With a one-year, $250,000 grant from Walmart, Youngjin Yoo, associate dean of research and the Elizabeth M. and William C. Treuhaft Professor in Entrepreneurship at Weatherhead School of Management, and his team of researchers are addressing critical challenges in learning and employment records (LERs) and the potential impact artificial intelligence (AI) can have on removing bias from the hiring process.
LERs are essentially digital resumes with verified records of people’s skills, educational experiences and work histories.
The research will focus on several key issues, including designing a decentralized data system that allows people to control their personal data while safely sharing their learning and work records, using AI to understand skills and abilities from things like transcripts and job descriptions, and creating privacy-friendly methods to use AI for matching skills with jobs without sacrificing personal data privacy,
Yoo, co-principal investigator, said the current hiring process using AI often suffers from bias due to the lack of valid and reliable data. As a result, people’s true skills and competencies lead to poor hiring outcomes.
“The current systems for learning and employment records are overly complex and disconnected, making it hard for people to show all their skills to employers in a clear and trustworthy way,” said Yoo.
Researchers hypothesize that streamlined AI could offer a solution to improve the process and hone the matching skills of job requirements. However, integrating AI into the LER ecosystem introduces other challenges, including privacy, fairness, transparency and verifiability, as well as individuals losing control over their personal data.
Erman Aday, associate professor of computer science at the Case School of Engineering who along with Yoo, is spearheading the research, said the team proposes developing a decentralized, privacy-preserving data architecture leveraging AI to alleviate these problems.
For its part, Walmart is excited to support this ground-breaking research and hopes the project will demonstrate that AI can help achieve better hiring outcomes for both employers and job applicants.
Sean Murphy, director of retail opportunity for the world’s largest retailer, said the project, which is also being conducted in partnership with the Department of Informatics and Networked Systems at the University of Pittsburgh and the Digital Credential Consortium at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will show that AI can create an unbiased and secure hiring practice in the future. .
“AI doesn’t have to be a threat to people’s jobs or their privacy,” said Murphy.
Yoo sees the potential outcome of the research having a profound impact on how human resources will conduct the hiring process.
“The goal is to create a more equitable, efficient and privacy-preserving infrastructure for LERs,” Yoo said. “This will empower individuals to showcase their skills, enable employers to make more informed decisions and foster a more dynamic education and workforce ecosystem.”