> allegations include that Workday, Inc., through its use of certain Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) features on its job application platform, violated the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (“ADEA”)
I'm interested to see Workday's defense in this case. Will it be "we can't be held liable for our AI", and will it work against a law as "strong" as ADEA?
Hopefully they have something better prepared because "we can't be held liable for the black box we made" doesn't sound like a recipe for success. In Canada, they've already ruled that a website operator is liable for information that their LLM chatbot gives out.
> It shall be unlawful for an employment agency to fail or refuse to refer for employment, or otherwise to discriminate against, any individual because of such individual's age, or to classify or refer for employment any individual on the basis of such individual's age.
I don't see any wiggle room for outsourced decision making to remove the responsibility for the outcome.
Key part is that AI is suspected of down-ranking folks by age (ADEA = Age Discrimination in Employment Act)
> The Court has provisionally certified an ADEA collective, which includes: “All individuals aged 40 and over who, from September 24, 2020, through the present, applied for job opportunities using Workday, Inc.’s job application platform and were denied employment recommendations.” In this context, being “denied” an “employment recommendation” means that (i) the individual’s application was scored, sorted, ranked, or screened by Workday’s AI; (ii) the result of the AI scoring, sorting, ranking, or screening was not a recommendation to hire; and (iii) that result was communicated to the prospective employer, or the result was an automatic rejection by Workday.
Age discrimination is a huge issue and I've experienced it firsthand. Places want to hire younger people because they're more apt to work longer hours for less pay. It's going to get worse as people who got into the web tech industry early on are still in the workforce, yet more and more young people are entering the workforce because "learning to code" was the perceived path to prosperity half a decade ago.
> Places want to hire younger people because they're more apt to work longer hours for less pay.
This is the best light you can shine on the discrimination. Most often it really is managers taking their “seniority” literally. As in, they don’t want to take the risk their reports are smarter, more experienced or capable of replacing them, so they discriminate on the basis of age. It’s counterintuitive, but this feels truest from my historical observation.
I've experienced the opposite where some smaller companies won't even look at a resume for someone under 30. One of the owners admitted it to me later on.
:(
> Places want to hire younger people because they're more apt to work longer hours for less pay.
If you take age out of the equation, is there supposed to be something wrong with preferring to hire people who are willing to work longer for less pay over people who aren't willing to work as long who want more pay?
Experienced people might produce better results? Have a greater understanding of the larger picture that makes a business? And people with kids were shown to have higher retention. If the youngsters move on with the tribal knowledge, what was the point? My .02, no proof that we should respect our elders.
It will be fascinating to see the facts of this case, but if it is proven their algorithms are discriminatory, even by accident, I hope workday is held accountable. Making sure your AI doesn't violate obvious discrimination laws should be basic engineering practice, and the courts should help remind people of that.
Feel bad for the next guy who wants to sue them but has to settle for workdaycase2 .com
I never liked these "trust me bro we're court authorized, give us all your PII to join the class action" setups on random domains. Makes phishing seem inevitable. Why can't we have a .gov that hosts all these as subdomains?
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[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 48.1 ms ] threadI'm interested to see Workday's defense in this case. Will it be "we can't be held liable for our AI", and will it work against a law as "strong" as ADEA?
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20240222-air-canada-chatb...
> It shall be unlawful for an employment agency to fail or refuse to refer for employment, or otherwise to discriminate against, any individual because of such individual's age, or to classify or refer for employment any individual on the basis of such individual's age.
I don't see any wiggle room for outsourced decision making to remove the responsibility for the outcome.
> The Court has provisionally certified an ADEA collective, which includes: “All individuals aged 40 and over who, from September 24, 2020, through the present, applied for job opportunities using Workday, Inc.’s job application platform and were denied employment recommendations.” In this context, being “denied” an “employment recommendation” means that (i) the individual’s application was scored, sorted, ranked, or screened by Workday’s AI; (ii) the result of the AI scoring, sorting, ranking, or screening was not a recommendation to hire; and (iii) that result was communicated to the prospective employer, or the result was an automatic rejection by Workday.
This is the best light you can shine on the discrimination. Most often it really is managers taking their “seniority” literally. As in, they don’t want to take the risk their reports are smarter, more experienced or capable of replacing them, so they discriminate on the basis of age. It’s counterintuitive, but this feels truest from my historical observation.
If you take age out of the equation, is there supposed to be something wrong with preferring to hire people who are willing to work longer for less pay over people who aren't willing to work as long who want more pay?
And I also generally believe it's bad, because it breeds a toxic and self-eating culture.
I never liked these "trust me bro we're court authorized, give us all your PII to join the class action" setups on random domains. Makes phishing seem inevitable. Why can't we have a .gov that hosts all these as subdomains?
https://youtu.be/7MA7xEgkGvY