A federal lawsuit alleges Workday's AI recruiting tool discriminated against an older applicant. The judge approved a nationwide class action and ordered Workday to reveal its clients and algorithm, raising questions about who's liable when companies outsource decisions to AI.
Questions this video answers
About 100 companies.
Higher Score.
Accepted the complaint and made it admissible nationwide (class action), and ordered disclosure of Workday's clients using Higher Score and the algorithm.
Hello, my friends. Moblai vs Workday is a complaint about artificial intelligence that absolutely needs to be addressed because it is something that risks completely disrupting the use of AI and in particular, corporate responsibility. So what's going on? Let me tell you, everyone knows Workday. Workday is a portal, a tool that is used by a lot of companies, particularly in the United States. Well, when you're an employee, you're given access, and in there you can, for example, book vacation days. You can see your rtts, lots of things. In fact, it's used by human resources in general. So it has modules, and one of these modules is called Higher Score. So what does Higher Score do? It does this. Aircore allows companies to filter applications. That means when companies post a job ad, they receive CVs and other things. Higher Score is a tool that belongs to Workday and that fits into their solution as a module, as a plugin that allows them to sort. Okay, okay, now we have Mr. Moble. Mr. Moble is someone who tried to find a job. He applied to about a hundred different companies. His resume was always rejected without him speaking to a human. He sent his resume and received a negative email. So he noticed one thing. All the companies that rejected him use the Higher Score tool from Workday. So he started to think that since he was over 40, he started to wonder if there wasn't some discrimination built into the higher score and which is actually based on. I though. Because Higher Score is basically based on artificial intelligence, if you even look at the Workday website. So what did he do? He contacted Workday, who, of course, initially, when you see companies and say, are you doing something sinister like age discrimination or something, you'll always come across the first service job that will say, no, you're talking nonsense. We're a company and our values forbid us from doing that kind of thing. What he did was go to court and go before a federal judge who accepted the case. He did two things. He accepted the complaint, which means he found that the complaint had merit. Secondly, he made the complaint admissible nationally. That means that today the there are many people across the United States who can join this complaint, which becomes a class action. Worse still, the judge asked Workday to give him the list of all the companies that use highscore, so the list of its clients plus the algorithm. And so this is taking on biblical proportions. Why? Because imagine the following situation. You have companies that have been using AI for several years now to recruit. Okay? They make decisions that are illegal, but they are somehow made by a human. But a human before AI, this literally means that the decision is being outsourced to AI. So this can be done for recruitment, but it can also be done for dismissals. For example, one day you could have a redundancy plan and, and then during the redundancy plan, you could have all the people with disabilities, all the people who are of a certain age, etcetera, who are made redundant. And then you could say, we don't discriminate. It's up to you. It reminds me of a story during the Internet bubble when many companies were computerizing their processes and all that. And many times we made mind boggling decisions and they said, oh, but it wasn't us, it was the computer that said it. You found that in companies, in administrations, and the computer said it meant that, well, we can't discuss anymore. It wasn't me as a human. If the computer said it was over, there were widows and orphans because of it. So for example, when planes were automated with a lot of computers and so on the latest generation planes, there were accidents because pilots said to themselves, as long as it's the computer that decides or that it's the computer that made this decision, I'm nothing to do with it. I'm just a human. Today we risk going back to the same scenario, but with, well, it's artificial intelligence. That said, okay, with this story, justice. If this Moble lawsuit against Workday is won by Mr. Moble and the people who are with him in the class action, it risks being a disaster. Why? Because it will mean that a company that uses AI for years will hide sometimes unfair decisions behind AI, such as insurers who refuse to pay for medical care, for example, by saying, well, they decided that it shouldn't be covered. Well, what is likely to happen is that their responsibility will suddenly be put on the table retrospectively. Okay, you've been using this recruitment tool for three years. So it's true that it may have saved you. Uh, you fired Melani from human resources, you fired Caroline, all that. Well, there you go. That's good for you. Well, today, here's the bill. You have $50 million or €50 million that you have to pay in compensation to 5,000 people that you discrimin during the last three years. With your tool completely out of date. There you have it. That's kind of the risk. And in fact, as much as I is a very interesting tool, but like any powerful tool, if it's used by savages, it's clear that it can, it can generate catastrophic results. And there's no question of hiding behind that saying, well, it's not me. No, it's not me. We have no business being there. Someone has decided, no, it's yours. You're the one who put it there. You're the one who configured it. You're the one who trained it. You're the one who prompted it. So, anyway, I'll give you a simple example. Imagine you file a fraudulent tax return. You file a fraudulent tax return. There you go. Clear. You've talked nonsense about vat, about income, about everything. There you go. And then you've avoided it. Millions of tax dollars. One day, the tax authorities come to your house. What do you say? Oh, but it wasn't me. I gave my accounts to AI. It was Lee who did the tax return. Yes, but whether it was Leah who made it unaccountable or whether you did it using Excel with poorly programmed formulas, the result, the tool, we don't care. It's not the tool that we're going to punish. It's you. Because ultimately it's a tool. And it's not because you have a rotten tool or a tool that does anything that you're completely absolved of your responsibility, that you have no responsibility. Do you see what I mean? So I think this is a case that needs to be followed up in the federal courts in California. I'll give you an update when it reaches its conclusion. At some point, it could take months, if not years, but it's something that risks to completely turn the cards upside down. Thank you, my friends, for watching this video so far, and I'll see you in the next one.
