A face-scanning algorithm increasingly decides whether you deserve the job; The Washington Post, October 22, 2019

Drew Harwell, The Washington Post; A face-scanning algorithm increasingly decides whether you deserve the job 

HireVue claims it uses artificial intelligence to decide who’s best for a job. Outside experts call it ‘profoundly disturbing.’

"“It’s a profoundly disturbing development that we have proprietary technology that claims to differentiate between a productive worker and a worker who isn’t fit, based on their facial movements, their tone of voice, their mannerisms,” said Meredith Whittaker, a co-founder of the AI Now Institute, a research center in New York...

Loren Larsen, HireVue’s chief technology officer, said that such criticism is uninformed and that “most AI researchers have a limited understanding” of the psychology behind how workers think and behave...

“People are rejected all the time based on how they look, their shoes, how they tucked in their shirts and how ‘hot’ they are,” he told The Washington Post. “Algorithms eliminate most of that in a way that hasn’t been possible before.”...

HireVue’s growth, however, is running into some regulatory snags. In August, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) signed a first-in-the-nation law that will force employers to tell job applicants how their AI-hiring system works and get their consent before running them through the test. The measure, which HireVue said it supports, will take effect Jan. 1."

Equity pending: Why so few women receive patents; The Christian Science Monitor, July 2, 2018

E'oin O'Carroll, The Christian Science Monitor; Equity pending: Why so few women receive patents

"The causes for the gender gap are varied and complex, but much of it can be explained by women’s underrepresentation in patent-intensive jobs, particularly engineering. Research shows women make up roughly 20 percent of graduates from engineering schools, but hold less than 15 percent of engineering jobs. Female engineering grads are not entering the field at the same rate as their male counterparts, and they are leaving in far greater numbers.

“It’s the climate,” says Nadya Fouad, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. “The organizational environment is very unforgiving.”

Professor Fouad, who spent three years surveying women with engineering degrees about their career choices, cites inflexible schedules, a lack of opportunities for advancement, and incivility toward women. “It’s not the women’s fault,” she says, noting that she found no difference in levels of confidence in those who stayed and those who left.

Other barriers women face are an absence of supportive social networks and implicit bias on the part of venture capitalists."