(Newswire.net — February 1, 2020) — Sweden is currently testing the world’s first robot designed to make unbiased job interviews, BBC reports.
Her name is Tengai. She is 41 centimeters tall and weighs three and a half pounds. Job applicants will find her on the table, exactly at the eye level of those she needs to interview.
Tengai’s bright and yellow face tilts slightly to the side. She blinks and smiles as she asks her first question, “Have you ever been interviewed by a robot?”
Tengai is the product of Furhet Robotics, an artificial intelligence and robotics company created during a research project at Stockholm’s Royal Institute of Technology. The firm has been working on a humanoid computer for four years that can mimic the way we speak, as well as our subtle facial expressions. They applied an innovative idea to project face mimicking rather than lots of facial expressions powered by motorized “muscles” which actually turns out to be cheaper and more accurate.
Startup Chief Scientist Gabriel Skantze claims that Tengai does not seem so scary or outlandish when compared to a more traditional robot.
“It’s learning from several different recruiters so it doesn’t pick up the specific behavior of one recruiter,” explains Skantze.
The goal is to allow candidates to talk about the job with someone who is not biased and does not have the subconscious prejudice that people bring into the hiring process, researchers said claiming that the process itself still “seems human”.
“It usually takes seven seconds for someone to make the first impression and about five to fifteen minutes for the recruiter to make a decision. We want to challenge that process, “explains Elin Öberg Mårtenzon, Chief Innovation Officer at TNG’s Stockholm office.
Subconscious biases are assumptions about one’s ability based on gender, ethnicity, voice, education, appearance, or the result of informal conversations before and after the job interview itself.
Developers of the interview robot say that Tengai does not engage in pre-interview chat and asks all the questions in the same way, in the same tone and usually in the same order. This is thought to lead to a fairer and more objective recruitment process.
Recruiters then receive a transcript of each interview and decide who goes forward based on the answers given. After months of rehearsals, Tengai will begin to really interview candidates, researchers said.
A recent survey by TNG found that 73 percent of job seekers in Sweden felt they had been discriminated against when applying for a job. Researchers are confident that in the near future Tengai will become fully operational and start practicing complete unbiased and accurate job interviews.