Hogan Lovells 2024-2025 AI Trends Guide - Flipbook - Page 21
AI in the workplace: balancing the
risks and benefits
Using AI to assist with employment-related functions, including
recruitment and talent management, has clear business benefits:
AI can automate repetitive tasks, allowing employees to focus
on more strategic work. It can also analyze vast amounts of data
quickly and, if properly implemented, help mitigate the risk of
human error and biases. The recent growth in employers’ use of AI
shows that organizations are embracing those advantages.
However, employers need to carefully balance the benefits of using
AI against the potential legal and reputational risks. AI can lead
to ineffective or discriminatory decisions, such as by favoring or
disfavoring job candidates on the basis of race, gender, age, or
other protected characteristics, or by disadvantaging applicants or
employees with disabilities. For example, an AI-assisted interview
tool that uses verbal data to make hiring recommendations may
disadvantage candidates with a disability impacting their speech.
Or an AI recruitment tool may be trained on biased data that tends to
favor younger rather than older candidates.
Employers that use AI tools for employment purposes may face
claims of discrimination under longstanding antidiscrimination
laws, however, regulators and policymakers are increasingly focused
on updating the legal framework. In the U.S., some states and
localities have passed or proposed laws that impose restrictions
on the use of AI in the workplace, such as requiring employers to
conduct bias audits or to provide advance notice and obtain consent
before deploying an AI tool. Employers that use AI systems in the
workplace should develop a compliance strategy that balances the
risks and benefits of AI and that prioritizes transparency, fairness,
and data security.
Additional
resources
Spotlight
Spotlight
Digital Trust Whitepaper |
Digitizing Employment
Employment Horizons 2024
Authors
George Ingham
Partner
Northern Virginia
Saydee Schnider
Associate
Northern Virginia
