Let a man recruit me

“A candidate prefers to be recruited by a man rather than artificial intelligence.” I recently read in a Facebook comment.

Are you sure?

The last episode of the World Science Festival, with a meaningful title Outsourcing Humanity, discussed progress in the development of artificial intelligence. The episode presents the successes and failures that arise during the development of this technology. Among the successes were promising results in the detection of breast cancer. Among the failures, the spectacular fiasco of artificial intelligence tested in Amazon recruitment processes. The reasons for Amazon’s failure resulted from the fact that incorrectly prepared data was used to learn AI algorithms. These data concerned historical recruitment processes in which male candidates were the preferred candidates. The algorithm, learning from such data, also preferred men, which quickly came to light and a spectacular failure became a fact.

However, my special attention was drawn to the case of a completely different failure, not directly related to artificial intelligence.

A case, whose analysis can shake the faith in human judgment, comes from an area that should be the backbone of the most accurate and just decisions – the justice system.

In 2011, a study by the American Academy of Sciences was published, which revealed quite shocking results of the analysis of court decisions in parole cases. More than 1,000 judgments issued within ten months by eight experienced judges were examined. The research shows that the highest probability (65%) of obtaining a positive court decision was immediately after breakfast (its not a joke). This probability was then constantly decreasing, and before the next meal, it was almost zero. The result of the research is presented in the chart below: