Google Claims They’re Not Using AI To Determine Which Employees To Fire

Image credit : NPR If you keep an eye on the tech industry, even the big names like Google that have a strong track record for employee happiness are laying off workers left and right. But they want you to know that they're not letting AI decide which workers stay and which leave. The first people to speculate that "mindless algorithms"—those that could be taught to not break any laws in the process—were to blame were laid-off workers. [caption id="attachment_148696" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] Image credit : Search Engine Journal[/caption] Google disputes the assertion, but 98% of American human resources executives say they'd be happy to see AI take the fall in the future. This is true even though less than half of them have faith in the technology's ability to make wise decisions. Also read : Using ChatGPT was a serious mistake committed by Samsung employees. According to Joseph Fuller, a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School, they currently use AI and algorithms to discover the "right person" for the "right project," so this would just be employing the same technology for the opposite goal.

“They suddenly are just being used differently, because that’s the place where people have a real inventory of skills.”

Analyst at a software review site Brian Westfall is concerned that racism might unwittingly enter the picture, particularly if AI starts considering factors other than performance.

“You can kind of see where the snowball gets rolling, and all of a sudden, these data points where you don’t know how that data was created or how that data was influenced suddenly lead to poor decisions.”