AI’s AI’s Arms Race is a great disaster for everyone

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You can almost listen to the frustration of Human Resources’ frustration. Applicants have discovered artificial intelligence and are not afraid to use it. Entrepreneurs have been snowed by people using new tools to produce impersonal applications. Some applicants use and to take a step through online evaluations. The FT has reported that many great businessmen have a “Attitude of zero tolerance Towards the use of the AI. ”

I am sure it would be a news story for job applicants, who had to use the big businessmen for ia. In fact, employment applicants would be fine within their rights to say: But you started it.

Like many caution tales, it begins with good intentions. In the 2010s, entrepreneurs implemented new automated hiring tools to reduce candidates before interviews because they wanted to do the most efficient and fair process, with less risk of human bias.

The “Asynchronous video interviews”, for example, involve job applicants who answer alone questions in front of their web cameras without a human on the other side. Often, a AI system evaluates its answers. But I have never met a job applicant who liked them.

By 2021 I wrote about research that they warned that young people felt confused, dehumanized and exhausted For the new tools. I was flooded with answers. “I did -one and it was the hardest and most humiliating experience I have ever encountered,” an older man wrote. “An interview in itself is difficult enough for someone to be in the labor market for the first time in years, but then it launches it. I do not care to say that I was traveling and that I made a from a hotel (it was not an ideal creation with my iPad balancing a suitcase) for a company that had dreamed for 30 years. The pressure was so intense, it wrapped me.” He then said, sat in his room and cried.

Therefore, it should not be surprised that work applicants have resorted to new tools of generatives like Chatgpt to accelerate or “play” a process that was already dehumanized. Even videos have appeared in Tiktok in which people show how to use Chatgpt to provide answers to asynchronous video interviews, which the applicant simply reads.

That said, the consequence of the AI ​​weapons race is not clearly for anyone. It is supposed to improve efficiency and equity. Has become a threat to both of them.

In terms of efficiency, entrepreneurs complain that they are overwhelmed by applications, which only feeds more rejection. “I do not hesitate to say that it breaks the system, because it is not broken, but it means that you are receiving more applications,” said Stephen Isherwood, a joint Chief Executive Officer of the Institute of Entrepreneurs. It has also been more difficult for entrepreneurs to find the best candidates because some applicants use and to increase their scores in testing of their skills.

Unequal access to payment models for the best in contracting assessments can be feeding a new type of injustice. Jamie Betts, founder of the Neurosight Evaluation Company, told me that his survey of 1,500 job applicants last year found that 31 percent of men used a paid Ai tool, compared to 18 percent of women.

It is worth noting that Neurosight sells a tool that sells as a resistant to Chatgpt, so Betts has some interest in making this point. However, he said that his company had recently performed a well -known critical reasoning test for a world professional service company. “Year after year, what we have seen is a significant increase in supply (relative) less performance among black people, women and (those with) socioeconomic indicators as if you had free school foods.”

What are the solutions? Some online evaluations are, for the moment, less vulnerable to the use of the AI, such as those involved in playing short games. But I would not be surprised to see the return of the test centers in person for the evaluations of the technical skills. Isherwood and Betts said businessmen was thinking of reintroducing the human touch before the process.

Even Hirevue, a great asynchronous video interview seller, wrote in an article last year: “One of the best ways to reduce the behavior of deception of all kinds is to use a flow of work in various stages in which the knowledge, skills and skills of a candidate are validated by an interviewer in a live interview environment.”

Would there be a commitment to bias and coherence? Maybe. But if there is a lesson in this precautionary tale, technology cannot simply move away from magic. The seemingly simple solutions to hard problems do not usually maintain -resolved for a long time.

sarah.oconnor@ft.com