

Those who possess it will be more successful – whether or not those qualities are actually best, or bring something new to the job.ĪI is in danger of becoming too male – new research Ease, confidence, self-assurance and linguistic skills become what Bourdieu called “symbolic capital”. They may even suffer from an inferiority complex.Īll of this will come across in job interviews. And there are many others who have not been exposed to the same teachings and cultural practices, and may be more timid and reserved. So there are those who, from an early age, have a stronger confidence in their abilities and knowledge. This is also reflected in our body language and the way we speak. It is this ingrained sense of how we should act that leads people with less cultural capital (generally from less privileged backgrounds) to keep to their “ordinary” place. This also has a big impact on the way we perceive ourselves – our levels of self-confidence, the objectives we set for ourselves, and our chances in life.Īnother famous sociologist, Erving Goffman, called it a “sense of one’s place”. The environment in which we grow up, the quality of the teaching we had, the presence or absence of extra-curricular activities and a range of other factors, have a decisive impact on our intellectual abilities and strengths. Shutterstock ‘Symbolic capital’Īs French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu emphasised in his work on the way that inequalities are reproduced, we all have very different economic and cultural capital. The solutions it provides are necessarily conservative, leaving little room for innovation and social progress.Ĭlearly a businessman. For this very reason we should question the intelligence of AI.

And by delivering these results algorithms necessarily contribute to the consolidation, perpetuation and potentially even amplification of existing beliefs and biases. This reflects how algorithms have “learnt” that professors and managers are mostly white men, while those who do housekeeping are women. By contrast, a search for “housekeeping” returns pictures of women.Īrtificial intelligence could reinforce society's gender equality problems You get similar results for a “successful manager” search. For example, when you search the term “professor style”, Google Images returns exclusively middle-aged white men. The data on which algorithms “learn” to judge candidates contains these existing sets of beliefs.Īs UCLA professor, Safya Noble, demonstrates in her book Algorithms of Oppression, a few simple Google searches shows this happening. It is created within our existing society, marked by a whole range of different kinds of biases, prejudices, inequalities and discrimination. The fundamental issue with this, as is often pointed out by critics of AI, is that this technology is not born in a perfect society. The thousands of facial features analysed include brow furrowing, brow raising, the amount eyes widen or close, lip tightening, chin raising and smiling. The 350 linguistic elements include criteria like a candidate’s tone of voice, their use of passive or active words, sentence length and the speed they talk. These are compiled from previous interviews of “successful hires” – those who have gone on to be good at the job. The AI is built on algorithms that assess applicants against its database of about 25,000 pieces of facial and linguistic information.

But there are important risks we should be wary of when outsourcing job interviews to AI. HireVue says it speeds up the hiring process by 90% thanks to the speed of information processing.

Some 700 companies, including Vodafone, Hilton and Urban Outfitters have tried it out.Ĭertainly there are significant benefits to be had from this. It was used in the UK for the first time in September but has been used around the world for several years. The technology, developed by US company HireVue, analyses the language and tone of a candidate’s voice and records their facial expressions as they are videoed answering identical questions.
Urban outfitters hirevue video interview software#
Artificial intelligence and facial analysis software is becoming commonplace in job interviews.
