NYC AI Bias Hiring Law

 Indications of how AI is being regulated. 

NYC’s New AI Hiring Law Won’t Be Enforced Until April

Alex Woodie

Companies with employees in New York City have four more months to figure out Local Law 144, a first-in-the-nation law that will regulate the use of AI for hiring. The law went into effect on January 1, but the city deferred enforcement until April 15.

Local Law 144 provides restrictions on the use of use of automated employment decision tools (AEDTs) that assist companies with candidate assessments and help them decide who to hire. The law is aimed squarely at AI- and ML-assisted hiring, and requires AEDT users to conduct a “bias audit” by a certified auditor that looks at the selection rate for race/ethnicity and gender for each job category.

According to the law, the term “automated employment decision tool” means “any computational process, derived from machine learning, statistical modeling, data analytics, or artificial intelligence, that issues simplified output, including a score, classification, or recommendation, that is used to substantially assist or replace discretionary decision making for making employment decisions that impact natural persons.” You can read the entire law here.

The new law marks a turning point in AI’s intersection with the law, according to Andrew Burt, the co-founder and managing partner at BNH.AI, a Washington D.C. law firm created to address the legal implications of adopting AI.

“The law represents a tectonic shift in the way that AI systems are regulated–the first of a much larger transition into an environment where increased oversight for AI makes it harder for organizations to deploy and use these systems,” Burt tells Datanami via email.

“Overall, this shift is a good thing, requiring more time and attention to be paid to minimizing the risks of AI,” Burt continues. “But most companies are, at the moment, not yet ready for this shift, which requires new and more thorough review of AI systems, and more fulsome testing of these systems for risks.”

(Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock)

While Local Law 144 was designed to reign in abuses of AI in hiring, a broad interpretation of its new legal requirements potentially could ensnare a larger pool of companies, including those that are using other computerized methods, according to lawyers with the Mintz law firm based in New York City.

“While AEDTs that incorporate artificial intelligence (“AI”) are certainly covered by the law, the law broadly defines ‘AEDT’ as including far more than only those processes utilizing advanced AI, and extends to computational processes and systems utilizing more rudimentary analytics, ranking systems, and decision analyses calculated to ‘substantially assist’ employers in the decision-making process,” write Michelle Capezza, Corbin Carter, and Evan Piercey in a blog post on the Mintz website. “Thus, in coming into compliance with the law, employers should closely scrutinize all processes that could be potentially construed as AEDTs.”

After holding two rounds of public comments and a single hearing in October, the NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection decided in mid December to delay enforcement of the law in order to hold a second public hearing, where it can address the numerous questions raised during the public comment period. While companies were encouraged to be in compliance with the new law as of January, the DCWP won’t take any enforcement actions until mid April, which gives companies an additional 15 weeks to figure out if their hiring methods fall within the scope of the new law.  .... ' 

Amazon.com is Freezing Hiring for its Corporate Staff in retail

In Retailwire: 

THE NEW YORK TIMES  10/05/2022

Amazon.com is freezing hiring for its corporate staff in retail for the rest of the year. More than 10,000 openings had been posted as of Monday evening. According to Brad Glasser, an Amazon spokesperson, the company has many jobs available throughout the company, but he said “we expect to keep adjusting our hiring strategies in each of these businesses at various junctures.” ...  ' 

Scrubbing Social Media

 Can see this happening. It also means that that hiring companies can enforce their belief in that is right.   Especially among those whose beliefs differ strongly.  Dangerous.

How Students Are Scrubbing Their Social Media Profiles   By Inside Higher Ed, June 23, 2022

Many current college students have had social media accounts since they were young teens, regularly posting on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook without fear of repercussions.

But posts riddled with profanity or raucous party photos can come back to haunt them once they start looking for a job. According to a 2020 survey from the Harris Poll, a global market research and consulting firm, 71 percent of those who make hiring decisions in the U.S. agreed that looking at social media profiles is an effective way to screen job applicants. Among employers that use social media to vet candidates, 55 percent said they have found content that caused them to turn down an applicant.

Now a new company called Filtari is partnering with institutions to help students clean up their social media profiles before they start the job-search process. Filtari works by using artificial intelligence to scan and identify written posts and photos on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook that an employer might deem inappropriate or harmful.

From Inside Higher Ed

View Full Article   

On Acquihires

Understandable, but the term is new to me.   Some reasonable thoughts.

The Complete Guide to Acquihires  in Future.com

Peter Blackwood, Tina Ferguson

In today’s ever-competitive environment to drive growth, identifying and hiring key talent through a structured transaction — known as an “acquihire” — has become an increasingly popular and effective way for companies to address hiring needs and accelerate product innovation and development. 

Often joining the acquiring company as a unit or existing team, employers also tend to benefit from these individuals having a relationship with their peers and a history of working together. However, hiring any new talent into your organization, let alone a group of individuals, will require thoughtful leveling and onboarding so as to ensure a successful integration. 

The challenge for most companies is figuring out whether an acquihire makes sense and, if so, how to successfully pull it off. Here’s some advice that we’ve compiled over the course of years assisting our portfolio companies in evaluating and executing on these strategic opportunities. We address several key facets to a successful acquihire transaction, including:

How to think about defining your priorities.

How to diligence the opportunity.

How to think about deal structure considerations.

How to properly integrate the newly hired individuals into your existing organization.   ... ' 

Hiring a Virtual Person in China?

In what further sense hire? 

Companies can Hire a virtual Person for about 14k a Year?

CNBC News, Evelyn Cheng, January 2, 2023

Companies in China are "hiring" virtual employees, with technology firm Baidu saying it has doubled its number of virtual people projects since 2021. Baidu uses animation, sound technology, and machine learning to produce digitized and sometimes interactive human beings that companies may purchase for customer service and entertainment applications. Baidu's Li Shiyan said buyers of virtual people to date include financial services companies, local tourism boards, and state media. While the cost of a virtual employee has fallen by roughly 80% since last year thanks to technological improvements, a three-dimensional virtual person can cost a company about 100,000 yuan ($14,300) annually. Sirius Wang at the Greater China at Kantar marketplace said Chinese brands see virtual people as reliable alternative spokespersons, following scandals involving human celebrities.  ... ' 

Bonding Remotely With New Hires

 Some good thoughts  here.

Managers, Here’s How to Bond with New Hires Remotely  in HBRWK  by Iavor I. Bojinov and Prithwiraj Choudhury shows how "virtual watercooler" sessions can make all the difference.

For senior managers at many firms, the shift to remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic came with a huge concern: Would the loss of in-person conversations keep them from mentoring or simply establishing rapport with employees, especially rookie workers?

New research, based on a first-of-its-kind field experiment at a large North American company, provides plenty of reassurance, showing that regular Zoom chats with managers fosters solid career-building connections for new workers.

In fact, informal “virtual watercooler” sessions in which interns chat with managers regularly online significantly improve the performance and satisfaction of workers and boost the chances of hiring them permanently, according to the results of the study by Harvard Business School professors Iavor I. Bojinov and Prithwiraj Choudhury and HBS postdoctoral fellow Jacqueline N. Lane.

COVID-19 forced many big companies that offer internships to cultivate talent, including JPMorgan Chase, Deloitte, and PepsiCo, to roll out virtual programs in 2020. The study’s findings offer reassurance to the 81 percent of companies offering virtual or hybrid internships this year, as well as many firms that have been onboarding more permanent talent remotely. ... ' 

Hiring from the Autism Spectrum

Fascinating piece, with some real world examples.   I admit I did not know this was being done.   With how tos and cautions.

Hiring from the Autism Spectrum   By Esther Shein
Communications of the ACM, June 2020, Vol. 63 No. 6, Pages 17-19  10.1145/3392509

Years ago, Michael Field-house had a dinner party and friends attended with their young son Andrew, who is autistic, non-verbal, and low-functioning. At one point, Fieldhouse noticed Andrew, who was five- or six-years-old at the time, outside dropping pebbles into an urn in a Japanese garden.

"I was curious about that and I started timing him," recalls Fieldhouse. "I noted there were perfect intervals between every stone. He did that for at least an hour."

Fieldhouse had an epiphany that night that "changed my view on talent. We look at so many people's deficits and not their strengths; what they can't do versus what they can do."

That inspired Fieldhouse to begin conducting research around autism-at-work programs. Over the course of about a year, "I interviewed lots of people at companies that had done this, and all of their programs failed." He found three reasons for those failures, he says: not enough training for managers and coworkers; not enough effort put into changing the work culture; and a lack of focus on sustainable employment.

Those three elements became the backbone of a program Fieldhouse helped build in 2013 at Hewlett-Packard; he and the program moved in 2017 to DXC, which was the result of the spinoff of the Enterprise Service segment of what in 2015 became Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, and its merger with Computer Sciences Corporation. Today, he is social impact practice leader in DXC's Dandelion Program, which has approximately 120 employees in Australia and New Zealand, and a 92% retention rate.

"I went in with a business case and [upper management] liked the idea," he recalls. "I pushed it as a talent gain and didn't sell it as a disability program or some kind of inclusion initiative, but as capability uplift." As a tech company, there were vacancies in a lot of areas, and Fieldhouse focused on areas of need where autistic workers could fill a void, such as analytics, cybersecurity, software testing, and automation work. ... " ... '

IT Hiring Slowing

In ComputerWorld:  By my own unscientific view as well, talking to several big hiring companies. Caused by continuing uncertainty about the economy, and thus unwillingness to make long term commitments on things like health care costs.

Predicting Hiring Success

From Fast Company:   Every company wants to avoid expensive mistakes.  New methods of analytics with more data is leading to making better hiring choices  " ... An interesting advantage of big data is its use to dissipate workplace myths. For example, a popular myth is that employees need a strong work-life balance to be engaged. Actually, we’ve discovered that engagement levels rise when employees are mission-driven, often by a big project or challenge, when they typically have increased work hours and reduced personal time.  ... " .  Learnings from the IBM company Kenexa.  See further their worktrends report.

July/August 2013 Analytics Magazine

Always interesting Analytics magazine is worth following, here are the key articles, but there is much more there:

Executive Edge: What Makes a Good Data Scientist?
by Andrew Jennings 
At the heart of a successful deployment is still human intelligence. Hiring the right people is crucial.

Analytics & BPM
by Malcolm Ross
'SMAC' delivers a much-needed combination punch for peak customer experience.

Predictive Analytics
by Eric Siegel
Harnessing the power of big data and the priceless collection of experiences within it.

Forecasting & Optimization
by Arne Andersson
The development of optimization: the perfect technology for complex sourcing.

Utilities Dust Off Forecasting Playbook
by Tao Hong and Alyssa Farrell
Smart grid data brings challenges and opportunities for the power industry.

Forensic Analytics
by Priti Ravi
Combating a growing pandemic of corporate crime, from identity theft to insider trading.

Analytics Communication
by Evan S. Levine
Fundamental principles include clarity, transparency, integrity and humility.

Graph Search for Recruiting

In Mashable:   Using Facebook Graph search for recruiting.   I am seeing more companies today interested in hiring, but making sure to sure they hire the right people to replace or augment current knowledge within an enterprise.

Posing Big Data Questions

We see many of them these these days.  Information Week looks at the needs for resources to solve these problems.   Data scientists and tools are useful to have on call, but lets get the business questions down first, and please start simply.  In a recent client discussion the initial very complex problem was whittled down to some high leverage,  very visual, alert-enabled capabilities.  We can start there, get 80% of the value and extend as needed.  Later we can think about hiring a pack of expensive scientists. Simple first, always.

Analytics at Work

Finally made it to the 2010 book:  Analytics at Work: Smarter Decisions, Better Results by Thomas H. Davenport, Jeanne G. Harris and Robert Morison.    A fairly good first introduction for the manager to business analytics.    Includes mention of a number of successful analytics projects and methods we developed at Procter & Gamble.   I wish it had more detail and specifics about how to really deliver the goods.  The description of the book does make the general proposition clear, we have more data, lets use it to make smarter decisions:

" ... Most companies have massive amounts of data at their disposal, yet fail to utilize it in any meaningful way. But a powerful new business tool - analytics - is enabling many firms to aggressively leverage their data in key business decisions and processes, with impressive results.

In their previous book, Competing on Analytics, Thomas Davenport and Jeanne Harris showed how pioneering firms were building their entire strategies around their analytical capabilities. Rather than "going with the gut" when pricing products, maintaining inventory, or hiring talent, managers in these firms use data, analysis, and systematic reasoning to make decisions that improve efficiency, risk-management, and profits.... "

McKinsey on the Future of Work

The suggestion that the decrease in employment and hiring in the recent recession was unique.  Because of the explosion of technologies in the years before the recession, many jobs, now replaced by technology solutions, will never return.   I have already seen the strong reluctance of companies to hire.  Full report here.

Eyeballs Out is now Available!

Donna Sturgess' book is now out ... Very nicely done. Excellent reviews on Amazon. An intriguing, great read. Novel look at making your business thrive. From my previous review:

I just read Donna Sturgess' new book: Eyeballs Out: How To Step Into Another World, Discover New Ideas, and Make Your Business Thrive. In the book she visits the Nuclear Carrier USS Stennis and immerses herself in the life on board. I too have been impressed by the thrill and excellence evoked by those with military experience. She provides a number of 'spectacular' points about how the military uses its understanding of people and technology to provide enduring value.

Some surprising chapters, like a description of the use of chaplains on the carrier and in business. A suggestion of using more incremental badge-style recognition methods. Utlizing games to anticipate action in complex business decisions. The use of immersive strategies to get true understanding of context of the business and customer. Our own innovation centers took this approach. Emphasizes the value of hiring veterans who have experienced this world. All of this provided using the background of a good story.

An easy read, this book would be useful as prereading, chapter by chapter or in its entirety, for innovative management meetings, where you could add examples from your own company. You can preorder now, planned release is in October.

Eyeballs Out

I just read the preprint of colleague Donna Sturgess' new book: Eyeballs Out: How To Step Into Another World, Discover New Ideas, and Make Your Business Thrive. In the book she visits the Nuclear Carrier USS Stennis and immerses herself in the life on board. I too have been impressed by the thrill and excellence evoked by those with military experience. She provides a number of 'spectacular' points about how the military uses its understanding of people and technology to provide enduring value.

Some surprising chapters, like a description of the use of chaplains on the carrier and in business. A suggestion of using more incremental badge-style recognition methods. Utlizing games to anticipate action in complex business decisions. The use of immersive strategies to get true understanding of context of the business and customer. Our own innovation centers took this approach. Emphasizes the value of hiring veterans who have experienced this world. All of this provided using the background of a good story.

An easy read, this book would be useful as prereading, chapter by chapter or in its entirety, for innovative management meetings, where you could add examples from your own company. You can preorder now, planned release is in October.