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Leah Feiger: I mean, from the Trump White House, which has historically been so anti-AI-regulation that its very own AI czar for the first year of the Trump presidency, David Sacks, was like, “We’re not regulating,” to now where the White House has a slightly toothless, but still there, policy of sorts, especially in response to all these national security threats, hacking threats, et cetera. Clearly no one, no matter how AI celebratory or positive you are, can’t even remotely pretend right now that you don’t have to take these things seriously, and it’s not just going to solve child care or what have you and teach your kid how to cook. That’s not it anymore.
Brian Barrett: And if it were, would you even want it to be? Last note of this is that we did run this essay, whatever you want to call it, through Pangram, which is an AI detection tool that we trust for the most part. Human written, Leah.
Leah Feiger: I love that.
Brian Barrett: AI is good enough for recipes with his daughter, but not good enough to crank out a manifesto.
Leah Feiger: I think that’s beautiful.
Brian Barrett: Yeah. OK. In other news, in other news, a delightful and maybe dystopian story from WIRED senior writer Kate Taylor. She published a story on a strange pattern that has been increasingly emerging. So here’s the deal. So many first-round job interviews these days are done by AI. You sit down in front of a screen, and an AI interviewer asks you questions or prompts, or if it’s not AI, it is a series of prompts that are programmed into software. And you just sort of answer that way and not get screened. You can do that literally anytime, because there’s no human on the other end of it, so people who are looking for jobs are increasingly scheduling those interviews late at night, as late as 1 in the morning sometimes, Kate found, to get around any family calendar conflicts, work conflicts, the hassle of making up a dentist appointment when you’re doing a job interview. Now people just sort of do it after the kids are in bed, sitting down in their living room, talking to an AI agent who’s going to determine their livelihood.
Leah Feiger: I think you’re going to be shocked by my take.
Brian Barrett: OK, I’m ready.
Leah Feiger: I like it.
Brian Barrett: Wah.
Leah Feiger: I like that this is flexible.
Brian Barrett: Which part of it?
Leah Feiger: OK. Historically, I’m that person who was honestly really, really bad at doctor’s appointments and dentist appointments. Not because I was not interested in my health, but because I just couldn’t figure out how to schedule it during my day. No, I did not want to go at noon. I’m busy. I have work. I have a life. The idea that things like this that perhaps you have to do, job interview, doctor’s appointment, whatever it is, the idea that you can do it on your schedule, to me, I’m like, that’s positive. That is one positive thing that I see coming out of all of this. And I get it. Look, do I think that automation for job interviews is really what I’m looking for right now? Absolutely not. I think there’s a lot of beautiful intricacies of the human experience and what people can bring to a workplace that cannot be captured adequately by a chatbot. However, if that is where society is right now, let it happen.
