On October 28, 2021, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) Chair Charlotte A. Burrows announced that the agency is launching an initiative to ensure that artificial intelligence (“AI”) used at all stages of the employment cycle comply with federal anti-discrimination laws. The EEOC also issued a press release on that same day outlining the agency’s plans under the new initiative.
The announcement comes as employers are increasingly using AI and other algorithmic tools to automate their recruiting process. From using “chatbots” to communicate with job applicants to schedule interviews, ask screening questions, and even using AI to review and screen resumes, the proliferation of these tools has steadily grown in recent years.
As these AI tools have enjoyed wider adoption, researchers have raised concerns that this technology has the potential to generate biased or discriminatory results due to, inter alia, its reliance on datasets that may reflect past biases and biases which may be embedded in the coding process. In response to these concerns, as early as October 2019 the EEOC was investigating at least two cases claiming that algorithms underlying AI tools used by employers were having a discriminatory impact. Similarly, on December 8, 2020, several U.S. senators sent a joint letter to then-Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission inquiring about whether the agency had ever used its authority to “investigate and/or enforce against discrimination...
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