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Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women

reuters.com

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Re: Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women

#401

Post by camelite »

beat wrote: post #310
naasking wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why are you assuming I have no idea of the data available? Because I question the default narrative? Because you're throwing out wild, unsupported speculation to salvage your narrative, and the original post of yours to which I replied had at least 4 elementary factual errors. > But I believe my explanation accounts for that - that STEM has become more prestigious, which draws men, which forces out women. That's no…

Sexism kept women out of medicine and law for centuries. It's only very recently that this has changed. Women were not even admitted to Harvard Law School until 1950. I do think there's a universal component, though, as sexism is seen across virtually all cultures.

> Sexism kept women out of medicine and law for centuries.

Have you noticed how this is inconsistent with your prestige argument?

Re: Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women

#402

Post by zimablue »

beat wrote: post #345
zimablue wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't around two generations ago to make the comparison but I imagine that with the higher income has come much higher expectations that you'll be in the office for 12 hours a day and weekends. You also have much higher wealth in western nations which correlates with higher ability to seek jobs that fit your preferences. Back in the day most people didn't go to uni and had a much smaller choice of positions. There…

Nonsense. I don't know where you work, but where I work, 12 hour days and weekends are clearly not the norm. We put in 40 hour weeks like any other profession. I first learned to program 35 years ago. It wasn't fundamentally different then. Hell, we still use programming languages that were in wide use 35 years ago, like C and the unix shell. The kind of thinking required hasn't changed. So, based on my 35 years of e…

The parent conceded we're talking 50 years not 35 years, and my point wasn't only that the job is different but that society is different.

how is the job different? The pay is much higher and so are the entry requirements, that's the biggest difference. You don't get assigned to program punch cards as part of your secretarial role, you have to actively get educated and good to choose it as a career.

I think there's far more places now expecting crazy hours but that's anecdotal I don't have numbers on it. But the languages are different (mostly), the tooling is different, the deployment is different, the scale is different.

Re: Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women

#403

Post by stef25 »

electrograv wrote: post #166
stef25 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> author-blind reviews Should I ever be in a position to hire a colleague, I wouldn't ever do so without having a chat with them. I spend 8hrs a day in an office with my colleagues (sometimes more than with my wife & kid) and the ones I can't stand is about the only thing wrong with my job. If we can't even see the person's face over some gender bias hysteria then I wonder how the hell we got here. People should just…

I’m not saying that all candidates should be interviewed without ever meeting or interviewing the candidate face-to-face; rather, I was speaking specifically of the coding interview portions. In these segments, face-to-face doesn’t really matter IMO, since it’s all about the candidate’s problem-solving ability. Yes there’s a lot of “bias hysteria” out there, as you put it, but I would dispute that advocating “author-…

You're totally right in that coding tests can and probably should be done "blind".

When it gets to the "let's meet" stage, it could be possible that the bias just comes back. Yes this woman made a perfect score on the coding but she's a woman and I'm not going to hire her for reason X that just bubbled up out of my biased brain. I can totally see that happening, unfortunately.

Re: Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women

#404

Post by ramblerman »

arandr0x wrote: post #247
courir wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>you are telling the women who do like programming (which, let's be real, is most of them on Hacker News) that they're in effect not real women woah what? no that is not at all what he's saying. If someone tells me "most american men like the NFL" and I don't like the NFL, I would be insane to take that as someone telling me "you're not a real man" and think they're trying to "tell me what a real man is." I can see h…

I hope you're actually an American who doesn't like the NFL so you can tell me how well the analogy follows. The conversational equivalent using the NFL example would go something like this: "Why are there no Americans at my favorite chess forum?" "Americans like the NFL. They're just more into brute force and camaraderie, especially American men. Chess can't really appeal to them. I mean, back in the Neolithic, a mo…

I reread this three times, and what a contrived way to look at the world. You are the one coming up with all these labels, and trying to project it into other people's arguments.

Let me play the same game: I know a black guy who is president. Does that mean all black men are political? What about the one who just wants to play sports. Will we now call him an athletic black man, instead of just a black man...

You can generate endless arguments like this depending on your choice of anecdote and label.

Re: Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women

#406

Post by jhfhhhf »

petsormeat wrote: post #323
jhfhhhf wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what do you do now? Btw some men in tech are also over 35 and tired of hiring rituals.

After 15 years of front-end dev, I now work in retail. Some of my other peers are scraping by with Uber/Lyft. Some are muddling through as housewives or substitute teaching. And, yes, Bay Area tech hiring is needlessly hostile for men over a certain age as well.

Ageism, OK - but still I find it hard to believe that you can't find a job if you can code. Maybe competition or demands are especially high in the Bay area?

Re: Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women

#407

Post by [deleted] »

beat wrote: post #298
naasking wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Okay, so TWO generations. Big deal. It still dismisses the "born that way" nonsense argument. It really doesn't. Unless you seriously think punch card programming is the same as modern programming, or that the fact that only women were secretaries that did programming somehow provides data on the relative strengths and inclinations of women and men for programming work at that time. Look, it's clear that you have n…

Why are you assuming I have no idea of the data available? Because I question the default narrative? I do find it interesting and noteworthy that gender disparities have grown in STEM while shrinking in other fields. But I believe my explanation accounts for that - that STEM has become more prestigious, which draws men, which forces out women. The "well known psychological attitude" is begging the question, which see…

[deleted]

Re: Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women

#408

Post by notSoRandom27 »

N0RMAN wrote: post #199
bicubic wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last place I worked at had to invest in additional resources to hire several females because the office was mostly male and applicants were overwhelmingly male. We did eventually find a few great female applicants, but it took a lot of work and a lot of time dedicated specifically to that goal. There does not exist some magical undiscovered pool of talented female engineers that are being turned away by biased recrui…

Just being female is a qualification at your workplace?

Not the parent, but in my current company it definitely helps to be a women, more referral bonus for referring a diversity candidate (post joining), performance targets for managers related to hiring and promoting diversity candidates.

Please note there is no active discrimination against men, but preference in some cases would be to hire a women. Gender is the only criteria for diversity in here.

Re: Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women

#409

Post by notSoRandom27 »

beat wrote: post #298
naasking wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Okay, so TWO generations. Big deal. It still dismisses the "born that way" nonsense argument. It really doesn't. Unless you seriously think punch card programming is the same as modern programming, or that the fact that only women were secretaries that did programming somehow provides data on the relative strengths and inclinations of women and men for programming work at that time. Look, it's clear that you have n…

Why are you assuming I have no idea of the data available? Because I question the default narrative? I do find it interesting and noteworthy that gender disparities have grown in STEM while shrinking in other fields. But I believe my explanation accounts for that - that STEM has become more prestigious, which draws men, which forces out women. The "well known psychological attitude" is begging the question, which see…

> that STEM has become more prestigious, which draws men, which forces out women.

Is it competition that is forcing women out, or men ?

> as the prestige of formerly female-dominated careers rises, they become more attractive to men, to the point where men dominate them

What do you mean by dominated, is it the number of people, or is it something else ?

Are you trying to say that once a career path becomes female dominated, men should stay out ?

Re: Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women

#410

Post by weliketocode »

hannasanarion wrote: post #195
weliketocode wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. There is no story here.

The story is, some ML researchers did their job properly and detected ethical issues before they became a problem. That's more rare than you'd think.

I like the counterpoint, but it's not clear that the ML researchers were the ones who pulled the plug on the project.
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