Definition
Automated employment decision tool
Also called AEDT
A computational process that substantially assists or replaces discretionary hiring decisions, typically by scoring, ranking or filtering candidates.
Last reviewed
In practice
The term comes from New York City’s Local Law 144, which requires employers using such a tool for candidates in the city to have it independently bias-audited within the preceding year, publish a summary of the results, and notify candidates that it is in use.
The boundary is genuinely contested. A tool that produces a score a human then acts on may or may not be "substantially assisting" depending on how much the score drives the outcome. Employers who spend their energy arguing the boundary tend to end up on the wrong side of it.
The practical response is to build for the requirement rather than litigate the definition: tell candidates, keep a human making the decision, commission the independent audit, and publish it.
Related
Bias audit
An assessment of whether a hiring tool produces different selection rates across protected groups, performed by a party independent of the tool’s vendor.
Human in the loop
A requirement that a person makes or can meaningfully change an automated decision, rather than reviewing it after the fact or approving it as a formality.
Adverse impact
A substantially different rate of selection for a protected group resulting from a neutral-seeming employment practice, whether or not anyone intended it.
Read further
Longer pieces on this and the arguments around it.
What counts as an automated employment decision tool?
The AEDT definition turns on whether a tool substantially assists or replaces discretionary decisions. Where the line falls, and the cases teams get wrong.
ReadNYC Local Law 144: a practical compliance checklist
Local Law 144 requires an annual independent bias audit, a published summary, and advance notice to candidates. What each obligation means operationally.
Read