In a Facebook post, a retired newspaper reporter and blogger who I “met” online more than 20 years ago shared a situation described by someone on Reddit who wrote about a job interview that took a surprising turn.
The author described what started as a typical interview, which went well. Then at some point, one of the interviewers said they had been trying a different method to get to know candidates better.
The next question: “Do you use ChatGPT?” He answered that he did have some experience with it, as most people do.
Then came the unexpected.
“That’s when they asked me to take out my phone and open the app.
They wanted me to type this prompt:
“Based on my past conversations, can you analyze my behavioral tendencies?”
When the job candidate declined, the interview abruptly changed.
“The atmosphere shifted immediately…the energy was different.”
After another brief perfunctory exchange, and the interview was over, leaving the job candidate musing about the moment we’re in.
“The idea that what you write to an AI could become part of a hiring evaluation just feels strange to me,” he observed.
Thoughts??
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See USA v. Bradley Heppner (25 Cr. 503) a recent decision/briefing re: AI use by clients and the attorney client privilege. It’s specific to a criminal case, nevertheless this appears to be the direction attorneys will have to be cognizant of and proactive in representing clients and their otherwise innocent use of AI to better understand what their attorney is saying or contributing to their case.
That’s a blatant invasion of privacy. It’s like asking to see your recent Google search history.
In the near future, the interviewer won’t have to ask such questions anymore. They’ll just buy it from a data broker. OpenAI collects a lot of data about your interactions with ChatGPT and is actively trying to monetize it.
I have so many thoughts about this and shared the gist in a recent comment. I only experimented with ChatGPT once out of curiosity (now twice). To see what it would say, I asked it the same question as the interviewer, and based on its response I would hire me. I was trying to figure out how it thinks in that first and only chat, and it had good things to say about my intellect and curiosity. I wouldn’t have expected it to criticize based on its prior behavior.
However, I used to work for Scientologists, and as a part of their hiring process they required applicants to take the Scientology personality test. I was in HR and had access to everyone’s analysis but my own. Yikes. More than once before I left I thought of blowing the whistle and handing people copies of their reports. It wasn’t a pass/fail kind of test. They were looking for vulnerabilities in the personality that would make the person easier to control as an employee, and for specific ways to do so, and if you didn’t have any obvious weaknesses to be exploited you were not hired. They hired me because I didn’t answer the questions honestly. Come on, it’s a job interview.
ChatGPT only had positive things to say about my behavioral tendencies, but Scientology would have seen that as a disqualifier. Business owners complain about overly-restrictive regulations, including me, but someone is always going to find a way to abuse the technology and ruin it for the rest of us. Regulate yourselves and laws wouldn’t be necessary.
Good to hear your friend/colleague declined.
That is so stupid…..first of all, maybe they were actually testing his “obedience” behavior. That would make sense but knowing today’s fascination with Ai, its also possible they were serious
Meanwhile think about your chats with Ai. There’s no way one (anyone) could infer behavioral tendencies.
I’ll look forward to other comments 🙂
Just to clarify, my colleague reposted something written by a third person applying for a job.
And the job candidate definitely felt the interview had gone well until he declined to provide access to his ChatGPT app. After that, it was essentially over.
I see…thx for the clarification. This is a good example of what I think is an important part of aging. That is when things start to not make sense or don’t fit into what is known and proven to be the “right way”. I guess the interviewers believe this is fine and necessary. Seems so weird to me tho!
Years ago when West Marine opened their “flagship” store on Nimitz I applied for a job, being an experienced boater. I had to take an online quiz which was a multiple-choice quiz asking seemingly innocuous questions about boating stuff. The general manager was brought in from the mainland to get the store up and running. After the test she told me I was considered “too analytical” to be considered. She confided that she was not supposed to tell me this, but that the test is timed to determine how you react to different questions and is actually a behavioral test. I felt this was likely discriminatory, especially against older or better-educated applicants. Being opaque it would be difficult to call out against them.