"Laughable at best and terrifying at worst."

Tell Me a Story

When being evaluated for a job, employment seeker and marketer Jack Ryan found himself being interviewed by an artificial intelligence-powered avatar — and was not exactly thrilled with the experience.

Ryan told 404 Media that the avatar he interviewed with, which was developed by a Melbourne-based AI startup called Fairgo, was "a perfect demonstration of late-stage capitalism."

"While Fairgo's intent is to provide a fair and equitable interview process," Ryan said, "I can't imagine AI, [large language models], and other tools are able to interpret the human emotion and facial reactions to provide an actual, well-rounded interview."

In a clip posted to his LinkedIn last week, the Silicon Valley-based marketer and self-described disabled athlete was seen smirking as the red-haired female avatar asked him for his work experience and encouraged him to get creative.

"I find it helps when candidates tell me a story in answering the questions," the avatar, which does not appear to have a name, said robotically.

It's a perfect encapsulation of the kind of uncanniness many said the age of AI would usher in — except, of course, far more banal.

 

Disability Matters

On its website, the startup claims that candidates interviewed by Fairgo avatars "consistently love the interview experience" — but Ryan very much disagrees.

"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," he explained to 404. "To add an AI component into this mix, I imagine, would have the opposite effect of [diversity, equity, and inclusion]."

Fairgo's CEO Julian Bright insisted in his own interview with 404 that his company's AI is actually there to help reduce human bias. Furthermore, Bright maintained that Fairgo's AI is not at all involved in the candidate selection process and that it does not use any video or audio taken during the process to evaluate candidates.

All the same, being interviewed by an AI avatar seems to have left a bad taste in Ryan's mouth.

"As someone who has interviewed upwards of 50 candidates for prior roles, human connection and interaction is the single most important indicator of how a team will mesh and jive together," he said. "If an AI is running the early stage process, it eliminates potential candidates because of its algorithmic design."

At the end of the day, using a service like Fairgo's "shows how executives and corporations are further trying to cut costs on the human side of business," Ryan said.

"As someone who has seen these layoffs at numerous top tech companies that then go on to rehire 6-12-18 months later... it's laughable at best and terrifying at worst," he concluded.

We can't say we didn't smirk along with Ryan — but that's only to keep ourselves from crying.

More on AI and labor: In Leaked Audio, Amazon Cloud CEO Says Human Developers Will Soon Be a Thing of the Past


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