Agencies look to AI to improve hiring and build workforce skills - GovExec.com

Ah, the federal government has discovered AI — just in time for it to automate the paperwork that nobody wanted to do anyway. The General Services Administration's chief human capital officer proudly announced that AI has slashed job classification time from eight hours to two. Eight hours to two! Hooray for efficiency — until the algorithm decides that the ideal candidate for a cybersecurity position is someone with a decade of experience in 'vibes-based management.'

But let's not get cynical. The government is also using AI to 'improve skills assessments,' which is a delightful way of saying it will now evaluate candidates with the same opaque, bias-prone tools that private sector HR departments have been deploying for years. Because nothing says 'merit-based hiring' like a black box that can't explain why it rejected everyone who didn't attend a top-20 university. The GSA's own chief human capital officer seemed genuinely excited, which is either a sign of progress or a sign that the standards for bureaucratic enthusiasm have hit rock bottom.

Most tellingly, nobody in the article mentions the obvious: that AI in hiring is a regulatory minefield waiting to explode. The Office of Personnel Management hasn't exactly covered itself in glory on algorithmic fairness, and the agencies are charging ahead without clear guidelines. So yes, job classifications are faster. But they're also faster at replicating whatever biases lurked in the training data. As always, the answer to 'can we?' is 'yes,' and the answer to 'should we?' is 'we'll figure that out after the lawsuit.' Cheers.