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Nowadays, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is everywhere; Siri on your iPhone, Alexa in your living room, and chatbots on many different websites. But in the field of recruitment, there is also a lot available (Nos.nl, 2018). This is because attracting new talents remains a challenge for many different companies. In addition, a recruitment process can involve relatively high costs, especially if it appears later on that the company did not recruit the right person for the right position. Therefore, there are currently many software applications and platforms enriched with smart, self-learning AI algorithms to help recruiters to perform these tasks effortlessly, to make decisions or to recognize patterns.

An example of such a platform is Equalture. Equalture is an innovative data-driven blind screening and matching platform. Basically, Equalture is the mediator between companies that are looking for new people to hire and people who are looking for a job. The start-up has developed an algorithm to automate the candidate screening and matching stage and additionally combines this automation with blind hiring, by which they provide the option for both sides of the platform to find their optimal match, a new job or a new employee (Equalture, 2018). Equalture wants to connect skilful professionals to companies, making sure everyone gets an equal chance by implementing the blind hiring principle, meaning that all job applicants will be judged purely on their ability and personal fit. Unfortunately, without implementing this principle, companies still fail in guaranteeing this fairness.

This all sounds promising; however, the question remains: where to draw the line? Currently, AI is used to make life easier for the recruiter, by speeding up the process and making better matches based on available data. Nevertheless, will there be a moment in the future that robots will take over the entire process and recruiters become redundant? And as a result, AI is preferred to human intelligence?

References

Equalture.com, (2018). Equalture Official Website. [online] Available at: https://equalture.com/en [Accessed 2 Okt. 2018]

Nos.com, (2018). A Bright New World: de impact van Artificial Intelligence. [online] Available at: https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2252501-a-bright-new-world-de-impact-van-artificial-intelligence.html  [Accessed 2 Okt. 2018]

 

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Nowadays, all your daily activities on your phone like checking the weather or checking if you payed your rent get repetitive sometimes. Eventually that just makes people bored, while those applications were invented to take that kind of work out of your hands. This is where “If This, Then That” (IFTTT) comes in: an application where users can link certain actions to other smart devices to automate all sorts of things to make life a lot easier.

Around eight years ago, IFTTT started with a website and three years later they released a mobile application (Ifttt.com, 2018). In recent years, this has changed a lot. Currently you can connect all your “services” so that tasks are automatically completed (Ovadia, 2018). There are many different ways you can connect all your services and the resulting combinations are called “Applets”. For example:

• If you add a new task to Alexa, the task will also be put in Reminders on iOS
• When it begins to rain, your Philips HUE lighting system colours to blue.

One week ago (11-09-2018), Sonos announced that its devices and services are now available on the IFTTT application (Nu.nl, 2018). With support from IFTTT, users can link their Sonos speakers to other smart services. Besides, smartphone functions such as location data also can be used: your Sonos speaker can start playing automatically when you return home, or a playlist can start when you switch your Philips HUE lights to a special position (Ifttt.com, 2018).

Obviously, this app is one of the most helpful Internet of Things applications nowadays and it makes your life a lot easier through its features and there is no doubt that other services would also like to incorporate IFTTT Applets into their own apps. Therefore, using this app could really help to make the first steps toward a completely automated future.

Now that you know about this, what do you think the impact of automation will be on our future society?

 

References

Ifttt.com. IFTTT Sonos. Retrieved from: https://ifttt.com/sonos

Ifttt.com. IFTTT Blog. Retrieved from: https://ifttt.com/blog#show-all&1

Nu.nl (2018, September 11). Sonos krijgt itegratie automatiserings app IFTTT. Retrieved from:

www.nu.nl/tech/5457587/sonos-krijgt-integratie-automatiserings-app-ifttt.html

Ovadia, S (2014, November 10). Automate the Internet with “If This Then That” (IFTTT).