Discrimination in the workplace has been a perennial issue that besets human resources departments of companies. Addressing the misdemeanor, known to be practiced even at the highest rung in an organization, has been a struggle, usually executed through issuances of stringent parameters, conduct of series of conscientization seminars, sanctions, and punitive measures.
However, total elimination of workplace bias, several industrial psychologists claim, is a very difficult feat in consideration of peoples’s subtle cultural nuances ingrained by geographical and demographical differences, accounting to the so-called unconscious bias. This being the case, there have been attempts to utilize artificial intelligence (AI) for the daunting task.
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Technology pundits, echoed by social media, hail AI to smother unconscious bias at workplaces. Through machine programming, AI can be put into action by expertly designed platforms or apps that could diagnose potential discriminatory deeds or situations in every aspect of official functions. As automated contraptions are bereft of human frailties arising from the cultural context of upbringing, AI will not only liberate management from anxieties of potential lawsuits but is expected to give way to a more balanced gender and demographic patterns in organizations.
However, this seems not to be the entire case. A machine learning startup, an initiative by Asia-based Youth Laboratories, turned up a disconcerting result in its photograph evaluation of attractiveness of more than 7,000 candidates. A big percentage of the 44 winners were white, only a handful were Asians, while only one was dark-skinned. Another corroborating experiment to this was the Twitter bot Microsoft’s Chabot- Tay from which offensive, racist, anti-feminist and anti-Semitic tweets cascaded shortly after its launch.
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Algorithms that are fed into machines are developed by human minds which can’t be totally bereft of biases. AI can only function satisfactorily dependent on the data being fed to it. In other words, elimination of biases is still largely the turf of people’s intervention.
Seattle-based business coach Emile Haddad’s edgy approach to business consulting has led to the formation of entrepreneurial strategies that explore the mental and emotional condition of workers. These tactics include the extreme discouragement of cultural biases within the workplace. For links to similar articles, visit this page.
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