Hiring Algorithms: An Ethnography of Fairness in Practice

While increasing attention in society is given to the role of AI in affording and threatening ethical values, such as fairness, little is known about how ethical values and AI are played out in organizations. Building on an ethnographic in-depth study of a large multinational company that recently implemented AI to enable a fair recruitment process, we show that AI brings to the fore the role of fairness in decision-making in several ways. We reveal that the development and use of AI does not necessarily improve nor degrade ethical values, but instead shapes what comes to be understood as ethical in the first place. We extend the conversations on AI by showing that it may not be enough to focus on changes in work practices, occupational boundaries, and power relations, but that research should take into account the role of AI in shaping what we consider ethical