[jerf]

Everything is correlated to everything [1].

Which means there's a good chance this is somehow correlated in one way or another to race/gender/other protected classes in the US, just by the math of everything being correlated to everything.

Which means this is one good lawsuit away from being illegal in the US as well. It doesn't even necessarily have to "win", just do well enough in court to scare away anyone else from using this.

And boy oh boy would I hate to be on the receiving end of this lawsuit, trying to prove that my AI screener is completely in compliance with all hiring laws. That sounds like a nightmare.

[1]: https://gwern.net/everything

[oceansweep]

Already happening with Workday in California:

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/workday-loses-bid-t...

[torben-friis]

Would the accused party have to prove compliance? Or would non compliance have to be proved by the accuser?

Honest question, I'm not American.

[jerf]

"Innocent until proven guilty" is a criminal court concept. This would be a civil suit. Those use different standards, like "preponderance of the evidence". I agree that if the claimant had to prove the AI system is violating employment law that that would be a hard bar to clear, but showing on the preponderance of the evidence is something that would have me a lot more nervous if I was on the receiving end of the lawsuit.

This is a highly general answer to a complicated topic; my main point is more that this is not going to be held to the standard of "beyond reasonable doubt", which would be hard to meet.

[1]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/preponderance_of_the_evidenc...

[DiscourseFan]

I wouldn't doubt that lawsuits for employment discrimination for any company (and I suppose it was most of them) that used LLMs in hiring processes will become a very lucrative business. They are all open to civil suits at this point.

[AnimalMuppet]

And, if there aren't enough lawyers to do all that work, you could use AI to file the suits.

I'll let you decide whether that's a dream or a nightmare...

[DiscourseFan]

I don't see why its a problem to use LLMs to assist with legal work if someone else uses it in a way that exposes them to lawsuits. That's like saying you shouldn't using a ledger to do accounting just because some people cook the books.

[AnimalMuppet]

Because using it to do shoddy work that harms people is the basis for the suit. If you're using it for the lawyering, too, how do you know that it won't do shoddy work in writing the lawsuit - shoddy work that could hurt the client?

[DiscourseFan]

Yes of course a mass produced doorknob is shoddier than the handiwork of a single craftsmen, but it can be used to open far more doors

[nonethewiser]

>Which means there's a good chance this is somehow correlated in one way or another to race/gender/other protected classes in the US, just by the math of everything being correlated to everything.

>Which means this is one good lawsuit away from being illegal in the US as well.

Uhh.. what? No that doesn't follow at all.

Screening resumes in a way that correlates to race, gender, etc. is not illegal. This is a fundamental distinction. The law is you cannot use those as filters. But the outcomes likely will be correlated. In fact to ensure they are not correlated you'd have to break the law and control for race, gender etc. Which is racism.

The models dont even get race as an input. If they did and they used it to select then yeah, that lawsuit sounds like it has merit. But a mere correlation in outcomes? In no way illegal what-so-ever.

[tikhonj]

The US has a notion of "disparate impact"[1] that means you can be liable for discriminating based on a protected characteristic on the basis of correlation. This is why HR departments are very hesitant to use things like IQ tests for screening candidates, for example.

[1]: https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF13057

[tptacek]

If they are, they're falling for an urban myth, because IQ tests in white-collar employment are legally fine, and several household-name corporations use them openly. I'm a noodge about this particular issue because there's a folk belief that IQ tests are the secret perfect hiring mechanism; it wouldn't bother me so much if it was so obvious how badly a pure IQ-test process would perform for a job in our field.

[alsetmusic]

>

How likely is an LLM to have different outcomes for Tyrone vs Jeff?