The US federal government said Thursday that using artificial intelligence to screen job applicants or monitor their work productivity can discriminate against people with disabilities and violate individual rights of citizens.
Posted at 4:07 p.m.
The US Department of Justice and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have jointly issued notices to employers to exercise caution if they want to use algorithms intended to streamline assessment work employees and job prospects, but which may violate the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, told reporters Thursday that the use of artificial intelligence could exacerbate long-standing discrimination against people with disabilities seeking employment. job.
Popular work-related AI tools include resume scanners, employee monitoring software, which rank workers based on the number of keystrokes.
There is also video job interview software, which measures a candidate’s speech patterns or facial expressions. Such technology could potentially weed out people who have speech impairments or a range of other disabilities.
The move reflects a broader push by President Joe Biden’s administration to foster positive advances in artificial intelligence technology, while limiting the opaque and potentially dangerous tools that are used to make important decisions about the win- citizens’ bread.
“We fully recognize that there is enormous potential” in these technologies, said Charlotte Burrows, chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which is responsible for enforcing anti-discrimination laws in work. “But we can’t let these tools become a technological pathway to discrimination. »