1 Verses 331 Million

Marc,

AI has been working to assess human potential for some time, and while I have not watched the movie Moneyball, I can imagine that artificial intelligence may find a level of success in industries like professional athletics where very defined skillsets are already in play, where how high they jump, how hard they hit, how fast they run, and the agility of their body movements are major determiners for future success. Those are benchmarks used by human scouts at camps held to find top talent. So, it is not surprising to see AI take a similar approach to identifiable benchmarks and for those systems to perhaps see patterns human coaches and trainers have not yet thought to consider.

But what are the definable and predictable benchmarks for those of us with mere mortal physical talent who are carving out our impact on this world in other ways? What would they be for a position like yours in Aerospace Engineering where what you know is just one piece of the talent paradigm needed to continually innovate? What would they be for a rhetorical scholar like myself where nuance is the name of the game and an ability to not just convince but move an audience — get them to feel and to believe, to empathize and to act — is an ultimate marker of success? Moving a human emotionally requires experience with those emotions that results in an awareness of how to draw them out in others, something a computer system is incapable of achieving. So, how will that system predict my potential in doing what it cannot itself do?

You mentioned AI’s presence in the employment process, something far too few applicants are aware of even now. It’s a reality I face every day as I guide my students through the process of submitting their resume to VMock, an artificial intelligence program that compares their entry against top performers in the industry and guides them through improvements meant to integrate keywords that AI will use to assess their potential to have the needed base of knowledge in that industry, to include key metrics of success in each prior position so that the AI system can use a numerical value to assess their potential to grow and perform, and to utilize active verbs so that the AI system will see a potential toward action and initiative.

The system has its strengths, but those strengths are often geared toward students who are of a traditional college age and have followed a fairly linear path in the completion of their degree and the work and internship opportunities that have enhanced that learning. It is far less effective for those retraining for a new career after they were automated out of the old one, far less effective for stay-at-home moms or dads now returning to the workforce due to the decline in the economy and mass layoffs affecting multiple industries, far less effective for those who had set aside their dreams in favor of responsibility and who have now returned to reclaim those dreams once again. What will this system do with those who made a youthful error that landed them in prison, those who have served their time and have matured and grown as human beings and stand ready to bring healing into a world they once harmed but who now have even less of a path through to that purpose than they have in the past? What will it do with those who became a parent at a young age and never truly entered the workforce, choosing instead to prioritize the raising of their children and the care of their home, whose spouse was claimed too early by COVID or cancer and who now must earn a living wage to support their family but possesses none of the benchmarks AI will search for to prove their potential?

In years past, those types of candidates had a chance. They could engage the business owner or hiring manager with their story, move them with their transformation of self and their vision for how they could help to transform that company. They could connect, human-to-human, on a common course and toward the common cause of betterment. AI now stands in the way of that meeting, a barrier that prevents them from a connection as humans because it has established benchmarks that do not accurately predict the potential of humans and certainly do not offer predictions that are equal, equitable and effective across all genders, cultures, belief systems and disability levels.

They are benchmarks based upon current markers of performance in industries that are not yet equitable, based on values that often lean white and male. According to Investopedia, we currently have our highest ever percentage of women CEOs and CFOs, but that record high reaches only to 15.1% of CFOs and a mere 6.9% of CEOs. The number of black CFOs nearly doubled between 2020 and 2021, which shows promise, but the number of black CEOs “remained stagnant.” And just 73 of the 682 total CFO positions were filled by people of color. Given those numbers, benchmarks used to gauge the potential of candidates are very likely to firmly represent the values, behaviors and characteristics of white professional males over all other groups holding a beautiful diversity of values, attitudes, mannerisms, ideas, experiences and behaviors. The system cannot equitably and accurately predict human potential if it is assessing that potential based on one subset of humans and favoring values and characteristics that will not be true of all members of even that one subset.

So, is AI being used to predict human potential? Yes. Is it doing so effectively? I would argue no. Are humans, as you said, themselves relatively poor at evaluating the ultimate potential of their fellow human beings? Notoriously so. But here’s the thing: there are only a handful of AI systems making determinations about the potential of human beings. There are more than 331 million human beings in the U.S. alone. A single human might undervalue another human’s potential. That has profound impacts. Yet, there are 331 million other humans in this country who are able to take the time to truly come to know that person and who will value them differently based on that understanding. 331 million other opportunities to correct the mislabeling and alter the course of a life. Where does that person go when the one and only AI system charged with determining their value is assessing an incomplete list of indicators and undervalues them and their potential to be and do great things? That system, by nature of it being the only one, has left that human with nowhere to go. So, the fact that one human being undervalues another has less finality than a single AI system making that determination.

I’ll place my bet on any number of those 331 million humans being willing to help correct the mislabeling, to take a risk on a human that hasn’t yet demonstrated their full potential, to cheer and coach and mentor and lift that person on to greatness. We are a pretty extraordinary group of compassionate and talented beings, each with unlimited and untold potential and with the eyes and experience to recognize the same in others.