R.Remember when many academics confidently predicted that technology, from robots to AI, was about to destroy all our jobs? They were wrong. We entered Covid with record employment before the pandemic, not robots, took out a large part of the workforce.
In fact, technology has done almost worse: given academics a whole new job producing studies that show how easily technology affects us even in major trials, from hiring to trial. Two arrived on my desk last week highlighting the danger.
He first role it reverses the trend of job applicants being vetted by algorithms. The researchers assigned some applicants “algorithmic writing assistance” with their CVs or cover letters to see if it influenced employers’ decisions. But obviously those of us who do a lot of recruiting would never be affected by such small changes… would they? I’m afraid so. Job seekers who had technical help were 8% more likely to be hired. Sigh.
But it gets worse. We all use Wikipedia, but its collaborative nature means you wouldn’t rely on it for important professional work. Or at least we would not like people to know that this is what we have done. But pesky academics have brought the judges to order, showing that messing with Wikipedia can materially affect legal proceedings. His investigation found that not only were high court judges more likely to cite Irish supreme court decisions with Wikipedia pages as precedent for their judgments, but Wikipedia text even influenced the language used in those judgments. Poor judges, caught red-handed.