WIDE+ participation in Horizon Project “FINDHR” to prevent, detect, and mitigate intersectional gendered discrimination in Algorithmic hiring
WIDE+ is part of a consortium to implement is a 3-year research and innovation project. It will in collaboration develop methods, algorithms, and training for an intersectional anti-discrimination approach that are contextualized within the technical, legal, and ethical problems of algorithmic hiring, and are applicable to a broad class of applications involving human recommendation.
This project is supported by the European Union’s Horizon Europe Programme (grant agreement No 101070212), under the call HORIZON-CL4-2021-HUMAN-01-24 (“Tackling gender, race and other biases in Artificial Intelligence”). The consortium includes leaders in algorithmic fairness and explainability research (UPF, UVA, UNIPI, MPI-SP), pioneers in the auditing of digital services (AW, ETICAS), and two industry partners that are leaders in their respective markets (ADE, RAND), complemented by experts in technology regulation (RU) and cross-cultural digital ethics (EUR), and two NGOs dedicated to fighting discrimination (WIDE+ and PRAK). WIDE+ is bringing in its gender expertise and network.
News
Companies are increasingly using automated systems to help select job applications. These systems rely on algorithms. Many case studies show that the implementation of automated systems leads to discrimination of marginalized groups, including women, and most of all people that face intersected discrimination. That means there is less chance of them getting a decent job compared to others.
WIDE+ wants to change that – together with partners – by developing tools to detect and avoid injustices in online job application processes! To do so, we need CVs to test how such injustices creep into job selection algorithms. Based on those real CVs, the project creates artificial CVs that will be used to develop methods against discrimination. To donate your CV, click here.
Three Expert Report Leaders selected!
In pursuit of equitable insights, FINDHR undertook a Selective process to identify candidates for crafting FINDHR Expert Reports. These reports endeavor to research the discrimination faced by marginalized groups in domains where AI-based human recommendation is on the rise. The selection process adhered to EU guidelines/EURAXESS, under the oversight of our partner NGOs, WIDE+ and PRAKSIS, in collaboration with the FINDHR Advisory Board. The selective process included job offer dissemination, rigorous pre-selection based on criteria and experience, personal interviews with top-ranking candidates, and a final selection of three exceptional candidates who align with the project’s needs.
The finalist candidates are:
- Paksy Plackis-Cheng
- Cesar Said Rosales Torres
- Jie Liang Lin
WIDE+ participated in Artificial Intelligence (AI) Fairness Cluster Inaugural Conference, 19 March, 2024, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
WIDE+ participated in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Fairness Cluster Inaugural Conference, held in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, on 19 March, 2024. It is the first conference for four projects that are currently supported by the EU Horizon programme to address intersectional discrimination in AI. Gea Meijers participated on behalf of WIDE+, since WIDE+ is a consortium partner to FINDHR.
The presentations and discussion during the conference showed how urgent it is for our societies to develop tools and approaches to assess and migitate bias in algorithms, as they are as fallable as humans, but an algoritmic decision-making system has the potential to be scaled up to impact large groups of people. A recurrent theme was how difficult and complex it is to “catch” bias as it comes up in all steps of a decision-making process in which humans and machines are interacting.
At the same time the practical use of algorithms is increasing by the day and policies to manage risks and ensuring equal treatment are lagging behind. Several speakers explained how the policies, treaties and laws of the EU and Council of Europe aim to protect human rights, but also how complex this. Without ongoing policy and legal development, it might be well that our regulatory framework remains inadequate.
For women, especially those facing multiple discrimination, and gender marginalized people, it is very important that there are rules to oversee AI, in how it is developed and used. In our gender and trade work, WIDE+ has called for ensuring global governance of AI. In following news, we will report on outcomes, such as from the expert reports that have been carried out.
BIAS
Register in the BIAS National Labs
Be part of the Trustworthy AI Helix Community
AEQUITAS
Survey to investigate AI-driven discrimination
FINDHR
Request for Comments. In FINDHR, partners are working on tools that prevent discrimination through AI in job selection. Please leave a comment on the website
MAMMOth
Check the project publications
Background to the FINDhR
Through a context-sensitive, interdisciplinary approach, FINDHR will develop new technologies to measure discrimination risks, to create fairness-aware rankings and interventions, and to provide multi-stakeholder actionable interpretability. It will also produce new technical guidance to perform impact assessment and algorithmic auditing, a protocol for equality monitoring, and a guide for fairness-aware AI software development. The project will also design and deliver specialized skills training for developers and auditors of AI systems.
Algorithmic hiring is on the rise and rapidly becoming necessary in some sectors. Artificial Intelligence technologies promise to deal with hundreds or thousands of applicants at high speeds (Heilweil R., ‘Job recruiters are using AI in hiring’, Vox, 2019). Moreover, their uptake in European HR teams and Public Employment Services (PES) is growing faster than the global average (High-Level Expert Group on the Impact of the Digital Transformation on EU Labour Markets, final report, 2019). European tools are highly innovative, and include tools that instantly select and rank candidates based on their resumes and application materials, or process candidates using online tests or games.
Discriminatory biases have been documented across almost all applied domains of Artificial Intelligence (AI) (Feuerriegel S, Dolata M, Schwabe G, ‘Fair AI’, in ‘Business and Information Systems Engineering 62’, 2020). It is increasingly acknowledged that algorithmic hiring systems do this too, reproducing and amplifying pre-existing discriminatory entry barriers into the labor market. The FINDHR project is designed to create practical integrated solutions to tackle this issue.
FINDHR (Fairness and Intersectional Non-Discrimination in Human Recommendation) aims to push beyond current general guides to address discrimination in algorithms. And develop a more concrete approach for all involved to ensure fair online recruitment, leading to systems that excel at finding the best candidates for a vacancy, and thus explicitly address bias. It will be pioneering through different research methods in which WIDE+ will in particular conduct a participatory action research with marginalized and discriminated groups.
The project is grounded in EU regulation and policy. As tackling discrimination risks in AI requires processing sensitive data, it will perform a targeted legal analysis of tensions between data protection regulation (including the GDPR) and anti-discrimination regulation in Europe. It will also engage with underrepresented groups through multiple mechanisms including consultation with experts and participatory action research. All outputs will be released as open access publications, open source software, open datasets, and open courseware.
Consortium Partners:
- UNIVERSITAT POMPEU FABRA (UPF), Spain (Project Coordinator)
- UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM (UvA), Netherlands
- UNIVERSITA DI PISA (UNIPI), Italy
- MAX-PLANCK-GESELLSCHAFT ZUR FORDERUNG DER WISSENSCHAFTEN EV (MPI-SP), Germany
- STICHTING RADBOUD UNIVERSITEIT (RU), Netherlands
- ERASMUS UNIVERSITEIT ROTTERDAM (EUR), Netherlands
- WOMEN IN DEVELOPMENT EUROPE+ (WIDE+), Belgium
- PRAKSIS ASSOCIATION (PRAK), Greece
- ETICAS RESEARCH AND CONSULTING SL (ETICAS), Spain
- RANDSTAD NEDERLAND BV (RAND), Netherlands
- ADEVINTA SPAIN, SLU (ADE), Spain
- ALGORITHMWATCH SWITZERLAND (AW), Switzerland
Please follow the FINDHR project on Twitter (@HorizonFINDHR) and Mastodon (@findhr@eupolicy.social). The project website will be soon launched.
