ChinaEducation2020–2023iTutorGroup
Automated tutor applicant screening
iTutorGroup's application software rejected older tutors by birth date and ended in a $365,000 EEOC settlement
Problem
iTutorGroup, an online English tutoring business serving students in China, hired large numbers of US-based tutors to teach remotely. Applicants applied through online application software that asked for their date of birth.
Approach
According to the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the company set its tutor application software to reject women aged 55 or older and men aged 60 or older automatically, based on the birth date in the application. The EEOC said more than 200 qualified US applicants were turned away in this way in 2020 and sued in 2022 under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. In August 2023 the company agreed to a consent decree, announced by the EEOC in September, that pays $365,000 to the rejected applicants and bars it from asking for birth dates. iTutorGroup had by then stopped hiring US tutors.
Results
Takeaway
A simple age cut-off entered in software, without a learned model, led to what was treated as the EEOC's first AI hiring-bias settlement. Applying that discriminatory rule to every applicant caused more than 200 rejections and a federal case.
Categories
- Industry
- Education
- Business function
- Human resources
- Innovation type
- Process innovation
- AI technology
- Robotics and automation
- Adoption
- Built in-house
- Evidence
- Regulator, audit or court
Sources
Source summaries
The EEOC announced a settlement with iTutorGroup and two affiliates, including Shanghai Ping An Intelligent Education Technology, which provide English tutoring to students in China. The EEOC alleged that the application software automatically rejected women 55 and over and men 60 and over, turning away more than 200 qualified US applicants. The settlement required a $365,000 payment, training, a new anti-discrimination policy, a ban on requesting birth dates and at least five years of monitoring.
Duane Morris described the consent decree filed on 9 August 2023 as the EEOC's first settlement involving AI software bias. The charging party, a woman over 55, was rejected immediately after entering her birth date. The $365,000 goes to applicants rejected in March and April 2020, split between compensatory damages and back pay.
Full details are in the original sources.
