New app scans your face and tells companies whether you’re worth hiring

Some comments are focusing on this exacerbating aggregate phenomena like diversity stats and wage gaps. This is true and a huge negative.<p>But that&#x27;s not the only thing we should be worried about. Far more damaging would be the dystopia that these &quot;cognitive surveillance&quot; products will bring upon us.<p>It claims to micro-analyze facial expressions, intonation, non-verbal signals while the candidate is interviewing. This is vile, hostile interaction in my opinion, and it is startling to see that companies like Vodafone, Intel, and Oracle are their customers [1].<p>At best, this is a way to sweep unaccountable decision-making under the carpet of &quot;the software said so&quot;. Quite likely, though, is that such products will make society a living hell for everyone until these practices are entrenched in the industry and it is too late to roll it all back.<p>The creators of these products are not stupid, they made a conscious choice to grab low-hanging fruit (now that they have the technology available) and enrich themselves while making the world a worse place. Let&#x27;s not kid ourselves that the consequences of their actions did not occur to them.<p>As a research student in DL&#x2F;AI, I realize this may make things marginally worse for my career, but right here is the reason we should regulate AI usage _now_: not Skynet, but these attempts to &quot;disrupt&quot; social norms for no stated reason other than &quot;progress&quot; and &quot;efficiency&quot;. We should keep some technologies out of the public sphere and make it vocally clear that they are unacceptable, lest we end up with a world where everyone is wearing google glasses and you have no way to maintain a personal facade because some combination of blood flow and facial muscle twitch betrays your thoughts.<p>Your only argument against this stuff <i>should not only be</i> that it has X bug or that it&#x27;s execution isn&#x27;t sound due to Y bias. We must oppose such things on principle, I would rather kill myself than live in some sort of Black Mirror-esque dystopia where this is mainstream.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hirevue.com&#x2F;customers" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hirevue.com&#x2F;customers</a>

Related:<p>&quot;The era of blind faith in big data must end&quot; | TED Talk |<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ted.com&#x2F;talks&#x2F;cathy_o_neil_the_era_of_blind_faith_in_big_data_must_end" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ted.com&#x2F;talks&#x2F;cathy_o_neil_the_era_of_blind_fait...</a><p><i>&quot;Algorithms decide who gets a loan, who gets a job interview, who gets insurance and much more -- but they don&#x27;t automatically make things fair. Mathematician and data scientist Cathy O&#x27;Neil coined a term for algorithms that are secret, important and harmful: &quot;weapons of math destruction.&quot; Learn more about the hidden agendas behind the formulas.&quot;</i><p>...<p><i>&quot;Algorithms are everywhere. They sort and separate the winners from the losers. The winners get the job or a good credit card offer. The losers don&#x27;t even get an interview or they pay more for insurance. We&#x27;re being scored with secret formulas that we don&#x27;t understand that often don&#x27;t have systems of appeal. That begs the question: What if the algorithms are wrong?&quot;</i>

This invariably will identify and rate characteristics like race. It will judge their vocabulary and identify if you are a native or an immigrant. Probably also identify your upbringing and class from language and grammar composition.<p>Let the lawsuits begin.

Holy shit, what HR department would <i>ever</i> approve such a thing?! Photographs on resumes are discouraged - can you imagine the risk involved asking for a biometric scan and doing feature analysis on video interviews? How would this interact with GINA and polygraph laws? It raises far, far too many questions - unless the app makers are providing indemnity I can&#x27;t see any reasonably competent hiring process professional adopting such a risky tool openly.

Is there any actual sound peer reviewed research indicating the results of their predictive system will lead to more great hires? Cus it didn&#x27;t seem so in the article. The article made it seem like HireVue is working off some false causal relationship assumption where the best hires performed like this in their interview therefore we should compare all new hires to them without any shred of evidence showing that this type of interview performance indicates a good hire. I.e. snake oil...

This leads to some pretty scary questions. What about different cultures? Everyone has different ways of speaking, acting, living. What if the app considers something bad behavior, and it&#x27;s just a cultural difference? Or it&#x27;s how someone was raised?<p>Maybe the biggest question we should ask is what does this solve? What problem is this trying to solve? And once we figure that out, ask ourselves... is that the problem we should be solving? Is it the best way to solve it?

can we rename machine learning to &quot;Prejudice Amplifier&quot; now ?

There&#x27;s no way this software is not inherently biased on very basic measures--a lisp caused by a disability probably wouldn&#x27;t pass muster, nor would a southern accent. But the real tragedy here is that it equates the way someone presents themselves--not the content of their words or the strength of their skills--with job performance. It exacerbates the worst vices of HR and hiring practices and performance reviews. It&#x27;s an algorithm for superficiality.<p>This company should remove this product from the market immediately. How this passed off as a good idea all the way through the product development cycle is beyond me.

Incredible that they can now get phrenological measurements from a video capture.

Fuck this. A whole company whose business model is to increase the current diversity gap in a field.

Great plot for Black Mirror episode.

To put skepticism aside for a second - I could see this working (maybe) in a field where face to face communication is incredibly important (e.g. sales). But the vast majority of roles in a modern company don&#x27;t need people that are good at communicating verbally, not to mention in front of a camera.<p>Can you imagine putting a scientist through this process? A janitor? No way.

Accessing this page results in an instant pop up box that says &quot;Thanks for reading, like us on Facebook&quot;, even before you&#x27;ve had a chance to read a word in the article. What a fail. Won&#x27;t read, pass.

Looking forward to 3D mapping of the skull, it will surely open up a utopia of completely unobjectionable, final judgment of character.

I&#x27;m curious as to how this judges the skillset of a particular candidate. To me the only skill this would be able to judge is confidence, which also makes it very easy to trick - simply believe in your bullshit and you&#x27;ll get through, no matter whether you actually have the skills.

A modern take on anthropometry and craniometry. Because we know the recent history of those.

What are they really testing? A candidate&#x27;s willingness to go through a trendy interview format, which comes across as weirdly similar to the HR version of a video dating profile - and be chipper about it? I mean, I hate video conferencing in general, I&#x27;d probably fail just because I wouldn&#x27;t like the format and it would show.<p>This kind of thing just provokes my bias towards only allowing recruiters, HR, etc., to handle processing paperwork, like clerks, and leaving the real decisions to the departments that have to work with the people who get hired. Something like this would be laughed out of the building where I work.

Let&#x27;s assume there are some people whom have many years of hiring people effectively. Whom among them is going to trust a computer at this point in time? Also, what potential candidate is not going to be immediately insulted or lose respect of a company so lazy it can&#x27;t even be bothered to do one of the most critical tasks without outsourcing it? Sounds like another &quot;something for nothing&quot; panacea service.<p>PS: Just imagine all the shallow correlation biases a deep learning net will discover. People with red hair? Nope. People with insufficient bilateral symmetry? Nope.

Is this a joke or a modern incarnation of phrenology.?<p>As society moves forward, we must not accept that just because a tool is based on AI that it is not flawless or biased.<p>Judging someone&#x27;s competency based upon their face and its expressions is not much. more accurate than a witch test, even without the consideration of differing cultural norms and behaviors. Will American firms discriminate against Russians because they don&#x27;t smile as much?

I&#x27;m sure this won&#x27;t instantly fail anyone with gender dysphoria that kicks into overdrive at seeing their own face. &#x2F;s

&quot;Judging a book by the cover&quot; taken to the extreme? And I&#x27;m sure this leads to great diversity in the workplace too :)

Another sensational (and misleading) title...<p>While there can be very much debate over the long term value of an AI based filter, at least the filter here includes much more than just &quot;your face&quot;.<p>Honestly, I only clicked it to see if they were really just viewing a still image of your face and then trying to determine if you would be a good hire. I knew better.

*Persons with facial deformity need not apply.

I always though that if the skills of a person are highly shaped by the genes, that would have a reflection in body traits. So basically you could have a good idea of the mental skills and personality of anyone just analyzing the body and other external features. One of the things that lead me to this theory is how mental illness do affect the body features.<p>But even if I am right in this theory, this only gives you one part of the person. Because the environment and the own decisions of a person shapes them. For example, even if a person if the perfect fit for the job position based on the analysis, and the analysis is right, the succeed of that person also depends in the attitude. If the person has developed a natural laziness over the life it wont be productive at the job. And the opposite can be true, a less genetical predisposed person which has work hard during all the life could be a much better match for the job.<p>EDIT: when I said the skills are encoded in genes and also expressed in body traits it doesn&#x27;t mean gender or race, it could irrelevant things as the length of the fingers, or the way you walk.

&quot;Would you be nervous with an artificial intelligence evaluating your interview skills?&quot;<p>Yes, because the prospective employer <i>should</i> be evaluating my job performance skills instead.

What makes a hire a good hire? Is a good hire one who sucks off management, or one who does the right thing even if it provokes management ire?

We&#x27;ve got discrimination down to a science

Who actually thinks this is a good idea?