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What many applicants may not realize is that, nowadays, the first hurdle in applying for a job is dealing with AI. Candidates now often must clear an artificial intelligence system that screens their résumés that quietly determines who advances, and whose application is filed away in a drawer or spam folder, never to see the light of day. Now, a new lawsuit filed on Tuesday is the first in the U.S. to accuse an AI hiring company of violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Eightfold AI, a venture capital-backed artificial intelligence hiring platform, is being sued by two workers in California for allegedly compiling reports used to screen job applicants without their knowledge, consent, or any opportunity to correct errors. Ive applied to hundreds of jobs, but it feels like an unseen force is stopping me from being fairly considered, said Erin Kistler, one of the plaintiffs, in a press release. Both plaintiffs applied to roles at several companies that use Eightfold AI, including PayPal and Microsoft, according to the complaint. Out of the thousands of jobs she has sought in the past year, only 0.3% of her applications have progressed to a follow-up or interview, Kistler told the New York Times. Its disheartening, and I know Im not alone in feeling this way. Eightfold AIs algorithm trawls career sites, job boards, and résumé databases to create a data set of 1 million job titles, 1 million skills, and the profiles of more than 1 billion people working in every job, profession, industry, and geography, according to their websitemuch of it inaccurate, incomplete, or drawn from unknown third-party sources, the complaint alleges. Using an AI model trained on that data, plaintiffs say, Eightfold AI scores job applications on a scale of one to five, based on their skills, experience, and the hiring managers goals. These AI-generated evaluations function as consumer reports under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and California law, the lawsuit alleges. Unlike credit reports (a type of consumer report which the FCRA regulates to ensure accuracy and fairness), applicants are given no feedback on their scores or how the rating was generated, rarely aware that an algorithm evaluated them at all. If the tool is making mistakes, candidates have no ability to correct them. This creates a black box situation where we can see what goes into an AI system, and what comes out. But the reasoning in between remains hidden or incomprehensible to humans or the employers relying on the scoring when considering potential hires. This opacity is troubling at a time when more companies are relying on AI for hiring and candidate screening. A spokesperson for Eightfold AI told Fast Company that this characterization about our products is factually incorrect. Eightfold offers technology that enterprises use to manage their talent processes and engage with candidates. Eightfold does not lurk or scrape personal web history, social media or the like to build secret dossiers. Eightfolds platform operates on data that is submitted by candidates to our customers or provided by our customers. They continued: We use information such as skills, experience and education that applicants choose to submit to our customers and data authorized by our customers under contract. They also pointed to their blueprint to learn more about their specific data practices. The plaintiffs, meanwhile, are not demanding the elimination of AI from hiring. Instead, they are asking for AI companies to be held to the same standards as others. Just because this company is using some fancy-sounding AI technology and is backed by venture capital doesnt put it above the law, David Seligman, Executive Director of Towards Justice, said in the press release. This isnt the wild west. Still, as AI becomes more pervasive in hiring, legal conflicts like this may just become more and more common.
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E-Commerce
The Farmers’ Almanac isn’t going out of business after all, but it is leaving Maine for the bright lights of New York City and a new owner. Beloved by farmers and gardeners, the almanac was first printed in 1818 and like the arguably more famous Old Farmers Almanac relies on a secret formula of sunspots, planetary positions, and lunar cycles to generate long-range weather forecasts. It’s been acquired by Unofficial Networks, a digital publisher focused on skiing and outdoor recreation. That means the almanac will keep operating despite announcing in November that its 208-year run was coming to an end. A new Farmers Almanac website will be a living, breathing publication with fresh, daily content and there are plans to bring back a print edition, said Tim Konrad, founder and publisher of New York-based Unofficial Networks. I saw the announcement that one of Americas most enduring publications was set to close, Konrad said, and it felt wrong to stand by while an irreplaceable piece of our national heritage disappeared. The deal will prioritize preserving and sustaining the iconic publication, according to a statement from Unofficial Networks and Peter Geiger, the almanac’s longtime publisher. The Farmers Almanac was founded in New Jersey before moving its headquarters to Lewiston, Maine, in 1955. The Old Farmers Almanac is based in New Hampshire. Over the years, scientists have sometimes chafed at the publications’ predictions. Studies of their accuracy have found them to be a little more than 50% accurate. That is about on par with random chance. But Geiger, whose family had the Farmers’ Almanac for more than 90 years, said they’re going out a winner by having predicted a cold and snowy 2026. For more than 200 years, the values and wisdom of the Farmers Almanac have been protected and nurtured by four owner-publishers,” Geiger said. “I am grateful to have found the right next custodian in Tim Konrad. I am also confident he will honor its heritage and carry it forward for generations to come. Unofficial Networks was started in 2006 by Konrad and his brother John in a California basement, according to the company’s website. Patrick Whittle, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
Financial markets are churning on Friday as investors try to figure out what President Donald Trumps new nominee to lead the Federal Reserve will mean for interest rates. The initial reactions were uneasy because of the uncertainty. U.S. stocks fell, with the S&P 500 down 0.8% in midday trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 507 points, or 1%, as of 1 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1% lower. The value of the U.S. dollar, meanwhile, climbed but only after swiveling a couple of times following Trumps nomination of Kevin Warsh. And some of the wildest action was again in precious metals markets, where the price of gold screeched lower following its stellar run over the last year. Whoever leads the Fed has a big influence on the economy and markets worldwide by helping to dictate where the U.S. central bank moves interest rates. Such decisions lift or weigh on prices for all kinds of investments, as the Fed tries to keep the U.S. job market humming without letting inflation get out of control. Trump has been pushing for lower interest rates, which usually help goose the economy but can also cause higher inflation. A fear in financial markets has been that the Fed will lose some of its independence because of Trump. That fear in turn helped catapult the price of gold and weaken the U.S. dollars value over the last year. The longtime assumption has been that the Fed can operate separately from the rest of Washington so that it can make decisions that are painful in the short term but necessary for the long term. To get inflation down to the Fed’s goal of 2%, for example, may require the unpopular choice to keep interest rates high and grind down on the economy for a while. The big question is what Warsh’s nomination, which still requires approval from the Senate, means for the Fed’s independence. Warsh used to be a governor on the Feds board, so investors are familiar with him. That could also mean Warsh is familiar with and hopes to continue the institution of the Fed as an independent operator. And while with the Fed, Warsh criticized the central bank’s buying of bonds to keep interest rates low. Some on Wall Street took Warsh’s nomination as an encouraging signal for a still-independent Fed that will keep rates high, if necessary. But Warsh has also recently been critical of the Feds current chair, Jerome Powell, and has voiced support for lower rates. Indeed, Warsh is not the Feds guy, he is Trumps guy, and has shadowed Trump on monetary policy almost every step of the way since 2009, according to Thierry Wizman, a strategist at Macquarie Group. This doesnt necessarily mean that Warsh will push the Fed into rate cuts soon, but it could indicate he may be quicker to do so when the time comes. On Wall Street, stocks of metals miners tumbled as the price of gold dropped 8.9% to $4,878.80 per ounce. Gold’s price has suddenly run out of momentum following a tremendous rally where it roughly doubled over 12 months. It topped $5,000 for the first time on Monday and got near $5,600 on Thursday. Silver, which has been on a similar, jaw-dropping tear, fell even more. It plunged 23.5%. Prices for gold and other precious metals had been surging as investors looked for safer places for their money while weighing a wide range of risks, including a potentially less independent Fed, a U.S. stock market that critics say is expensive, political instability, threats of tariffs and heavy debt loads for governments worldwide. The dramatic halt in momentum may have been inevitable given how far and how fast metal prices had surged over the last year. Nothing goes up in price forever. Friday’s drops for metals prices helped send the stock of miner Newmont down 10.9%. Freeport-McMoRan, another miner, dropped 8.4%. Apple was the heaviest weight on the S&P 500 after sinking 1.4%, even though the iPhone maker reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Helping to limit the market’s losses was Tesla, which rose 4.3%. It bounced back after dropping on Thursday despite delivering better profit reports for the latest quarter than analysts expected. In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury held at 4.24%, where it was late Thursday. It got near 4.28% in the overnight and early-morning hours before falling back. A rise in a bond’s yield indicates that its price is weakening. Yields may have felt some upward pressure from a report released Friday showing U.S. inflation at the wholesale level was hotter last month than economists expected. That could put pressure on the Fed to keep interest rates steady for a while instead of cutting them, as it did late last year. In stock markets abroad, indexes rose in much of Europe following a mixed performance in Asia. Stocks rose 1.2% in Jakarta after the CEO of Indonesias stock market, Imam Rachman, resigned Friday. Stocks had stumbled there in prior days after MSCI, an influential company in the investment industry that creates stock and other indexes, warned about market risks such as a lack of transparency. Stan Choe, AP business writer AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.
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E-Commerce
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