News Summary

• )“The … proposed rules [must be strengthened to] ensure broad coverage of [hiring algorithms], expand the bias audit requirements and provide transparency and meaningful notice to affected people in order to ensure that [algorithms] don’t operate to digitally circumvent New York City’s laws against discrimination,” Schwarz wrote.
• After months of delays, New York City today began enforcing a law that requires employers using algorithms to recruit, hire or promote employees to submit those algorithms for an independent audit — and make the results public.
• “We’re not yet at a place where algorithms can or should be trusted to make these decisions on their own without mirroring and perpetuating biases that already exist in the world of work.”One needn’t look far for evidence of bias seeping into hiring algorithms.
• Daniel Schwarz, senior privacy and technology strategist at the NYCLU, notes in a policy memo that Local Law 144 could, as written, be understood to only cover a subset of hiring algorithms — for example excluding tools that transcribe text from video and audio interviews.
• It must also list the algorithms’ “impact ratios,” which the law defines as the average algorithm-given score of all people in a specific category (e.g.
• Black male candidates) divided by the average score of people in the highest-scoring category.Companies found not to be in compliance will face penalties of $375 for a first violation, $1,350 for a second violation and $1,500 for a third and any subsequent violations.