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Hiring managers are more prone to disability bias in certain situations, and inclusion-focused gen-AI tools might inadvertently "swing the pendulum toward preferential treatment", a researcher has found.

The study, conducted by Macquarie Business School's Miles Yang and reported in Human Resource Management Journal, sought to test how inclusion-focused GAI – generative artificial intelligence designed to incorporate diversity, fairness, and inclusion principles into its reasoning – might mitigate disability bias in hiring.

Yang was particularly interested in bias risks occurring under complex conditions, defined as those where hiring managers have to evaluate candidates "across multiple, often non-comparable attributes such as technical skills, adaptability, and interpersonal competencies". He hypothesised those experiencing higher cognitive demands would be less likely to favour candidates with a disability; and sought to test whether working with an inclusion-focused GAI assistant would reduce their disability bias.

The GAI assistant was designed as "process support" rather than the sole decision-maker. "It provided participants with structured, fairness-oriented prompts that reminded them to focus on job-relevant competencies and inclusive evaluation criteria throughout the hiring task," Yang says...