eLaw hosts second co-creation workshop of the BIAS project
Fighting together against diversity bias of AI applications in the labor market: The second co-creation workshop of the BIAS project
eLaw - Center for Law and Digital Technologies at Leiden University, has hosted the second Horizon Europe BIAS Project co-creational workshop geared towards discussing fairness in the hiring process and identifing desirable requirements and functionalities of the Debiaser.
Designing AI solutions involves technological aspects and social, economic, political, and legal considerations. Since such AI solutions have the potential to impact society as a whole significantly, adopting a multidisciplinary and multi-stakeholder approach can be valuable in mitigating any related problems arising from their development. The Horizon Europe BIAS project, in which the eLaw Center for Law and Digital Technologies is a partner, embraces a participatory and co-creative approach to defining the requirements for identifying and mitigating diversity bias of AI systems used for recruitment and selection purposes.
For this purpose, on 30 August 2023, Carlotta Rigotti and Eduard Fosch-Villaronga from eLaw - Center for Law and Digital Technologies, hosted the secon co-creation workshop of the HE BIAS project.
Accompanied by Alexa Zainea and Raiz Shaffique from the Adv. LL.M. in Law and Digital Technologies who helped in the execution of the workshop, the four facilitators engaged with a high-level expert crowd coming from different sectors, including HR experts, AI developers, interdisciplinary scholars, civil society organisations, and workers to interactively discuss fairness in the hiring process and the desirable requirements and functionalities of a Debiaser tool - namely, the BIAS proof-of-concept technology with modules that both identify and mitigate diversity bias.
Participants kicked off the workshop with a group discussion and role-play on fairness. In small groups of 5 people, and based on their expertise and experience, they discussed whether it is possible to define fairness in the hiring process from a procedural angle and which requirements should underpin it. After a short plenary session (and a well-deserved break), the workshop took an even more hands-on approach, and participants put themselves in the shoes of HR practitioners and AI developers to imagine a desirable design for the Debiaser.
With a feeling of curiosity on what the next steps of the BIAS project will be, participants left the workshop with a smile on their face, having worked together with other enthusiastic people.
The BIAS Project: Would you like to participate?
The BIAS project aims to identify and mitigate diversity biases (e.g. related to gender and race) of artificial intelligence (AI) applications in the labour market, especially in human resources (HR) management.
To gain new and consolidated knowledge about diversity biases and fairness in AI and HR, the BIAS Consortium is currently involved in several activities that you might be interested in discovering and joining:
- Survey
Help us map the personal experience and attitudes towards AI applications in the labour market. To fill out our survey, please use the following link.
- National Labs
If you want to stay tuned about our activities and/or participate in our project in different capacities, please join these national communities of stakeholders coming from different ecosystems: HR officers, AI developers, scholars, policymakers, representatives of trade unions, workers, and civil society organisations.
To join the national labs, click on the following link.
