Young people who seek employment at good companies can be considered healthy. And good companies cultivate young people into highly productive employees. One indicator of a company that young people thrive is that the employees of the company they are considering working with smiles on their faces. Furthermore, if you can see the employees’ families living happily, it’s an even better company. Production and services supported by the harsh working conditions of exploitative companies are never sustainable. Unsustainable growth inevitably creates strain somewhere in the organization, leading to a short lifespan. On the other hand, long-lived companies that have lasted for 200 years have a track record of overcoming these challenges over many years.
Currently in Japan, companies are desperately seeking high-quality talent due to labor shortages. There are also young people who are unsure which company to choose. A tool has emerged to bridge this gap: AI interview systems. Since the release of the open AI “ChatGPT,” the number of companies providing AI interview systems has rapidly increased. Currently, there appear to be around 20 companies in Japan offering AI-powered interview systems. Most of these domestic AI interview systems are based on overseas-developed or proprietary AI. AI interviews, conducted via smartphones or computers, analyze candidates based on the “basic skills for working adults” advocated by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. Interactive AI interviews ask questions such as, “What did you learn from that experience?” or “How did you deal with difficult situations?” While asking questions to check the student’s personality, the system analyzes their answers and language use. It typically evaluates logical thinking, consistency, and perseverance, presenting the results in the form of numerical values or standard scores.
Every company wants to hire talented individuals. Amazon has undertaken a new experiment to have AI handle this hiring process instead of humans, utilizing its renowned cloud computing capabilities. Amazon trained its AI using past hiring resume data. The AI then determined pass/fail decisions based on this vast amount of data. The results showed that male applicants received higher evaluations. Because the majority of previous applicants were male, the AI began to give discriminatory evaluations to female applicants. It’s unclear which information the AI prioritized in its hiring process. However, if the data is biased, it can sometimes produce biased answers. There are concerns about social bias, that AI generates distorted evaluations from the internet. In fact, in the United States, there have been numerous lawsuits questioning the fairness of AI interviews. The EU has imposed strict regulations on this issue. The EU regulations aim to protect people from the harmful effects of AI and promote the use of reliable AI. In Japan, it would be desirable to create an AI interview system that eliminates such biases as much as possible.
