Reejig announces the world’s first independently audited Ethical Talent AI

The new benchmark in trust and ethics for AI-driven technologies

Reejig, an award-winning workforce intelligence platform, today announced their successful completion of the world’s first and only independent assessment and validation of Ethical AI in partnership with the University of Technology Sydney (UTS).

This process is the first time that algorithms within an AI-driven intelligence platform have been independently assessed against key ethical criteria of transparency, privacy, bias, and accountability.

“The benefits that data and AI are bringing to the professional workforce are phenomenal, but AI is not immune to bias in the data or in the algorithms. Previously, the decision making has been hidden in a black box, meaning until now, there has been no clear, defensible, independent, and objective validation demonstrating ethical AI.”

Siobhan Savage, CEO & Co-Founder, Reejig

“Frameworks provide guidance however we believe that’s like marking your own homework. Boards, organizations, and decision-makers are exposed to a real risk that they may unwittingly be causing harm or bias. Given what’s at stake, we were astounded that there was no independent assurance that the AI an organization adopts is ethical and unbiased,” Savage said.

Reejig partnered with Executive Director Data Science UTS, Distinguished Professor Fang Chen to deliver the ‘non-biased talent shortlisting algorithm validation’ project – a pioneering independent validation of Ethical AI.

The research team led by Professor Chen has taken two years to develop, test, and iterate the ground-breaking assessment process, before being passed on to industry partners to confirm that the AI outputs are fit for purpose and deliver actionable results.

“When you are talking about AI and workforce or HR data you are dealing with sensitive information about real people, so building trust into that process is critical. Combined, these two have the power to transform the way we think, engage and work. AI for good needs to be the standard. But there has been no way to properly assess that until this project.”

Professor Fang Chen, Executive Director, Data Science, UTS

Companies, organizations, and governments around the world face an incredible challenge to rebuild their workforce at scale, and with the confidence that the technology they use to make important decisions is fair, accurate, and equitable.

“We absolutely need to minimize the risk of AI to humanity, otherwise the public will lose trust in AI and its capability to do good. Whilst globally, there are over 200 AI ethics frameworks and guidelines, few have been operationalized and this is a milestone in bringing independently audited certification to an innovative AI product.”

Mark Caine, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Lead, World Economic Forum

Caine added, “A key barrier to the adoption of AI, and thus its potential to do good, has been lifted. This is significant for organizations who want to do the right thing and minimize risk to their customers, their stakeholders, and their reputation.”

Reejig uses big data and verified Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help organizations understand and analyze the skills and capabilities across their talent ecosystem. It connects existing HR systems, cleanses and aggregates talent data, and unifies data from across the entire enterprise. This coupled with market, industry, and competitor intelligence and skills mapping is helping companies design their workforce of the future.

A key part of the Reejig workforce intelligence platform is the automated matching of potential candidates or employees to opportunities in a way that removes negative unconscious bias from the process.

Reejig also has explainable AI ensuring that the HR users can explain why talent has been recommended to ensure they comply with Equal Opportunities and employment law.

About Reejig

Reejig is a workforce intelligence platform that helps large organizations find, manage, up-skill, reskill talent and fulfill their diversity goals. Reejig uses deep learning artificial intelligence and the world’s first independently audited Ethical Talent AI to enable enterprises and governments to shape their workforce of the future.

About The University of Technology Sydney (UTS)

Engineering and IT is the largest of the nine faculties at The University of Technology Sydney (UTS). UTS is located in central Sydney and is one of Australia’s leading universities of technology. It is known for fusing innovation, creativity, and technology in its teaching and research and for being an industry-focused university. UTS has a total enrolment of over 40,000 students and is rated the No.1 ‘young’ university in Australia in both the QS and Times Higher Education rankings. For more information go to uts.edu.au.

Notes to editors:

UTS reviewed more than 175 frameworks and guidelines from around the world and refined these into four categories of Ethical principles: transparency, accountability, fairness, and security and privacy. UTS validated Reejig’s algorithms and processes against these to provide an assessment of and guidance for ethical practice, before passing onto industry partners KPMG and others for independent testing of the outcomes.

Reejig gifted the audit framework back to UTS so that they could use it to do further good in the building of Ethical Talent AI.