Episode Details

In this Tech Barometer podcast, Eightfold AI CMO Navneet Singh makes the case for using AI to improve routine human resources processes.

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Audio podcast transcript:

Navneet Singh: The current system is actually already deeply biased. The recruiter who sees 200 resumes by Friday afternoon, he or she is not evaluating the last 50 with the same rigor as the first 10. And this is not a character flaw. It’s just human judgment, just degrades with volume and fatigue.

Jason Lopez: Navneet Singh is the CMO for Eightfold. It’s a company that provides AI-based HR tools, which they describe as talent intelligence. This is the Tech Barometer Podcast produced by The Forecast. I’m Jason Lopez. Today we’re going to look at AI-based hiring. The gist of what Navnit tells us in this story is you can’t just dump data into a typical AI engine and have it do the job of hiring. It won’t turn out well. So one wrinkle Eightfold starts with is to focus on skills rather than resumes. A resume focus often overlooks the intangible capabilities of people which Eightfold’s AI recruiting and tracking platform takes into account. It also matches people to open roles inside a company. Singh says it takes a lot of work to get AI recruiting like this right.

Navneet Singh: It’s not whether AI is safer than humans. Typically, HR and recruiting has been done by humans. The real question is, is it fairer than humans, especially at scale? And the honest answer is that well-designed AI is.

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Jason Lopez: His view is one that scientists hold about the unreliability of human perception. Scientists in other fields like biology or astrophysics use tools to measure findings. Tools that work the same regardless of what kind of day the scientist is having. It works the same in the hands of each scientist. A well-built tool such as an algorithm in the hands of an HR person can do the same thing.

Navneet Singh: It can apply the same standard to candidate one as it does to candidate one million. The bar doesn’t move. The evaluation doesn’t drift. So that’s where critically every decision can be logged, it’s auditable. You can actually see bias if there is one and correct it.

Jason Lopez: But here’s where AI falls short. Yes, it makes calculations and machine decisions which are consistent, but ultimately not human decisions. Just as AI can identify what a joke is, analyze it and describe it. If you wanted to write a joke and the output to be actual humor, it requires a human in the loop. Singh draws a similar line in a human resources setting.

Navneet Singh: Where it should not be used is fully autonomous decisions. It should surface signals. Humans should make the judgment. Performance management, terminations, leadership assessments in terms of cultural nuances. So just simple principle is that AI executes on volume. It should surface signal. Humans own the decisions that carry any consequence.

Jason Lopez: That line matters because the scale he’s talking about is enormous. He points to Amazon. I

Navneet Singh: Was listening to Amazon, right? It was saying that last holiday season had to hire 250,000 people. It’s just a mind-boggling number.

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Jason Lopez: And he says that’s exactly the kind of high volume hiring where AI is a