Big data will push out human factor more and more in decision-making. An interesting quote from the economist article

“How might your choice of browser affect your job prospects?” underlines my earlier posts

[e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4] on the influence of Big data on decision making:

Collectively, such findings suggest that algorithms and analysis of “big data” can provide a powerful tool to help employers sift through job applications. They might also make things fairer, by taking the personal prejudices of recruiters out of the equation. The challenge is to ensure that algorithms do not inadvertently introduce new biases.

A finding in this research was:

…its analysis found that those applicants who have bothered to install new web browsers on their computers (such as Mozilla’s Firefox or Google’s Chrome) perform better and stay in their posts for 15% longer, on average, than those who use the default pre-installed browser that came with their machine.

Lucky me; I have been a very early adopter of Firefox/Netscape, so I would pass this test with flying colors!

Or maybe Big Data will show that innovators are the people you should not hire because of evident autonomous behavior and as a consequence proof totally unmanageable as employees?

NB Using software to asses human activities that seem reserved for humans but will be robosourced are starting to pop up everywhere; just an an other example I ran into on assessing college essays.

Update 240413: and another one here Google Cares Less About SAT Scores And GPA Because They Have Better Hiring Data. But this article adds something important to the mix: the criteria – if you want the “algorithm” – to hire personal are changed based on big data analyses. Robosourcing is not only about having software make decisions but also about changing what decisions are taken.