These article provide some background on WeCP’s approach to the New York City Local Law related to employer usage of Automated Employment Decision Tool (“AEDT”) as they relate to WeCP customers using WeCP services that make use of artificial intelligence or machine learning algorithms.
What is an Automated Employment Decision Tool (AEDT)?
The NYC Law defines an AEDT as “any computational process, derived from machine learning, statistical modeling, data analytics, or artificial intelligence that issues simplified output, including a score, classification, or recommendation, that is used to substantially assist or replace discretionary decision making for making employment decisions that impact natural persons.”
Are WeCP services AEDTs covered by the NYC Law?
Assessments and Interviews
WeCP does not view its Assessment and Interview services as AEDTs because these services are not derived using artificial intelligence, machine learning, or similar technologies (“AI”). Nor is the output generated by these services the result of an AI judgement.
Add-on AI Services:
AI Assessment Generation, AI Grading, Code Plagiarism Detection, Audio and Image Analysis
WeCP’s AI Assessment Generation, AI Grading, Code Plagiarism Detection and Image Analysis (our “AI Tools”) are add-on features / functionalities that WeCP customers can choose to enable within their use of the overall WeCP services. These AI Tools are derived from AI and issue a simplified scoring output. Whether these AI Tools are deemed AEDTs under the NYC Law likely depends on how the customer uses them, i.e., whether the customer uses WeCP’s AI Tools to substantially assist or replace discretionary decision-making.
If a WeCP customer uses the results of our Automated Tools to “substantially assist or replace” human decision-making by, for example, automatically rejecting candidates for whom plagiarism, answer quality or image anomalies are flagged, then our Automated Tools will likely be considered AEDTs. But, if the customer uses the results as one of many factors in determining a candidate's fitness, they likely won’t be considered AEDTs.
What does the NYC Law require when using AEDTs?
If a WeCP customer uses our AI Tools as AEDTs, the NYC Law requires the customer to provide New York City candidates subject to the AEDT with certain notices and the option to request an alternative selection process or accommodation.
The NYC Law also requires that our AI Tools undergo a bias audit and that the customer make that bias audit available to its candidates. Such a tool has been the subject of a bias audit conducted no more than one year prior to the use of such tool; and a summary of the results of the most recent bias audit of such tool as well as the distribution date of the tool to which such audit applies has been made publicly available on the website of the employer or employment agency prior to the use of such tool.
How is WeCP assisting customers with their NYC Law compliance obligations?
If a customer uses our AI Tools as AEDTs, WeCP is taking multiple steps to make it easier for our customers to comply with their obligations under the NYC Law.
AI Tools “Off” by default
Our Automated Tools are defaulted to “off” within the WeCP product. Automated Tools will not be enabled unless the customer turns them on. This gives the customer a choice as to whether they want to use our tools that could qualify as AEDTs.
AEDT reminder and confirmation
When a customer user turns on our Automated Tools, the user will receive a pop-up reminding the user that these automated tools use automated processing based on AI and that the customer may need to comply with applicable laws related to automated processing.
Candidate Consent
If the customer enables an Automated Tool, WeCP will secure the candidate's consent prior to the use of an Automated Tool. If the candidate does not give consent, the candidate will not be able to participate in the feature using the Automated Tool. This consent is not intended to replace the 10-day advanced notice and alternative method request that the customer must offer the candidate but is instead an added precaution (based on GDPR, not necessarily the NYC Law).
Bias Audit
Our Automated Tools have gone through an independent internal bias audit consistent with the NYC AI Law on a test data. In future audits, customers will likely need to provide us with their historical data to conduct the bias audit.