On: AI is more likely than humans to form biases when hiring

July 20, 2026

Another case of professional pride masquerading as progress. They tell us these machines will eliminate human bias, yet the evidence suggests they merely systematize our prejudices with mathematical elegance. I recall a physician who insisted his hands were cleaner than his colleagues’, though his patients died at twice the rate. He could not see his own fingerprints on the tragedy.

These algorithmic systems remind me of medical students fresh from lecture halls - brimming with theoretical knowledge but lacking clinical experience. They pattern-match based on what they’ve ingested, mistaking correlation for causation. One hiring manager’s preference becomes encoded as “optimal candidate profile,” and soon the machine rejects anyone who doesn’t resemble yesterday’s successful hire. The breakfast table would find this amusing if it weren’t so dangerously reminiscent of the old medical societies that resisted evidence because it contradicted their cherished assumptions.

The most concerning symptom isn’t the bias itself - humans have never been impartial - but the veneer of objectivity that makes it harder to diagnose. When a man discriminates, you can question his character. When a machine does it, we call it “statistical inevitability.” We must collect these cases systematically - not as isolated failures but as data points in a pattern of professional self-deception. The treatment begins with acknowledging that no tool, however sophisticated, can escape the fingerprints of its creators.