The Washington Post (WP) reported on the 20th that companies in the United States are increasingly likely to rely on artificial intelligence (AI) judgment when deciding who to lay off.
According to reports, in an online chat room where hundreds of employees who were laid off due to Google’s large-scale layoffs last month were crowded, it was said that “a soulless algorithm developed to avoid breaking any laws” decided who to fire.
Google has clarified that no algorithms were involved in the layoffs, but these concerns are not entirely unfounded, as corporate HR managers are increasingly using AI software to decide who to interview, hire and promote, the WP reported. In fact, in a January survey of 300 human resources managers at American companies by software evaluation site Captera, 98 percent said they would use software and algorithms to determine layoff targets this year.
Several large companies are already using algorithms extensively for things like employee recruitment and job evaluation.
These programs build vast databases of employees’ experience, qualifications, and skills to facilitate the process of finding the best fit for a specific job.
Companies also use software to evaluate employee performance, and when used in reverse, these programs can single out and fire underperformers.
There are also algorithms that analyze the characteristics of employees who make it easier to change jobs.
However, if the cause of turnover is not an individual employee, but an environmental problem such as racial discrimination in the workplace, there may be a problem in that certain groups, such as blacks, are judged to have a high turnover rate and are considered first for dismissal.
For this reason, some experts pointed out that HR managers need to clearly understand the nature of algorithms and transparently explain to company members how to use algorithms.
“Using the wrong data or blindly following algorithmic decisions can be dangerous,” said Brian Westpole, Captera’s head of human resources analytics.