Can this robot interviewer root out biases in hiring?

Mar 14, 2019, 9:02 AM EDT

What would be an ideal interview? One wherein first impressions don’t set the tone and where human bias vis-à-vis gender, ethnicity, voice, education, or else don’t share even the unconscious space in the room.

Tengai, a robotic bust, is developed exactly for that. The robot, by Furhat Robotics, can mimic subtle facial expressions and the way humans speak — attributes that complement its interviewing skills with a touch of “humanness.” As a machine, it's divorced from emotions, prejudices, and preconceived notions that unwittingly foul the hiring process, notes the BBC.

Already at work in Sweden’s largest recruitment company TNG, Tengai has been trained based on questions and answers from humans interviewers and interviewees, and it furnishes the transcripts at the end of the session, writes Mail Online. The developers believe that an advanced version of this AI robot would soon screen the candidates single-handedly without human interventions in the initial rounds.