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Hjem New Horizon Europe project funded, led by NTNU

New Horizon Europe project funded, led by NTNU

NTNU and 8 partners have been awarded the project “BIAS: Mitigating Diversity Biases in the Labor Market,” a large €4.7M, Horizon Europe grant coordinated by Dr. Roger A. Søraa at the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture at the Humanities Faculty. NTNU’s Departments of Computer Science and Social Anthropology are also part of the project.

Project Leader Dr. Roger A. Søraa & team at NTNU are partners and leads in several EU and RCN funded projects. Photo from a recent workshop from the EU-project “Robotics4EU,” with NTNU team members at the left & bottom row.
Written by Else Britt ErvikPublished:

NTNU and 8 partners have been awarded the project “BIAS: Mitigating Diversity Biases in the Labor Market,” a large €4.7M, Horizon Europe grant coordinated by Dr. Roger A. Søraa at the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture at the Humanities Faculty. NTNU’s Departments of Computer Science and Social Anthropology are also part of the project.

The 9 project partners: Norway – NTNU, Switzerland – BFH, Iceland – HI, Portugal – LOBA, Ireland – CHX, Italy – SVEN, Netherlands – LEID, Estonia – DIGI, Turkey – FARPL.

The project will investigate the use of Artificial Intelligence in the labor market, and how biases in hiring and promoting processes based on personal characteristics are potentially reproduced with AI-based systems.In an employment context, this can for example involve analyzing text created by an employee or recruitment candidate in order to assist management in deciding to invite a candidate for an interview, to training and employee engagement, or to monitor for infractions that could lead to disciplinary proceedings. It is therefore necessary to identify and mitigate biases that occur in applications used in a Human Resources Management (HRM) context.

The project will (1) investigate this from a technical perspective by identifying how current AI systems are biased and propose solutions to make them less biased, and (2) from a social scientific side with extensive ethnographic fieldwork concerning the lived experiences of employees, Human Resource managers, and technology developers. The project will then (3) provide substantial training for HR managers and technology developers regarding the responsible development and implementation of AI.

In order to investigate and mitigate these biases, this interdisciplinary project explore how we can mitigate diversity biases of AI in the labor market. The project consists of a consortium across Europe, including Leiden University, Bern University of Applied Sciences, University of Iceland, Smart Venice, LOBA, Crowd Helix, Digiotouch, and Farplas.

“Developing the proposal has been a team effort, with great discussions and hard work with all the partners, supported by EU-advisors at NTNU. We are looking forward to starting the project to further understand how AI impacts working life.”

Roger A. Søraa, PI of BIAS

The project is funded by Horizon Europe’s Pillar II (Global Challenges & European Industrial Competitiveness), Cluster 4 (Digital, Industry & Space) and will run from 2022–2026.

Contact PI Dr. Søraa for more information.