ments for skills, education, and experience.

“By generat-
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NEWS
ing a match score, recruiters are more likely to consider
underprivileged and underrepresented minorities to
move forward in the recruiting process,” Doman-Pipe
says. The company claims that in tests comparing its
AI-based approach to traditional recruiting methods,
users of its software saw significant improvements in
the diversity makeup of new hires.
Still, a major obstacle AI-powered recruiting tools
face before they can gain widespread trust is the lack of
public data showing how they help—or hinder—efforts
to make tech hiring more equitable.
“I do know from interviews with software companies
that they do audit, and they can go back and recalibrate
their systems,” says Yarger, the Penn State professor. But
the effectiveness of efforts to improve algorithmic equity
in recruitment remains unclear. She explains that many
companies remain reluctant to publicly share such infor-
mation because of liability issues surrounding equitable
employment and workplace discrimination. Compa-
nies using AI tools could face legal consequences if the
tools were shown to discriminate against certain groups.
For North Carolina State’s Payton, it remains to be seen
whether corporate statements about addressing diversity
and racial bias will have a broader and lasting impact in
the hiring and retention of tech workers—and whether
or not AI can help to create an equitable workforce.
“Association and confirmation biases and networks
that are built into the system—those don’t change over-
night,” she says. “So there’s much work to be done.”
—JEREM Y HSU
A version of this article appears in our Tech Talk blog.
POST YOUR COMMENTS AT spectrum.ieee.org/antiracistai-sep2020
TECH’S STAR TURN
Even technophobes rely on
consumer tech now
Remember March, when stay-at-home orders
and advisories first went into effect in many U.S.
states and other places around the world? That
month is generally not a big time for consumer electron-
ics sales; gadgets may fly off shelves during the December
holiday season, but then there’s a bit of a lull.
But things have been different during the pandemic.
Peloton, which makes an Internet-connected exercise
bike, reported first-quarter revenues up by two-thirds, as
stay-at-home orders kept people from their normal exer-
cise routines. Webcams sold out just about everywhere.
And good luck finding a pharmacy with a pulse oximeter
in stock. Some services also saw a huge boom. The video-
conferencing platform Zoom, previously a tool used mostly
by businesses, became a household word, and by April
it was clocking 300 million daily participants—up from
10 million before the pandemic. Instacart, the so-called
Uber for groceries, saw sales of US $700 million per week
in April, up 450 percent from December.
Those are just a few examples of gadgets and services
that the pandemic made more attractive to a lot of con-
sumers. But will this pandemic effect continue, and bring
a long-term boost to the consumer electronics industry?
Mojo Vision, a California startup aiming to bring
­augmented-reality contact lenses to the masses, commis-

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SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG | SEP 2020 |  11
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 TAP.
CONNECT.
NETWORK. sioned an independent survey to find out.
SHARE. (While the company won’t have a prod-
uct on the mass market for a few years
Connect to IEEE– yet, it obviously is keenly interested in
no matter where you consumer purchasing trends.) The sur-
are–with the IEEE App. vey, conducted in June, involved 2,000
people who self-identified as belonging
Stay up-to-date to five different categories of consumer.
with the latest news Forty-three percent of the respondents
Schedule, manage, classed themselves into two categories of
or join meetups so-called first adopters (innovators and
virtually early adopters). Fifty-seven percent fell
into three categories of so-called later
Get geo and
adopters (early majority, late majority,
interest-based
and laggards).
recommendations
Ninety percent of respondents to Mojo’s
Read and download survey reported their attitudes toward
your IEEE magazines technology became more positive as a
result of the pandemic. The survey also
Create a personalized
experience found that 60 percent of the first adopt-
ers and 40 percent of the later adopters
Locate IEEE members bought or tried new devices, applications,
by location, interests, or services because of the pandemic. Fifty
and affiliations percent of both groups indicated that
they are generally using technology more.
What’s more, 76 percent of the first adopt-
ers and 41 percent of the later adopters
said they are likely to continue buying and
trying new devices, apps, or tech services
after the pandemic subsides.
The biggest shift, according to Mojo’s
survey, came in the early majority group.
These consumers had generally tended
to wait for a tech product to become
popular—and for at least a second if not
third generation to arrive—before bring-
ing it into their lives. But 42 percent of
that group indicated that the pandemic
sped up their adoption of technology,
12  | SEP 2020 | SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG
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and 48 percent said they were likely or
somewhat likely to continue to buy and
try new devices and technologies sooner
rather than later.
The tech getting the biggest pandemic
boost? Virtual communication tools, fol-
lowed closely by online delivery services.
But even alternative transportation—like
electric scooters and semiautonomous
vehicles—is getting more interest from
people who indicated that this type of
technology wasn’t really on their radar
prepandemic. And augmented and vir-
tual reality—a category that will eventu-
ally include Mojo’s augmented-reality
contact lens—got a bit of a boost as well,
even though it certainly isn’t an essen-
tial tool for sheltering in place right now.
Steve Sinclair, Mojo senior vice pres-
ident of products, says, “Everyone’s
been at home for 12 to 16 weeks, forced
to order everyday food and groceries
online and work via videoconference,
so people are naturally using more tech.
The question is: Will it stick? Will they
keep that same pace when they’re not
stuck at home? The answer seems to be
yes. And if you turn a whole lot of casual
buyers into avid buyers, that’s good for
tech overall.”
Turns out there may be a little early
adopter in a lot more of us than the con-
sumer electronics industry ever dared
to imagine. —TEK LA S. PERRY
A version of this article appears in our View
From the Valley blog.
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