Discrimination

ChatGPT-related artificial intelligence (AI) seems likely to impact the labour market by making organisational processes, such as personnel selection, more efficient. At the same time, it may also introduce and reinforce bias in these processes. A simulated CV screening task with ChatGPT shows that the chatbot discriminates based on ethnic identity when evaluating job applicants. The experiment suggests that we should be careful when using ChatGPT-like AI in selection processes. Chances are you have used ChatGPT before – whether it was to get ideas for a birthday gift, to summarise a company report or an interaction of a completely different nature. The chatbot provides an accessible, conversational model that can generate text and even image output based on user textual input, creating a chat experience that feels almost human. At face value, nothing but benefits, or do some interactions with ChatGPT require a caveat? ...

Many correspondence audit studies on labour market discrimination have recently been published. My research with Siel Vermeiren and Stijn Baert, which appeared in the January 2023 issue of European Economic Review, synthesises the data from nearly all correspondence audit tests conducted around the world between 2005 and 2020. It thus gives a bird’s-eye view of the extent of hiring discrimination on various grounds of discrimination. How do, for example, age discrimination and ethnic discrimination compare? Are there regional differences? And does hiring discrimination decrease over time? ...

Recently, there was much talk in Belgium about the inactivity among 25- to 64-year-olds in Belgium with a non-EU27 nationality. With 44.2% of the 25- to 64-year-olds with a non-EU27 nationality neither working nor looking for work, Belgium is at the very back of the European rankings. This level of inactivity is a problem given the intention of the Flemish, Walloon and federal governments to get more people into work. In this blog post, I look at one of the possible explanations for this high level of inactivity on the employers’ side, namely hiring discrimination. More specifically, the scientific evidence for the mechanisms of hiring discrimination is discussed, and some solutions to counteract discrimination based on economics (as a science) are provided. ...