Artificial intelligence in the hiring process and the bias problem.

For Marketplace, I'm Novosafo. Good morning.

Most companies are now using AI to help with hiring about 90% according to the World Economic Forum.

But a new study from the Stanford Institute for Human-centered AI finds that one such hiring tool used by lots of companies is often biased against black and Asian applicants.

Marketplaces Samantha Fields has more.

Anyone who's been job searching knows it's rough out there.

Companies aren't posting many jobs, and when they do, they get tons of applications.

They almost have to use an algorithm in some way to be able to look through the number of

applications that are coming in. Sarah Banna at Chapman University says the AI tool she and her study

co-authors looked at screens applicants by having them play behavioral video games. She says the

company behind it actively tries to eliminate bias.

But what we find is they still end up with racial bias in the algorithm.

The AI discriminated against black applicants in about 25% of jobs and against Asian applicants in about 15% of jobs.

This is a tool that many companies are using.

So Kathleen Creel, a co-author at Northeastern University, says if you apply to five different places...

It could be that the same system is actually screening your resume at all five of those.

And so these five supposedly independent chances

are no longer independent. This is a real problem, says Alukmetha at the Center for Strategic

and International Studies. Unless companies take steps to really include human review and

manage how these systems are being deployed internally, they're going to replicate

patterns all across industry.

And people who are already marginalized in hiring could be marginalized even further.

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