AI platform accused of sabotaging job seekers in class action lawsuit in San Diego

A recent class action lawsuit alleges that an Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform called Eightfold is sabotaging job seekers by collecting and sharing personal data from the internet without their consent. Two plaintiffs, Erin Kistler and Sruti Bhaumik, have come forward with their experiences of being filtered out by AI tools before a human ever saw their resumes. This resulted in a low success rate of only 0.3% of applications progressing to a follow-up for Kistler.

Jenny Yang J.D., who represents both plaintiffs, highlighted the detrimental impact of AI filtering on highly qualified job applicants like Kistler. The lawsuit accuses Eightfold of collecting personal data such as social media profiles, location, internet activity, and device information to create profiles about applicants with information they never included in their job applications. This data is then used by the platform to rank an applicant’s likelihood of success from 0-5 and sell that information to employers.

The lawsuit claims that Eightfold’s practices violate privacy and consumer protection rights under state and federal law. Despite the platform’s claims that it only operates on data submitted by candidates or provided by customers, the lawsuit argues that the use of personal data without consent leads to opaque decision-making that regulations like the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and ICRAA were enacted to prevent.

In response to the lawsuit, Eightfold defended its technology, stating that it does not scrape personal web history or social media to build secret dossiers. The company emphasized that its platform operates on data submitted by candidates or provided by customers under contract. Candidates have the ability to view and correct the data gathered by Eightfold, ensuring transparency and accuracy in their profiles.

The plaintiffs’ counsel, Towards Justice and Outten & Golden, countered Eightfold’s statement by referencing the platform’s marketing materials, which boast about using a large pool of talent data to score and rank applicants. The lawsuit highlights the need for responsible AI practices and transparency in data sourcing to avoid black-box decision-making that harms job seekers.

This lawsuit against Eightfold follows a similar class action suit against another AI hiring platform called “workday,” which is still in court. These legal actions underscore the growing concerns around the use of AI in recruitment processes and the need for regulatory scrutiny to protect job seekers from potentially biased or unfair practices.