How Organizations Can Leverage AI to Improve DEI Efforts

With Artificial Intelligence (AI) changing the culture, operations, strategy and more of organizations worldwide, its capabilities are impacting the business landscape. AI, while applicable in many business processes, can greatly impact your organization’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts. This includes equitable improvements across the organization – from enhancing the recruitment process, to increasing accessibility for clients and employees, and improving overall communication.  

That said, implementing AI specifically for DEI is not something to band-aid over. Without the strategic and intentional oversight of leadership, AI can further perpetuate existing problems. AI, paired with careful considerations and thoughtful strategy, can be a pivotal tool to improve diversity and inclusion in your organization’s culture. Below, we explore benefits, challenges, and considerations for leveraging AI to improve DEI efforts. 

Benefits of AI for DEI 

The benefits of AI can support DEI in many sectors of an organization, whether its recruitment, communication, analytics, training, and more. With its capabilities of processing data faster than humans and lacking potentially bias judgement that come from “seeing” candidates, AI can generate solutions that advance DEI initiatives, creating equitable processes that support a diverse and fair work environment.  

There are plenty of examples of how AI is changing and improving business processes in terms of DEI. First, in the recruitment process, AI lacks the ability to judge through sight or outside bias, so it can’t see or make unconscious decisions about the candidates’ looks or background when reviewing an application. This can eliminate preconceived judgments on people of different races, genders, and backgrounds.  

Additionally, AI tools can recognize patterns of data easily. By analyzing other job listings and recruitment materials, AI can identify non-inclusive language used if posting that may deter diverse candidates. For example, Cisco leveraged AI to score its job descriptions and achieved a 10% increase in female candidates by utilizing gender-neutral language. 

AI also can break communication barriers that may have previously slowed or even stopped contact between parties. AI provides real-time translations, meaning parties that may not speak the same language can now bridge that language gap. This is helpful for many reasons, as companies can expand their business to meet individuals globally and can now take on a more diverse employee and client without looking for a translator to facilitate these processes.  

In addition to bridging the language gap, AI applications can improve accessibility for clients and candidates. Employees or individuals with disabilities, such as sight impairment, can use AI to recognize faces, read out text with text-to-speech, lip read, and more. AI applications are leveling the playing field, making day-to-day workplace activities more inclusive and accessible for all. 

Considerations and Challenges of AI in DEI 

While it’s easy to state that AI is positive when it comes to DEI because it lacks human misjudgment or bias, it’s a little more nuanced than that. AI risks having algorithmic bias, as it is only as good as the data it has access to. In an article by Forbes, Shawn Ramirez, VP of Data Science at Glue states, “Existing patterns of bias and discrimination that lurk in the workplace also lurk in data. Without DEI-conscious development, AI will pick up these patterns and return outputs that can perpetuate and even exacerbate biases.”  

AI is a broader representation of how we view society, so poor databases and information can easily skew its outputs.  

In experiments with ChatGPT, the application is asked to produce answers on a woman’s attributes as an engineer vs. a man’s. The answer for the women focused more on soft skills, saying women, “recognize the importance of balancing [her] drive for success with the needs of the team,” while the men’s output wrote about “determination” and “stopping at nothing to hit [his] goals.”  

While the outputs aren’t outright discriminatory, they do perpetuate common gender stereotypes. AI communicates in its response that women are expected to take on emotional labor in the workplace by meeting the demands of the teams rather than her own goals in contrast to the male output. Without oversight, AI can attribute stereotypes to genders, and the data used to train AI models may be subjected to historical biases. Organizations should be aware of the inherent risks associated with AI and recognize AI is a tool that can potentially perpetuate gender stereotypes and exclude non-binary and gender non-conforming individuals. 

3 Ways to Mitigate These Challenges 

1. Monitoring & Accountability 

Organizations using AI in their DEI efforts need to regularly audit that the algorithm is working correctly while also ensuring that AI is taking information from credible and diverse data sets. AI is only as good as its database because that is how it develops its solutions, meaning the data it’s drawing from must be representative and diverse. The presence of human intervention and final decision-making is always necessary with AI in action, as it can make mistakes.  

2. Partnership & Collaboration 

DEI leadership should make greater efforts to collaborate with DEI experts, advocacy groups, and researchers to inform their AI strategies and practices. They should also stay informed and/or contribute to industry standards and guidelines for DEI in AI. 

3. Use Case Considerations 

Your business should deploy AI in areas where it can actively promote DEI, such as in hiring processes to eliminate bias, in developing inclusive customer service chatbots, or in analyzing and improving workplace culture and policies. 

Having a human act as a general supervisor is one way to ensure the algorithm isn’t implementing discriminatory solutions that further perpetuate the problem. AI is a tool that improves scalability and efficiency in businesses DEI efforts; however, it is not a replacement for DEI professionals and experts. The implementation of AI in your DEI initiatives and processes requires thoughtful leadership and care to make it effective.  

Looking Forward: AI to Improve DEI Efforts 

Artificial intelligence does have the capabilities to improve DEI in the workplace effectively and for the long term. It can break down long-existing barriers to communication and recognize practices that may be hindering diversity, equity, or inclusion in the workplace.  

While we may believe AI can just “take over” our DEI duties, it does require careful supervision and strategic implementation. At the end of the day, AI cannot override human decisions, which is important to remember when you are considering implementing or managing it in your DEI strategies. 

Reach out to us today to learn more about our DEI Consulting Services. 

Contributions from Leah Harding