• Swindon & Wiltshire Experts
• Thursday April 23 2026
• Author Name: Peter Jones

You can’t spell bias without “AI” – The HR Dept

Employers need to watch out for bias when using AI in the recruitment process, warns Peter Jones of the HR Dept Swindon, North Wiltshire and East Cotswolds.

There may be “no ‘I’ in team” but there is certainly “AI” in bias. And also, unfortunately, bias in much of AI.

AI is increasingly being used within business to speed up processes and cut costs. It comes with a number of downsides too, one of which is bias.

It turns out that these large language models, one of the main technologies behind AI as we know it, are trained on a vast amount of historical data. Unfortunately, it is data that has all kinds of human bias baked into it.

A classic example could be in CV sorting where the data an AI was trained on showed a preference for male candidates over female.

Now it applies this same bias automatically.

Not only would this expose you to legal risk under the Equality Act, but it could also mean you miss out on the best candidates due to the bias.

Worse, because two of AIs superpowers are its speed and scale, it can significantly amplify these biases if left unchecked.

And worse still, because it is software, biases may be less visible than if it were a human showing bias traits.

What is an SME to do? You don’t want to get left behind as technology develops. You may not have much control over how an AI is trained if it is off the shelf from Silicon Valley, so the bias may be there.

The quality of the prompts you put into it are within your control though, so taking time to get these right will help. This can be reinforced by making sure a human is checking the AI outputs at the other end too.

An experienced eye should be able to pick up on biases and intervene at key moments. Longer term review mechanisms will be an additional help, as your use of AI technology evolves over time.

Written policies are a powerful tool in managing most things HR. So formalising all of the above in an AI framework for your business will further stand you in good stead.

Peter Jones is managing director of the HR Dept Swindon, North Wiltshire and East Cotswolds