AI for the people? Embedding AI ethics in HR and people analytics projects

Abstract

Technological advances and the “zeitgeist” led to increased use of AI in HR Analytics. Using machine learning models in this field might be beneficial but requires some unique considerations in how organizations govern, assure, audit, and support the use of AI. While substantial work has been done on AI ethics, organizational implantation studies are rare and often anecdotal, particularly in HR. In this article, we would like to better understand the common ethical considerations and organizational responses for developing AI for HR use and how different organizations engage with them by comparing two case studies.This paper begins by reviewing AI ethical issues specific to HR and describes the common mitigation strategies proposed in the literature. After this introduction, case studies are illustrated, and the organizational responses in both cases are analyzed. The discussion section shows that although the organizations were aware of the AI ethics issues, their responses varied and depended on different governance and self-regulation mechanisms that might have impinged their ability to proactively engage with ethical issues. A second finding is that the organization used only a relatively small set of mitigation strategies proposed in the literature, and we propose several reasons for this. These insights might be important to various organizations deploying or developing AI for HR use that want better governance, assurance, and audit mechanisms to responsibly address the ethical issues raised by AI in this field.