I Survived University Just to Be Interviewed by a Fucking Robot.

Ella Leffler

1 day ago

5 min read

The following is a long-winded message I sent as feedback to a company that invited me to participate in an AI interview.

“Hello, I would still like to be considered for this job. However, I feel it necessary to say that using an AI interviewer for potential hires is a rude and distasteful experience. At times during this interview, I got very frustrated, but you must understand the humiliating nature of being corrected by a robot with ‘the most natural way to say that would be…’ when I am the human, not them.I still think I would be a good fit for this job. I am a hard worker, intrinsically motivated and smart. However, as feedback for the future of your hiring process, I recommend treating the humans who may potentially be giving up hours of their week for you as such.Throwing us in front of a purple-dot AI bot that acts as though it knows better is an insult to the intellect and individuality that humans carry. I understand that we are in an age of AI and that this is cheaper for you. However, you lose respect from real people when you choose convenience over real connection and conversation.”

This may be seen as a dramatic response, but it should be read as justified frustration towards the rapidly accelerating prominence of AI everywhere. As someone fresh out of university, I am eager, or rather desperate, to find any form of employment. As most people braving the ‘entry-level’ job market in Europe will tell you, it is rough out here, and one will often resort to blindly applying for jobs after being unsuccessful in finding employment in their desired field.

Scouring the halls of LinkedIn, Indeed and far more miscellaneous sites like Talent.com, it seems that all anyone is looking for are AI trainers. And the more of those advertisements appear, the more I come to the conclusion that an ‘AI trainer’ must be one of the most soulless jobs in the world.

This point will be returned to, but it centres around the general problem I’ve noticed since I became aware of AI’s existence: no normal person really asked for this much AI.

Sure, people 20 or so years ago probably loved the idea of having robots do all the gruelling and annoying tasks capitalism demands of us so that real people could relax and enjoy themselves. But when one thinks for a second about the labour- and land-exploitative culture we live in, and the corrupt politicians and elites who are seen reaping the benefits of ordinary human struggles, one can’t be too surprised that AI manifested in this intense and sinister manner.

Ordinary people were perfectly fine speaking to an actual customer service representative, interviewing with a real hiring team, doing their own little hunt on Google to find an answer to a specific question or even just reading a book. People don’t mind, and often enjoy, these things because they revolve around basic aspects of human existence: community, conversing with other individuals and learning.

As stressful as interviews can be, you often walk out of one feeling better and confident that you have impressed another person with your abilities and personality. If an interview went poorly, you can still draw a lesson from the interaction at the end of the day.

As frustrating as getting through a complicated book can sometimes be, you learn and strengthen your brain by pushing through. Not to mention that community and books are also interrelated: having finished that tough book, you can now go and discuss it with friends or strangers, hearing their opinions and sharing yours.

However, now, the convenience of AI, our optimisation society, the literacy crisis and the rise of fascism, among other things, are all converging to produce a world in which the simplicity of AI seems increasingly appealing to us.

You don’t have to use your brain to read that book. You can ask AI all your questions and become an ‘expert’ on it, although you don’t retain nearly as much information, sentiment or meaning. You don’t have to interview someone; you can just throw them in front of a robot to decide whether they should go further. Or, inversely, you don’t have to experience the nerves and friction of being interviewed by a real person. You can just sit in front of your computer talking to no one.

In this regard, AI is stealing everything considered quintessential to the ‘human experience’ thus far. It is killing our planet, robbing us of feeling, discomfort, friction, mental strain and confusion, all of which are essential to building knowledge and character.

So, as ‘AI trainer’ jobs appear more and more, the conclusion must be that AI is stealing our minds, and we are letting it. These companies that teach AI have trainers in almost any professional or academic sector you could imagine. But behind that computer sits an actual, qualified individual, or ‘trainer’, who probably has the talent, intellect and passion for said sector.

AI trainers are handing over the hard-earned contents of their brains to the very thing that poses the grandest threat to human sovereignty.

Of course, a case can be made for this line of work. These jobs come at a time when career opportunities and economic conditions are not what they used to be. That gap in youth employment is being exploited by AI companies, offering broke young adults an easy escape from their financial predicaments.

The global instability of the day, to which AI is itself contributing, has backed people into a corner. Thus, it is a ‘soulless’ job in its purpose. It is a technological void of nothingness that feeds on our Earth’s most precious and necessary resources, which are already so scarce for many.

It is the antithesis of all that defines the human experience, as it threatens to erase those fundamental experiences, abilities, knowledge and emotions we require by sucking them out of humans themselves.

Those behind the screen aren’t soulless. They’re trapped.

Just as AI is imposed upon little moments of our everyday lives, so too is it imposed upon our careers. But this was the plan all along, right? Make AI a necessity. Make it a fundamental part of moving through this world. Make it so that those individuals who do not have access to it, or refuse to comply and engage with it, are forced into a lower social class. Make it so that AI is the sole bearer of all necessary knowledge, and it will become a fundamental necessity for all who want to live an enjoyable and prosperous life.

Resistance in the face of billionaires, whose influence has become intricately woven into the shape of global politics, can feel futile.

Going out into your community or sticking to traditional tenets of learning and self-cultivation can feel pointless next to the little AI companion that can answer and provide all.

Feeling little unease about the unnatural implementation of AI, whether from perceived powerlessness, ignorance or indifference, must be fought against. It is crucial. That which threatens our individual sovereignty, our humanness, cannot be allowed to take over our world with our permission.

The world does not need this unregulated evil.

The world does not need more tech billionaires and AI start-ups.

The world needs good and honest people doing impactful, helpful and human-made work.

The world needs solidarity on the grounds of our shared humanity so that ordinary humans, together, can upend the AI status quo that tech billionaires seek to leverage for their further ascendance into socio-economic domination.

For it is our complete and true existence on this Earth, and the relationships and emotions we cultivate, that AI will never be able to replicate. And if we can find power in that truth to collectively refuse to allow AI to hold such stature in our global society, well, that may just be a starting point.