Anthropic Asks Job Applicants Not To Use AI In Job Applications (404media.co) 36
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Anthropic, the company that made one of the most popular AI writing assistants in the world, requires job applicants to agree that they won't use an AI assistant to help write their application. "While we encourage people to use AI systems during their role to help them work faster and more effectively, please do not use AI assistants during the application process," the applications say. "We want to understand your personal interest in Anthropic without mediation through an AI system, and we also want to evaluate your non-AI-assisted communication skills. Please indicate 'Yes' if you have read and agree."
Anthropic released Claude, an AI assistant that's especially good at conversational writing, in 2023. This question is in almost all of Anthropic's nearly 150 currently-listed roles, but is not in some technical roles, like mobile product designer. It's included in everything from software engineer roles to finance, communications, and sales jobs at the company. The field was spotted by Simon Willison, an open source developer. The question shows Anthropic trying to get around a problem it's helping create: people relying so heavily on AI assistants that they struggle to form opinions of their own. It's also a moot question, as Anthropic and its competitors have created AI models so indistinguishable from human speech as to be nearly undetectable.
Anthropic released Claude, an AI assistant that's especially good at conversational writing, in 2023. This question is in almost all of Anthropic's nearly 150 currently-listed roles, but is not in some technical roles, like mobile product designer. It's included in everything from software engineer roles to finance, communications, and sales jobs at the company. The field was spotted by Simon Willison, an open source developer. The question shows Anthropic trying to get around a problem it's helping create: people relying so heavily on AI assistants that they struggle to form opinions of their own. It's also a moot question, as Anthropic and its competitors have created AI models so indistinguishable from human speech as to be nearly undetectable.
Really? Indistinguishable? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just because something is written on the internet doesn't mean it's true
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Just because something is written on the internet doesn't mean it's true
On the contrary, there are highly intelligent elves with lots of computer screens, chorded keyboards, and very fast typing speeds. They check every fact on the internet and correct stuff that's false. They're connected deeper into the backbone of the network than the NSA. You can trust the elves.
I know this is true because I read it on the internet.
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Just because something is written on the internet doesn't mean it's true
On the contrary, there are highly intelligent elves with lots of computer screens, chorded keyboards, and very fast typing speeds. They check every fact on the internet and correct stuff that's false. They're connected deeper into the backbone of the network than the NSA. You can trust the elves.
I know this is true because I read it on the internet.
I'm reminded of when in a Discworld City Watch book, Vimes got a PDA that he never figured out how to personalize, so the Personal Daemon Assistant was constantly asking him questions personalized to INSERT NAME HERE
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Recursive Logic (Score:2)
Just because something is written on the internet doesn't mean it's true
Perhaps, but now you have written it on the internet how can I believe it?
So now they get (Score:3)
a bunch of applicants happy to lie at the drop of a hat. Maybe that's what they want.
Re:So now they get (Score:4, Insightful)
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Problem is this is what HR wants... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that AI written resumes that take all the points that are required for a job and turns them into prose, is what gets resumes onto desks. If one doesn't participate in the AI arms race, they won't be getting a job. Usually because the recruiters and HR departments use AI on their end to see if a candidate mentions all points, and if they don't, they are removed from consideration.
So, it is an ironic arms race. You AI "encode" a resume to have it "decoded" by HR.
Re:Problem is this is what HR wants... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that AI written resumes that take all the points that are required for a job and turns them into prose, is what gets resumes onto desks. If one doesn't participate in the AI arms race, they won't be getting a job. Usually because the recruiters and HR departments use AI on their end to see if a candidate mentions all points, and if they don't, they are removed from consideration.
So, it is an ironic arms race. You AI "encode" a resume to have it "decoded" by HR.
If you replace "AI" with "algorithms" it makes a lot more sense.
For the last better part of 20 years, HR departments have been using software to try to downselect resumes for candidates. This doesn't work when the downselect software doesn't understand how products have evolved over time. I heard of an example in 1998 when a system was requiring 5 years experience with Windows NT Server 4.0. This was a simple oversight, but the department was asking for someone with experience from the beginning of Windows NT, which had been around for about six years at that point, but the software doing the downselect was too stupid to understand versions.
Other times a product may be renamed entirely but is still the lineage, and a resume discussing experience with prior revs might well get circular-filed because the software can't handle it. The rename of Windows NT to Windows 2000, dropping the NT moniker is a good example, and the migration from the NT domain to the Active Directory Forest would be another similar scenario where asking for years of experience would break the HR system's ability to provide meaningful results so that basically only mendacious, unqualified, or poorly-written ones make it through.
But it's all a race to the bottom to see who can have the fewest workers as salary liabilities, even as they look for workers.
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I'm not sure it was software. I recall HR departments doing the initial filtering against the job interview with no understanding of what the requirements were nor what equivalent but different formulation of words added up to the same thing.
I recall the battles with HR to allow technical people to do CV filtering.
It was a real skill, writing(tweaking) your CV so that it was truthful and
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Just like steroids and sports. You are required to both use them to compete and to lie about your use of them. The real game is seeing who is best at deceit.
Re:Problem is this is what HR wants... (Score:4, Informative)
I was always a skeptic of AI. But then I lost my job, and on a whim a friend sent my resume through ChatGPT to have it revise it.
I discarded most of its revisions (the hallucinations were terrible, as expected). However, it did brilliantly on some text I was having a hard time with and managed to re-word it in a much better way than I ever could have myself. I think I took another of its suggestions as well as it managed to offer a better wording as well.
Everything else I disregarded - it either hallucinated some facts or it wasn't too good.
Still not entirely convinced, but I can admit for those awkward phrases you're having difficulty with writing, it can be a great aid. But you really have to be careful.
"Our AI filters in HR don't like AI applications." (Score:2)
I'm guessing the AI filtering process they use doesn't work well for the AI produced applications. They need to train their AI HR drones on *REAL* user input.
Probably need a CAPTCHA on that form (Score:3)
Violation of the ADA (Score:4, Interesting)
This is a clear violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act.
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Like that stands a snowball's chance in hell of mattering for the next four years at least. They're already in full-on "sacrifice the weak" mode.
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Who's going to enforce that? Trump?
puke! (Score:2)
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Step 1: Don't say... (Score:2)
Don't say "my mind is blown" or "I'm trying to wrap my head around this" in your interview either, since those seem to be popular catchphrases. They appear repeatedly in Brainfrog's AI Skyrim/Fallout videos, and they appear often when I'm floating impractical (but hopefully not physically impossible, which is why I'm asking) engineering ideas for a story setting, or when I informed my incredibly well-educated buddy with the processing capacity of a rat that it's running on an office PC with some extra RAM a
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Just the thought of having a job at Anthropic sends chills up and down my spine...
Typo in title (not the first time it happened) (Score:2)
Please do not use B.R.A.I.N. when applying for a job in AI field.
If you have read and agree (Score:4, Funny)
Probably HR's way to weed out.... (Score:2)
Probably HR's way to weed out the utter slackers. And the people who won't leverage the AI as a tool to help themselves.
It's probably a test of the user applying for the job, if they can't be sure the resume wasn't written by the AI they are making, it's a good indication that the person applying is likely using the AI as a tool, not just slacking and letting it do all the work for them. They probably want people who know how to use TOOLS to get something done, versus having someone who can only have a mach
So only the liars will get hired (Score:2)
If the honest people don't use AI, and their profiles look worse as a result, only the people who use AI and lie about it, will end up getting hired. Good move.
Yes (Score:2)
If you want a job... (Score:2)
Making Apple Pies? (Score:2)
The job interview asks that in order to prove you can make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.
Slop for thee, but not for me... (Score:2)