THE ALIENATION OF BUSINESS ETHICS IN THE AGE OF ALGORITHMS: THE CASE OF BYTEDANCE’S AI RECRUITMENT SYSTEM

Abstract

Amid the digital wave driven by the pursuit of extreme efficiency, ByteDance has achieved millisecond-level responses in human resources screening through its proprietary AI recruitment system; however, this has also triggered a profound crisis in business ethics. This study focuses on the operational mechanisms and controversies surrounding this system, conducting a penetrating analysis through a three-dimensional framework of “Justice-Dignity-Responsibility”. The research finds that, while the system’s core logic of “fitting historical optimality” has reduced recruitment costs, it has, at the technical level, solidified and amplified historical biases regarding dimensions such as educational background and region, thereby deviating from Rawls’s “Principle of Difference”. In terms of dignity, the system reduces job seekers to feature vectors, and its panopticon-style surveillance and evaluation trigger widespread “surveillance anxiety”, leading to the dissolution of job seekers’ agency. Regarding responsibility, the coupling of organizational incentive mechanisms with algorithmic black boxes causes a systemic breakdown in the chain of accountability, creating a vacuum where “no one is held responsible”. This study reveals the deep-seated paradox of ethical compromise under efficiency-driven systems and argues that algorithmic governance must urgently shift from purely commercial logic toward a sustainable balance between efficiency and justice.