Companies must balance the benefits and risks of using artificial intelligence tools to aid recruiting, hiring or promotion decisions, McGuireWoods Houston partner Meghaan Madriz and associate Miles Indest told an audience at the New York City Bar Association’s recent AI and Machine Learning Summit. Law360 Pulse reported on the webinar in a Sept. 29, 2023, story.
Madriz and Indest participated on a panel that explained how such tools could fail to accommodate individuals with disabilities or have a negative effect on members of a protected class. Madriz, a member of the firm’s Labor & Employment Department, discussed how companies already use AI to screen job applicants and how companies should audit their AI tools, given the litigation and regulatory climate.
“Résumé scanners could be trained to look for gaps in employment, and that could be screening out, for example, women who left the workforce to take care of children because of pregnancy, or individuals with disabilities that left the workforce for medical reasons,” Madriz said. Madriz explained how the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and other agencies are focusing their attention on AI tools.
Indest spoke on federal and state discrimination laws that address AI use and require annual audits, including New York City’s AI law, which took effect in July 2023. “New York City is probably one of the first of its kind that really focused on the hiring and promotion decisions being made using AI tools,” Indest said.
Indest also discussed issues involving AI in litigation, including a lawyers’ ethical duty of tech competence, AI certification requirements for certain courts and the emerging “deepfake defense.”
McGuireWoods partners Janet Peyton and Clare Lewis will present a complimentary webinar, “Protecting Your Data and Your Company” the second in its generative AI and the law series, on Oct. 19, 2023, from 11 a.m.-12 p.m. (ET). Materials from the first installment, “Generative AI and the Law – Introduction and IP Ownership” by partners Justin Lowery, Lucy Wheatley and Amanda DeFord, are also available.