Employers who believe artificial intelligence will remove biases from hiring and firing decisions are about to learn a costly truth: the law holds them accountable for every algorithmic misstep.
Your company’s next job interviews might be administered through bots — bots that can get you sued.
Employers are stampeding toward AI in hiring, promotion and employee monitoring. Resumes are scanned by algorithms. Interviews scored by voice-analysis software. Keystrokes and mouse movement logged by remote-work surveillance as they occur.
The pitch is ineffably seductive: lower costs, faster decisions and “objective” outcomes.
But the reality? An algorithm is an agent of the employer. If it discriminates — whether by sexual orientation, gender, race, age or disability — it’s the employer, not the AI vendor, that will face a human rights tribunal or wrongful dismissal lawsuit.
AI systems learn from historic data. But history is messy. If a company’s past hires skewed male, a resume-screening bot will prefer male candidates. If performance reviews penalized parental leave absences, the algorithm will too.
Under human rights law, it is no defence to say, “the software did it.” The law cares about the outcome, not your good faith. If the process disadvantages a legally protected group, the employer is liable.
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