good for identifying waste and inefficiency and for creating scaling automation. So it's not even clear if "laziness" is interesting without context to businesses. Of course, it could also entail lack of work ethic.
  - jorgemf 9y ago
    My point is that there are more factors that the biological capabilities (or whatever an algorithms says) to be good at something.
- hycaria 9y ago
  > One of the things that lead me to this theory is how mental illness do affect the body features. Care to back up this claim?
adityab 9y ago
Some comments are focusing on this exacerbating aggregate phenomena like diversity stats and wage gaps. This is true and a huge negative. But that's not the only thing we should be worried about. Far more damaging would be the dystopia that these "cognitive surveillance" products will bring upon us. It claims to micro-analyze facial expressions, intonation, non-verbal signals while the candidate is interviewing. This is vile, hostile interaction in my opinion, and it is startling to see that companies like Vodafone, Intel, and Oracle are their customers [1]. At best, this is a way to sweep unaccountable decision-making under the carpet of "the software said so". Quite likely, though, is that such products will make society a living hell for everyone until these practices are entrenched in the industry and it is too late to roll it all back. The creators of these products are not stupid, they made a conscious choice to grab low-hanging fruit (now that they have the technology available) and enrich themselves while making the world a worse place. Let's not kid ourselves that the consequences of their actions did not occur to them. As a research student in DL/AI, I realize this may make things marginally worse for my career, but right here is the reason we should regulate AI usage _now_: not Skynet, but these attempts to "disrupt" social norms for no stated reason other than "progress" and "efficiency". We should keep some technologies out of the public sphere and make it vocally clear that they are unacceptable, lest we end up with a world where everyone is wearing google glasses and you have no way to maintain a personal facade because some combination of blood flow and facial muscle twitch betrays your thoughts. Your only argument against this stuff should not only be that it has X bug or that it's execution isn't sound due to Y bias. We must oppose such things on principle, I would rather kill myself than live in some sort of Black Mirror-esque dystopia where this is mainstream. [1]: https://www.hirevue.com/customers https://www.hirevue.com/customers
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- canadian_voter 9y ago
  At best, this is a way to sweep unaccountable decision-making under the carpet of "the software said so". Quite likely, though, is that such products will make society a living hell for everyone until these practices are entrenched in the industry and it is too late to roll it all back. Sounds a lot like redlining to me[0][1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/24/upshot/how-redlinings-racist-effects-lasted-for-decades.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/24/upshot/how-redlinings-rac...
pella 9y ago
Related: "The era of blind faith in big data must end" | TED Talk | https://www.ted.com/talks/cathy_o_neil_the_era_of_blind_faith_in_big_data_must_end https://www.ted.com/talks/cathy_o_neil_the_era_of_blind_fait... "Algorithms decide who gets a loan, who gets a job interview, who gets insurance and much more -- but they don't automatically make things fair. Mathematician and data scientist Cathy O'Neil coined a term for algorithms that are secret, important and harmful: "weapons of math destruction." Learn more about the hidden agendas behind the formulas." ... "Algorithms are everywhere. They sort and separate the winners from the losers. The winners get the job or a good credit card offer. The losers don't even get an interview or they pay more for insurance. We're being scored with secret formulas that we don't understand that often don't have systems of appeal. That begs the question: What if the algorithms are wrong?"
- icelancer 9y ago
  These same algorithms run in our brains with far more flawed edge cases than big data. Not that I am defending blind use of "algorithms," but that word is a boogeyman at best.
  - rainbowmverse 9y ago
    That's why it's important to make sure people with significant variety in their backgrounds are involved in the process. Otherwise you run into situations where, for example, a team of designers doesn't discover their motion activated soap dispenser doesn't work on people with dark skin until after it's been produced, sold, and used.
  - panic 9y ago
    We can talk about our decisions, explain them, and revise them if someone convinces us we're wrong. That's very different from a system that only outputs a vector of probabilities.
  - sidlls 9y ago
    No, "these same algorithms" don't "run in our brains". Our brains produce thoughts in ways that we don't even have the slightest understanding of. We have conjecture and some observations (e.g. electric signal monitors) that only scratch the surface of describing what the end result of a "thought" looks like. The comparison of how humans think and human intellect in general with poorly understood applied computational statistics really has gone too far. Now, if you mean to say that humans themselves have biases and "wrong" behavior, that's a different matter.
kotrunga 9y ago
This leads to some pretty scary questions. What about different cultures? Everyone has different ways of speaking, acting, living. What if the app considers something bad behavior, and it's just a cultural difference? Or it's how someone was raised? Maybe the biggest question we should ask is what does this solve? What problem is this trying to solve? And once we figure that out, ask ourselves... is that the problem we should be solving? Is it the best way to solve it?
rafiki6 9y ago
Is there any actual sound peer reviewed research indicating the results of their predictive system will lead to more great hires? Cus it didn't seem so in the article. The article made it seem like HireVue is working off some false causal relationship assumption where the best hires performed like this in their interview therefore we should compare all new hires to them without any shred of evidence showing that this type of interview performance indicates a good hire. I.e. snake oil...
- blunte 9y ago
  Since when has science and reason driven management decisions? 20 years ago the silver bullet was OOP. 10 years ago the silver bullet was offshoring. Now it's AI and/or blockchain.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
transverse 9y ago
What makes a hire a good hire? Is a good hire one who sucks off management, or one who does the right thing even if it provokes management ire?
- blunte 9y ago
  As long as the company has excessive cash flow, it's the former. Once the company must actually work to compete, it's the latter. Maybe.
Overtonwindow 9y ago
We've got discrimination down to a science
noir-york 9y ago
A modern take on anthropometry and craniometry. Because we know the recent history of those.
amb23 9y ago
There's no way this software is not inherently biased on very basic measures--a lisp caused by a disability probably wouldn't pass muster, nor would a southern accent. But the real tragedy here is that it equates the way someone presents themselves--not the content of their words or the strength of their skills--with job performance. It exacerbates the worst vices of HR and hiring practices and performance reviews. It's an algorithm for superficiality. This company should remove this product from the market immediately. How this passed off as a good idea all the way through the product development cycle is beyond me.
- notyourwork 9y ago
  >This company should remove this product from the market immediately. How this passed off as a good idea all the way through the product development cycle is beyond me. It sounds like you are assuming that businesses are supposed to act like a single human with ethics and a moral compass should. I agree with your conclusion but to ponder how this passed off as a good idea is silly. If I could come up with software to sell to businesses to replace a huge amount of their recruiting cost (people, time, operational cost) wouldn't I be inclined to do business with them? Consider a company global company, when you look at hiring at scale it becomes easy to justify streamlining the whole process. I still find it like a bad direction to go but what do you expect?
blunte 9y ago
Another sensational (and misleading) title... While there can be very much debate over the long term value of an AI based filter, at least the filter here includes much more than just "your face". Honestly, I only clicked it to see if they were really just viewing a still image of your face and then trying to determine if you would be a good hire. I knew better.
olleromam91 9y ago
Who actually thinks this is a good idea?
- blunte 9y ago
  The people funding the project with the fairly realistic expectation that they will cash out with a good profit one way or another within the next couple of years.
diggernet 9y ago
"Would you be nervous with an artificial intelligence evaluating your interview skills?" Yes, because the prospective employer should be evaluating my job performance skills instead.
zebraflask 9y ago
What are they really testing? A candidate's willingness to go through a trendy interview format, which comes across as weirdly similar to the HR version of a video dating profile - and be chipper about it? I mean, I hate video conferencing in general, I'd probably fail just because I wouldn't like the format and it would show. This kind of thing just provokes my bias towards only allowing recruiters, HR, etc., to handle processing paperwork, like clerks, and leaving the real decisions to the departments that have to work with the people who get hired. Something like this would be laughed out of the building where I work.
deusum 9y ago
*Persons with facial deformity need not apply.
FullMtlAlcoholc 9y ago
Is this a joke or a modern incarnation of phrenology.? As society moves forward, we must not accept that just because a tool is based on AI that it is not flawless or biased. Judging someone's competency based upon their face and its expressions is not much. more accurate than a witch test, even without the consideration of differing cultural norms and behaviors. Will American firms discriminate against Russians because they don't smile as much?
trapperkeeper74 9y ago
Let's assume there are some people whom have many years of hiring people effectively. Whom among them is going to trust a computer at this point in time? Also, what potential candidate is not going to be immediately insulted or lose respect of a company so lazy it can't even be bothered to do one of the most critical tasks without outsourcing it? Sounds like another "something for nothing" panacea service. PS: Just imagine all the shallow correlation biases a deep learning net will discover. People with red hair? Nope. People with insufficient bilateral symmetry? Nope.

49 points by Futurebot 9y ago

vbuwivbiu 9y ago

can we rename machine learning to "Prejudice Amplifier" now ?

jschwartzi 9y ago
I will certainly start calling it that informally.

Rjevski 9y ago

I'm curious as to how this judges the skillset of a particular candidate. To me the only skill this would be able to judge is confidence, which also makes it very easy to trick - simply believe in your bullshit and you'll get through, no matter whether you actually have the skills.

OtterCoder 9y ago
It says right in the article. You train it on your 'top performers' and then use it to increase groupthink and tribalism in your company.
- blunte 9y ago
  Well, according to US political polls, 35% of the population is very happy with groupthink and tribalism despite any arguments. So there obviously is some room in business for a product like this.
  - OtterCoder 9y ago
    35%? I think you underestimate the bad blood and ill faith in the US political system. Both major parties are mere parodies of genuine debate. I will concede that 35%, being Trump's approval rating, I assume, is an easy and valid lower bound.

bogomipz 9y ago

Accessing this page results in an instant pop up box that says "Thanks for reading, like us on Facebook", even before you've had a chance to read a word in the article. What a fail. Won't read, pass.

hardlianotion 9y ago
popup blocking does still work, after all.
- bogomipz 9y ago
  Really? How do you block an HTML5 element?

rainbowmverse 9y ago

I'm sure this won't instantly fail anyone with gender dysphoria that kicks into overdrive at seeing their own face. /s

Brakenshire 9y ago

Looking forward to 3D mapping of the skull, it will surely open up a utopia of completely unobjectionable, final judgment of character.

Broken_Hippo 9y ago
Yay, phrenology for the digital age... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology

braxxox 9y ago

Fuck this. A whole company whose business model is to increase the current diversity gap in a field.

blunte 9y ago
This would, if allowed to run for generations, play out like incest - a dead end. Fortunately for US-based companies, the quarterly earnings-per-share cycle creates so many decision changes within a year that a system like this wouldn't survive more than two years max. And that's about the tenure of the average employee, so it will wash out. Meanwhile, a boss will get a bonus for implementing it, and the vendor will make some cash. All is well, right?

diimdeep 9y ago

Great plot for Black Mirror episode.

andrei_says_ 9y ago
May I recommend rewatching the Waldo episode, especially if you live in the US?

rayiner 9y ago

Incredible that they can now get phrenological measurements from a video capture.

bostik 9y ago
Hell, if this system starts spreading[0], retrophrenology might actually become a thing in job interview prep. 0: Think of the plague

colbyh 9y ago

To put skepticism aside for a second - I could see this working (maybe) in a field where face to face communication is incredibly important (e.g. sales). But the vast majority of roles in a modern company don't need people that are good at communicating verbally, not to mention in front of a camera. Can you imagine putting a scientist through this process? A janitor? No way.

hardlianotion 9y ago
I think it's hard to avoid a lawsuit. An interview process that uses visual input to help it decide who to hire? It almost doesn't matter what else it considers - you'll have difficulty explaining to folk how it is not discriminating in some nefarious way.

justinjlynn 9y ago

Holy shit, what HR department would ever approve such a thing?! Photographs on resumes are discouraged - can you imagine the risk involved asking for a biometric scan and doing feature analysis on video interviews? How would this interact with GINA and polygraph laws? It raises far, far too many questions - unless the app makers are providing indemnity I can't see any reasonably competent hiring process professional adopting such a risky tool openly.

Myrmornis 9y ago
According to the article, > Goldman Sachs, Under Armour, Unilever, and Vodafone are also among the companies that have used the platform.
- snissn 9y ago
  According to the article they've used the HireVue platform, but not necessarily this new (and weird) feature
  - justinjlynn 9y ago
    Lawsuits flying and discovery/settlement processes commencing in 3.. 2.. 1..
- Rjevski 9y ago
  I remember Vodafone UK using this (at least the HireVue video interview thing, not sure if the AI-based approach described here was used). I turned it down straight away - if they can't bother allocating one hour of an interviewer's time for me then I shouldn't spend one of my own time for them.

gchapiewski 9y ago

"Judging a book by the cover" taken to the extreme? And I'm sure this leads to great diversity in the workplace too :)

electic 9y ago

This invariably will identify and rate characteristics like race. It will judge their vocabulary and identify if you are a native or an immigrant. Probably also identify your upbringing and class from language and grammar composition. Let the lawsuits begin.

blunte 9y ago
Reminds me of this problem: https://gizmodo.com/5431190/hp-face-tracking-webcams-dont-recognize-black-people https://gizmodo.com/5431190/hp-face-tracking-webcams-dont-re... There are a thousand reasons why this is probably a garbage system. And chances are, it's just another AI-hype-driven thing to sell to ignorant companies/"decision-makers" who should be out of business already.

jorgemf 9y ago

I always though that if the skills of a person are highly shaped by the genes, that would have a reflection in body traits. So basically you could have a good idea of the mental skills and personality of anyone just analyzing the body and other external features. One of the things that lead me to this theory is how mental illness do affect the body features. But even if I am right in this theory, this only gives you one part of the person. Because the environment and the own decisions of a person shapes them. For example, even if a person if the perfect fit for the job position based on the analysis, and the analysis is right, the succeed of that person also depends in the attitude. If the person has developed a natural laziness over the life it wont be productive at the job. And the opposite can be true, a less genetical predisposed person which has work hard during all the life could be a much better match for the job. EDIT: when I said the skills are encoded in genes and also expressed in body traits it doesn't mean gender or race, it could irrelevant things as the length of the fingers, or the way you walk.

whateverman3 9y ago
This is only true if the two genes are correlated in success. I have faith such traits do exist, and many of them, but I am not immediately convinced most traits interesting to businesses would be revealed this way. Also, your example of laziness is classic thinking yourself out of quality employees: laziness is good for identifying waste and inefficiency and for creating scaling automation. So it's not even clear if "laziness" is interesting without context to businesses. Of course, it could also entail lack of work ethic.
- jorgemf 9y ago
  My point is that there are more factors that the biological capabilities (or whatever an algorithms says) to be good at something.
hycaria 9y ago
> One of the things that lead me to this theory is how mental illness do affect the body features. Care to back up this claim?

adityab 9y ago

Some comments are focusing on this exacerbating aggregate phenomena like diversity stats and wage gaps. This is true and a huge negative. But that's not the only thing we should be worried about. Far more damaging would be the dystopia that these "cognitive surveillance" products will bring upon us. It claims to micro-analyze facial expressions, intonation, non-verbal signals while the candidate is interviewing. This is vile, hostile interaction in my opinion, and it is startling to see that companies like Vodafone, Intel, and Oracle are their customers [1]. At best, this is a way to sweep unaccountable decision-making under the carpet of "the software said so". Quite likely, though, is that such products will make society a living hell for everyone until these practices are entrenched in the industry and it is too late to roll it all back. The creators of these products are not stupid, they made a conscious choice to grab low-hanging fruit (now that they have the technology available) and enrich themselves while making the world a worse place. Let's not kid ourselves that the consequences of their actions did not occur to them. As a research student in DL/AI, I realize this may make things marginally worse for my career, but right here is the reason we should regulate AI usage _now_: not Skynet, but these attempts to "disrupt" social norms for no stated reason other than "progress" and "efficiency". We should keep some technologies out of the public sphere and make it vocally clear that they are unacceptable, lest we end up with a world where everyone is wearing google glasses and you have no way to maintain a personal facade because some combination of blood flow and facial muscle twitch betrays your thoughts. Your only argument against this stuff should not only be that it has X bug or that it's execution isn't sound due to Y bias. We must oppose such things on principle, I would rather kill myself than live in some sort of Black Mirror-esque dystopia where this is mainstream. [1]: https://www.hirevue.com/customers https://www.hirevue.com/customers

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
canadian_voter 9y ago
At best, this is a way to sweep unaccountable decision-making under the carpet of "the software said so". Quite likely, though, is that such products will make society a living hell for everyone until these practices are entrenched in the industry and it is too late to roll it all back. Sounds a lot like redlining to me[0][1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/24/upshot/how-redlinings-racist-effects-lasted-for-decades.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/24/upshot/how-redlinings-rac...

pella 9y ago

Related: "The era of blind faith in big data must end" | TED Talk | https://www.ted.com/talks/cathy_o_neil_the_era_of_blind_faith_in_big_data_must_end https://www.ted.com/talks/cathy_o_neil_the_era_of_blind_fait... "Algorithms decide who gets a loan, who gets a job interview, who gets insurance and much more -- but they don't automatically make things fair. Mathematician and data scientist Cathy O'Neil coined a term for algorithms that are secret, important and harmful: "weapons of math destruction." Learn more about the hidden agendas behind the formulas." ... "Algorithms are everywhere. They sort and separate the winners from the losers. The winners get the job or a good credit card offer. The losers don't even get an interview or they pay more for insurance. We're being scored with secret formulas that we don't understand that often don't have systems of appeal. That begs the question: What if the algorithms are wrong?"

icelancer 9y ago
These same algorithms run in our brains with far more flawed edge cases than big data. Not that I am defending blind use of "algorithms," but that word is a boogeyman at best.
- rainbowmverse 9y ago
  That's why it's important to make sure people with significant variety in their backgrounds are involved in the process. Otherwise you run into situations where, for example, a team of designers doesn't discover their motion activated soap dispenser doesn't work on people with dark skin until after it's been produced, sold, and used.
- panic 9y ago
  We can talk about our decisions, explain them, and revise them if someone convinces us we're wrong. That's very different from a system that only outputs a vector of probabilities.
- sidlls 9y ago
  No, "these same algorithms" don't "run in our brains". Our brains produce thoughts in ways that we don't even have the slightest understanding of. We have conjecture and some observations (e.g. electric signal monitors) that only scratch the surface of describing what the end result of a "thought" looks like. The comparison of how humans think and human intellect in general with poorly understood applied computational statistics really has gone too far. Now, if you mean to say that humans themselves have biases and "wrong" behavior, that's a different matter.

kotrunga 9y ago

This leads to some pretty scary questions. What about different cultures? Everyone has different ways of speaking, acting, living. What if the app considers something bad behavior, and it's just a cultural difference? Or it's how someone was raised? Maybe the biggest question we should ask is what does this solve? What problem is this trying to solve? And once we figure that out, ask ourselves... is that the problem we should be solving? Is it the best way to solve it?

rafiki6 9y ago

Is there any actual sound peer reviewed research indicating the results of their predictive system will lead to more great hires? Cus it didn't seem so in the article. The article made it seem like HireVue is working off some false causal relationship assumption where the best hires performed like this in their interview therefore we should compare all new hires to them without any shred of evidence showing that this type of interview performance indicates a good hire. I.e. snake oil...

blunte 9y ago
Since when has science and reason driven management decisions? 20 years ago the silver bullet was OOP. 10 years ago the silver bullet was offshoring. Now it's AI and/or blockchain.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

transverse 9y ago

What makes a hire a good hire? Is a good hire one who sucks off management, or one who does the right thing even if it provokes management ire?

blunte 9y ago
As long as the company has excessive cash flow, it's the former. Once the company must actually work to compete, it's the latter. Maybe.

Overtonwindow 9y ago

We've got discrimination down to a science

noir-york 9y ago

A modern take on anthropometry and craniometry. Because we know the recent history of those.

amb23 9y ago

There's no way this software is not inherently biased on very basic measures--a lisp caused by a disability probably wouldn't pass muster, nor would a southern accent. But the real tragedy here is that it equates the way someone presents themselves--not the content of their words or the strength of their skills--with job performance. It exacerbates the worst vices of HR and hiring practices and performance reviews. It's an algorithm for superficiality. This company should remove this product from the market immediately. How this passed off as a good idea all the way through the product development cycle is beyond me.

notyourwork 9y ago
>This company should remove this product from the market immediately. How this passed off as a good idea all the way through the product development cycle is beyond me. It sounds like you are assuming that businesses are supposed to act like a single human with ethics and a moral compass should. I agree with your conclusion but to ponder how this passed off as a good idea is silly. If I could come up with software to sell to businesses to replace a huge amount of their recruiting cost (people, time, operational cost) wouldn't I be inclined to do business with them? Consider a company global company, when you look at hiring at scale it becomes easy to justify streamlining the whole process. I still find it like a bad direction to go but what do you expect?

blunte 9y ago

Another sensational (and misleading) title... While there can be very much debate over the long term value of an AI based filter, at least the filter here includes much more than just "your face". Honestly, I only clicked it to see if they were really just viewing a still image of your face and then trying to determine if you would be a good hire. I knew better.

olleromam91 9y ago

Who actually thinks this is a good idea?

blunte 9y ago
The people funding the project with the fairly realistic expectation that they will cash out with a good profit one way or another within the next couple of years.

diggernet 9y ago

"Would you be nervous with an artificial intelligence evaluating your interview skills?" Yes, because the prospective employer should be evaluating my job performance skills instead.

zebraflask 9y ago

What are they really testing? A candidate's willingness to go through a trendy interview format, which comes across as weirdly similar to the HR version of a video dating profile - and be chipper about it? I mean, I hate video conferencing in general, I'd probably fail just because I wouldn't like the format and it would show. This kind of thing just provokes my bias towards only allowing recruiters, HR, etc., to handle processing paperwork, like clerks, and leaving the real decisions to the departments that have to work with the people who get hired. Something like this would be laughed out of the building where I work.

deusum 9y ago

*Persons with facial deformity need not apply.

FullMtlAlcoholc 9y ago

Is this a joke or a modern incarnation of phrenology.? As society moves forward, we must not accept that just because a tool is based on AI that it is not flawless or biased. Judging someone's competency based upon their face and its expressions is not much. more accurate than a witch test, even without the consideration of differing cultural norms and behaviors. Will American firms discriminate against Russians because they don't smile as much?

trapperkeeper74 9y ago

Let's assume there are some people whom have many years of hiring people effectively. Whom among them is going to trust a computer at this point in time? Also, what potential candidate is not going to be immediately insulted or lose respect of a company so lazy it can't even be bothered to do one of the most critical tasks without outsourcing it? Sounds like another "something for nothing" panacea service. PS: Just imagine all the shallow correlation biases a deep learning net will discover. People with red hair? Nope. People with insufficient bilateral symmetry? Nope.