A global cybersecurity consulting firm is being challenged by its board after it notices unexpected patterns in the AI-driven candidate-ranking system used to select red-team operators. Despite a diverse applicant pool, the model consistently gives candidates with certain certification keywords significantly higher scores than equally qualified individuals with strong exploit-development portfolios, active bug-bounty histories, or advanced defensive threat-hunting experience.
Internal analysis confirms that, although the dataset was balanced, the model learned during training to overweight specific textual features, resulting in disproportionate ranking outcomes. As the Head of Responsible AI Operations, you must identify the fundamental source of bias to direct remediation and ensure fair evaluation standards across global hiring pipelines.
Which type of bias is the AI system exhibiting in this scenario?