The New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection just announced that it will begin enforcing the NYC Automated Employment Decision Tools ("AEDT") law on July 5, 2023, delaying enforcement of a law which was originally introduced in 2021. Along with this announcement, the Department also published its Final Rule, which is intended to clarify the Department's interpretation of the NYC AEDT law.
Firstly, what is an Automated Employment Decision Tool? As we wrote in more detail last year, these are automated tools that are generally intended to help employers pick the best job candidate from a pool of applicants, including by using machine learning, statistical models, or artificial intelligence ("AI"). This can involve, for example, automated systems that read through every applicant's resume to determine which candidates to interview, systems that purport to analyze a candidate's facial expressions or intonation during an interview, or programs that use candidates' answers on personality tests or logic puzzles to rank their likelihood of success in the job.
Secondly, why is New York City trying to regulate the use of these automated tools? Because New York City is trying to prevent race and sex discrimination in hiring. All of these automated tools rely on a particular set of inputs and then categorize them based on a series of criteria which are themselves biased. For example, if an algorithm or machine learning platform uses the resumes of historically...
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