The group that made the program did so by creating 500 computer models focused on specific job functions and locations, each one taught to recognize some 50,000 terms that showed up on past candidates’ resumes. These models led to the program valuing not IT skills common across applicants but, rather, the use of verbs more commonly found on male engineers’ resumes, such as “executed” and “captured." To get an idea of what that means, consider this comic from cartoonist Zach Weinersmith, where robots determined that since the majority of battles have been won with pre-modern weaponry, it's best to use spears, swords and rocks. 

According to Reuters, Amazon disbanded the team responsible for the program by the start of last year because executives lost hope for the project. The company declined to comment on the problems with the algorithm but said the tool “was never used by Amazon recruiters to evaluate candidates.” But Amazon did not dispute that recruiters looked at the recommendations generated by the recruiting engine.