from Hacker News

HireVue’s face-scanning algorithm decides whether you deserve the job

by ductionist on 10/22/19, 4:03 PM with 8 comments

  • by Barrin92 on 10/22/19, 6:38 PM

    well, it only took us a hundred years or so but looks like we're back to craniometry, AI edition.

    Also, a cursory look at HireVue's website shows an advertisement as follows: "Screen the best tech talent, no need to understand the code", enough said.

    If anyone who works at that company reads this: You are making the world a worse place, you're selling people snake-oil, and you're building software that controls people rather than liberates them, spend a few minutes pondering the ethics of the systems you're building.

  • by alexfromapex on 10/22/19, 4:45 PM

    Good luck proving it works in court

  • by tlb on 10/22/19, 7:57 PM

    > “I feel like that’s maybe one of the reasons I didn’t get it: I spoke a little too naturally. Maybe I didn’t use enough big, fancy words. I used ‘conglomerate’ one time.”

    One of the bad outcomes will be if people imagine ways of gaming the system (like using big words, or smiling broadly), and then cargo-cult those into real life.

    People are already prone to this, especially when applying for jobs with vague criteria for success like investment banking.

    I think if you told people they're being judged by an AI, and then simply decided randomly, they would cook up no end of stories about how it works and what it's looking for.

  • by deogeo on 10/22/19, 6:16 PM

    I think more scary than any bias the algorithm might have, is giving such enormous power to a single company - to be able to influence hiring decisions for all the companies that use it. Even if they're not malicious (yet), what happens when its use becomes more widespread, and some people are (rightly or wrongly) classified as unemployable? Right now they can try their luck at a different company, but it won't make any difference if that company also uses HireVue.

    Putting a black-box AI in charge of everyone's prosperity is crazy.

  • by IOT_Apprentice on 10/23/19, 3:50 PM

    Voight-Kampff style snake oil, wrapped in AI phrenology. As these guys don't provide feedback to the test subject and have not had their tech audited, who knows what this is based on and how mature the technology is. And major firms are basing hiring decisions around this? Unbelievable.