Artificial Intelligence (AI) can cut through bias and create “true democracy” for insurers sifting through candidates when hiring new team members, attendees at a Dive In festival event hosted by AIG, Marsh & DXC Technology heard.

The diversity and inclusion festival’s “The AI Influence: How will technology shape the future ally?” virtual session featured Marsh Chief Client Officer in Pacific Alex Lumby, DXC Technology Senior Managing Partner for Analytics and Engineering Kevin Jury and Predictive Hire CEO Barbara Hyman.

Humans have embedded bias which is often unchecked and gets “amplified into solutions,” Mr Jury said. “Human bias often creeps in, it is not by design, it is just naturally the way we are,” he said.

Ms Hyman says resumes are “not an objective dataset” and more is needed to really help understand job candidates in order to inform hiring decisions.

Humans can never compete with AI’s speed and discovery of patterns in data, and organisations will be “left behind if you don’t start to really embrace and lean in to the power of that AI”.

“Think of it as a co-pilot but then ultimately the decision rests with you,” she said. “Use AI to interrupt bias, to create true meritocracies and really democratised opportunities because humans we know are biased, and we can’t remove those bias is because most are unconscious.”

She says it is critical every organisation uses technology to access the best qualified candidates in a way that is “really fair,” using algorithms and bringing the “power of data processing” to help make better and more objective decisions.

“We are not very good at understanding why we make the decisions we make which is where bias comes into it. We rely a lot on our gut,” Ms Hyman told the audience.

“What you’re doing as an organisation when you are bringing in AI is making yourself smarter at a level and at a scale that humans will never achieve.”

Creating a culture of trust comes from how decisions are made, Ms Hyman says, particuarly who gets promoted internally.

“All of your decisions around hiring and promotion – that is your culture,” Ms Hyman says. “If you can bring objective intelligence and parity so that everyone is assessed against the same rubric and in the same blind way, you are going to create a culture where people trust the decisions that you were making.”