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How can you combat bias in a team of humans if humans are susceptible to bias? How do you even know what neutral is if it's not a physically measurable quantit

How can you combat bias in a team of humans if humans are susceptible to bias? How do you even know what neutral is if it's not a physically measurable quantity?

Larrikin 2y ago
This sounds like an argument for never educating people and doing nothing about the problem. Just because you graduated from a CS program doesn't mean you will always write bug free code using the ideal algorithm and design pattern. But you know what you should be striving for, can more readily identify issues, and maybe sometimes you actually are perfect.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  > This sounds like an argument for never educating people and doing nothing about the problem. I feel like it's really the opposite. There is a major problem with using AI to screen CVs, which is that AI is bad at screening CVs. It excludes good candidates and offers mediocre ones, and opens up a bunch of hacks the equivalent of black hat SEO, which gives an undesired advantage to people inclined to dirty tricks. But "it's racist" is a political hot button, so before people can start to point that out, someone scrambles to push the hot button and suck all the oxygen out of the room. Then the purveyors of snake oil can munge the algorithm until it passes the naive oversimplified racial bias test someone made up (probably making it even worse at its intended purpose), and then claim "the problem" is solved, as if that was the main and only problem.
lanstin 2y ago
They send resumes with the same accomplishments and names that indicate race and observe the relative degrees of acceptance. Everytime they do this test, considerable bias is found to still exist.
- ekianjo 2y ago
  remove names then. problem solved.
  - TylerE 2y ago
    There are still plenty of proxies that can amount to the same thing. Not a lot of white graduates of HBCUs, for instance. Are we removing the names of all schools, too?
    - ekianjo 2y ago
      if you dont want to favor ivy leagues that would be the next thing to remove yes
- mensetmanusman 2y ago
  Still using resumes, have an ai interview for knowledge and communication skill.
  - wondertag 2y ago
    Like many others, we've built a product to do this. I think it gives a much higher signal on candidates than a resume, and is more "blind" in terms of bias than a human. It's based on voice messages. Open to all here if anyone wants to take it for a spin. https://candit.net https://candit.net
    - lanstin 2y ago
      How do you get an unbiased evaluation of someone with an accent that differs from your training set? It took about a decade for my friends with Indian English accents to be able to use voice controls in luxury cars. And honestly young people from India have a much more American accent than my generation.
ivan_gammel 2y ago
It‘s 2024. There are decades or research with a lot of data, there exist best practices and products that help combating the bias. The toolkit available to HRs is rich and there’s plenty of things that work. E.g. I have absolutely no problem hiring women in tech roles, because I simply adjusted my process. I heard complaints from other engineering leaders that they want to increase diversity but struggle to find candidates: they do not realize that they have bias in job descriptions, they apply same screening criteria and do the post-interview evaluation the same way regardless of candidate gender or background. Many people can do the job, but they communicate it differently and it is important to account for that when you see the CV or talk to them.

How can you combat bias in a team of humans if humans are susceptible to bias? How do you even know what neutral is if it's not a physically measurable quantity?

Larrikin 2y ago

This sounds like an argument for never educating people and doing nothing about the problem. Just because you graduated from a CS program doesn't mean you will always write bug free code using the ideal algorithm and design pattern. But you know what you should be striving for, can more readily identify issues, and maybe sometimes you actually are perfect.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
> This sounds like an argument for never educating people and doing nothing about the problem. I feel like it's really the opposite. There is a major problem with using AI to screen CVs, which is that AI is bad at screening CVs. It excludes good candidates and offers mediocre ones, and opens up a bunch of hacks the equivalent of black hat SEO, which gives an undesired advantage to people inclined to dirty tricks. But "it's racist" is a political hot button, so before people can start to point that out, someone scrambles to push the hot button and suck all the oxygen out of the room. Then the purveyors of snake oil can munge the algorithm until it passes the naive oversimplified racial bias test someone made up (probably making it even worse at its intended purpose), and then claim "the problem" is solved, as if that was the main and only problem.

lanstin 2y ago

They send resumes with the same accomplishments and names that indicate race and observe the relative degrees of acceptance. Everytime they do this test, considerable bias is found to still exist.

ekianjo 2y ago
remove names then. problem solved.
- TylerE 2y ago
  There are still plenty of proxies that can amount to the same thing. Not a lot of white graduates of HBCUs, for instance. Are we removing the names of all schools, too?
  - ekianjo 2y ago
    if you dont want to favor ivy leagues that would be the next thing to remove yes
mensetmanusman 2y ago
Still using resumes, have an ai interview for knowledge and communication skill.
- wondertag 2y ago
  Like many others, we've built a product to do this. I think it gives a much higher signal on candidates than a resume, and is more "blind" in terms of bias than a human. It's based on voice messages. Open to all here if anyone wants to take it for a spin. https://candit.net https://candit.net
  - lanstin 2y ago
    How do you get an unbiased evaluation of someone with an accent that differs from your training set? It took about a decade for my friends with Indian English accents to be able to use voice controls in luxury cars. And honestly young people from India have a much more American accent than my generation.

ivan_gammel 2y ago

It‘s 2024. There are decades or research with a lot of data, there exist best practices and products that help combating the bias. The toolkit available to HRs is rich and there’s plenty of things that work. E.g. I have absolutely no problem hiring women in tech roles, because I simply adjusted my process. I heard complaints from other engineering leaders that they want to increase diversity but struggle to find candidates: they do not realize that they have bias in job descriptions, they apply same screening criteria and do the post-interview evaluation the same way regardless of candidate gender or background. Many people can do the job, but they communicate it differently and it is important to account for that when you see the CV or talk to them.