Man 'terrified' after being interviewed for a job by 'weird' AI avatar
10/02/2024 10:38 AM
A MAN has been left both spooked and disappointed after being interviewed for a new job by a bizarre AI avatar.
Instead of having a video call with a human interviewer, US-based marketer Jack Ryan was met with a red-haired female avatar asking him about his work experience.
The avatar even encouraged him to answer her questions with a story.
During the conversation, Ryan, a San Diego native, can be seen with a smirk on his face.
In a now viral post on professional social media platform LinkedIn, Ryan said: “AI avatars are now performing interviews
“Not sure if I'm impressed, weirded out or terrified. (Clearly my face gives me away).”
Ryan, a self-described disabled athlete, was interviewed by an ‘AI agent’ supplied by Australian startup called Fairgo.ai.
The company says its AI avatars can halve the time it takes to screen candidates for open roles.
But it also says they can produce 25 per cent fewer in-person interviews, which Ryan called “a perfect demonstration of late stage capitalism”.
Speaking to 404 Media, Ryan added: "While Fairgo’s intent is to provide a fair and equitable interview process, I can’t imagine AI, LLMs, and other tools are able to interpret the human emotion and facial reactions to provide an actual, well rounded interview.
"As a disabled individual who is reliant on remote work, I am already concerned about openly stating I am disabled in the forms that companies put at the end of their job applications,.
"To add an AI component into this mix, I imagine, would have the opposite effect of inclusion and DEI."
According to Fairgo’s CEO Julian Bright, once the introductory video voiced by the AI avatar ends, interviews are done by an audio-only AI.
It is only the audio transcripts that are reviewed after the 10-15minute interview is over.
Bright added that Fairgo does not make decisions on who to shortlist for a role.
That decision is always up to the hirers.
What are the arguments against AI?
Artificial intelligence is a highly contested issue, and it seems everyone has a stance on it. Here are some common arguments against it:
Loss of jobs – Some industry experts argue that AI will create new niches in the job market, and as some roles are eliminated, others will appear. However, many artists and writers insist the argument is ethical, as generative AI tools are being trained on their work and wouldn’t function otherwise.
Ethics – When AI is trained on a dataset, much of the content is taken from the Internet. This is almost always, if not exclusively, done without notifying the people whose work is being taken.
Privacy – Content from personal social media accounts may be fed to language models to train them. Concerns have cropped up as Meta unveils its AI assistants across platforms like Facebook and Instagram. There have been legal challenges to this: in 2016, legislation was created to protect personal data in the EU, and similar laws are in the works in the United States.
Misinformation – As AI tools pulls information from the Internet, they may take things out of context or suffer hallucinations that produce nonsensical answers. Tools like Copilot on Bing and Google’s generative AI in search are always at risk of getting things wrong. Some critics argue this could have lethal effects – such as AI prescribing the wrong health information.
