More
and more German companies rely on artificial intelligence when it comes to
personnel selection. Insurer Talanx has stated that it
conducts executive search with software that creates within minutes extensive
personality analyses of applicants based on language tests. According to Talanx,
the software produces a 90 percent approximation of the results obtained by psychologists
after days of work at assessment centers. Talanx relegates assessment to an
algorithm for good reason: a large part of its management will retire by 2025. Other
companies using the same software, Precire, include Frankfurt
Airport’s operator Fraport and Ranstadt HR agency. The algorithm test of Precire was
created by an Aachen startup of the same name. The developer currently works on
integrating a medical speech analysis program for early detection of
depression. To date, Precire is able to reveal first signs of depression at a
very early stage.
Artificial
intelligence development is considered a multi-billion-dollar market in Europe,
and the situation in the U.S. is very similar. AI technologies could soon make
impact on other sectors, but platforms such as Precire are both highly promising
and alarming at the same time, as cheap and increasingly accurate technology is
bound to spread quickly.
Alas,
practical concerns reach far beyond EU’s GDPR: who will ensure that this easily recorded
deep psychological language analysis will be used only with valid consent and for
certain purposes but not for others, and not by potential anonymous actors? More
immediately, who will incur the risk of hiring an individual with symptoms, or
even likelihood of future onset of depression? What else besides depression
will be revealed by additional modules and additions to such a platform? What
are the consequences for Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights? Do individuals
retain a reasonable expectation of any privacy if physical characteristics such
as voice and images are increasingly available from plenty of uncontrollable
recordings, such as millions of CCTV cameras, public and private webcams, and
voice-operated AI systems? Will banks start to rely for credit decisions also
on customer profiles based on voice commands given to automated navigation
systems? How about individuals considering relationships with new
acquaintances? Has anyone ever seen a genie retreat into its bottle?
Multiple
elections in Western countries since 2016 were about “the forgotten men and
women,” the losers of globalization and victims of automation. It is safe to
say that their numbers are bound to grow while neo-Luddite resistance may
destabilize purportedly open societies from inside more than migration has to
date. As the potential for abuse by further dilution of traditional concepts
such as “informed consent” and “reasonable expectation of privacy”
proliferates, will resistance to technology, even at great sacrifices of
convenience and price, remain even theoretically possible?
