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Anthropic: "Applicants should not use AI assistants"

simonwillison.net

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Re: Anthropic: "Applicants should not use AI assistants"

#161

Post by anal_reactor »

xnorswap wrote: post #145
radu_floricica wrote: post #115

I'll be the contrarian and say that I don't find anything wrong with this, and if I were a candidate I'd simply take this as useful information for the application process. They do encourage use of AI, but they're asking nicely to write my own texts for the application - that's a reasonable request, and I'd have nothing against complying. sshine reply above is coming from a very conflictual mindset. "Can I still use…

I'm with you, I'm very surprised by the amount arguments which boil down to, "Well I can cheat and get away with it, so therefore I should cheat". I have read that people are getting more selfish[1], but it still shocks me how much people are willing to push individualism and selfishness under the guise of either, "Well it's not illegal" or "Well, it's not detectable". I think I'm just very much out of tune with the…

Honesty is not something our modern societies optimize for, although I do wish things were different

Re: Anthropic: "Applicants should not use AI assistants"

#162

Post by eknkc »

hollowturtle wrote: post #46
sshine wrote: post #15

> please do not use AI assistants during the application process. 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. There are two backwards things with this: 1) You can't ask people to not use AI when careful, responsible use is undetectable. It just isn't a realistic request. You'll have great repl…

Can't disagree more. Talent is built and perfected upon thousands hours practice, LLMs just make you lazy. One thing people with seniority in the field don't realize, as I guess you are, is that LLMs don't help develop "muscle memory" in young practioners, it just make them miserable, often caged in an infinite feedback loop of bug fixing or trying to untangle a code mess. They may extract some value by using it for…

I drove cars before the sat nav systems and when I visited somewhere, I'd learn how to drive to there. The second drive would be from memory. However, as soon as I started relying on sat navs, I became dependent on them. I can not drive to a lot of places that I visited more than once without a sat nav these days (and I'm getting older, that's a part of it too).

I wonder if the same thing will happen with coding and LLMs.

Re: Anthropic: "Applicants should not use AI assistants"

#163

Post by meindnoch »

Eisenstein wrote: post #130
sho_hn wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly agree with this comment. Anecdotal evidence time! I'm an experienced dev (20 years of C++ and plenty of other stuff), and I frequently work with younger students in a mentor role, e.g. I've done Google Summer of Code three times as a mentor, and am also in KDE's own mentorship program. In 2023/24, when ChatGPT was looming large, I took on a student who was of course attempting to use AI to learn and who wa…

What about people who don't have access to a mentor? If not AI then what is their option? Is doing tutorials on your own a good way to learn?

Write something on your own. When stuck, consult the docs, Google the error message, and ask on StackOverflow (in this order).

There's no royal road to learning.

Re: Anthropic: "Applicants should not use AI assistants"

#165

Post by Applejinx »

Maybe they are ahead of the curve at finding that hiring people based on ability to exploit AI-augmented reach produces catastrophically bad results.

If so, that's bad for their mission and marketing department, but it just puts them in the realm of a tobacco company, which can still be quite profitable so long as they don't offer health care insurance and free cigarettes to their employees :)

I see no conflict of interest in their reasoning. They're just trying to screen out people who trust their product, presumably because they've had more experience than most with such people. Who would be more likely to attract AI-augmented job applicants and trust their apparent augmented skill than an AI company? They would have far more experience with this than most, because they'd be ground zero for NOT rejecting the idea.

Re: Anthropic: "Applicants should not use AI assistants"

#166

Post by latexr »

radu_floricica wrote: post #115

I'll be the contrarian and say that I don't find anything wrong with this, and if I were a candidate I'd simply take this as useful information for the application process. They do encourage use of AI, but they're asking nicely to write my own texts for the application - that's a reasonable request, and I'd have nothing against complying. sshine reply above is coming from a very conflictual mindset. "Can I still use…

> I don't find anything wrong with this

It’s not about being wrong, it’s about being ironic. We have LLMs shoved down our throats as this new way to communicate—we are encouraged to ask them to make our writing “friendlier” or “more professional”—and then one of the companies creating such a tool asks the very people most interested in it to not use it for the exact purpose we’ve been told it’s good at. They are asking you pretty please to not do the bad thing they allow and encourage everyone to do. They have no issue if you do it to others, but they don’t like it when it’s done to them. It is funny and hypocritical and pulls back the curtain a bit on these companies.

It reminded me of the time Roy Wood Jr visited a pro-gun rally where they argued guns make people safe, while simultaneously asking people to not carry guns because they were worried about safety. The cognitive dissonance is worth pointing out.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=m2v9z2S5XzQ&t=190

Re: Anthropic: "Applicants should not use AI assistants"

#167

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

ben30 wrote: post #80

This application requirement really bothered me as someone who's autistic and dyslexic. I think visually, and while I have valid ideas and unique perspectives, I sometimes struggle to convert my visual thoughts into traditional spoken/written language. AI tools are invaluable to me - they help bridge the gap between my visual thinking and the written expression that's expected in professional settings. LLMs are essen…

This is an excellent comment and it more-or-less changes my opinion on this issue. I approached it with an "AI bad" mentality which, if truth be told, I'm still going to hold. But you make a very good argument for why AI should be allowed and carefully monitored.

I think it was the spell-checker analogy that really sold me. And this ties in with the whole point that "AI" isn't one thing, it's a huge spectrum. I really don't think there's anything wrong with an interviewee using an editor that highlights their syntax, for example.

Where do you draw the line, though? Maybe you just don't. You conduct the interview and, if practical coding is a part of it, you observe the candidate using AI (or not) and assess them accordingly. If they just behave like a dumb proxy, they don't get the job. Beyond that, judge how dependant they are on AI and how well they can use it as a tool. Not easy, but probably better than just outright banning AI.

Re: Anthropic: "Applicants should not use AI assistants"

#168

Post by jajko »

exitb wrote: post #156
radu_floricica wrote: post #115

I'll be the contrarian and say that I don't find anything wrong with this, and if I were a candidate I'd simply take this as useful information for the application process. They do encourage use of AI, but they're asking nicely to write my own texts for the application - that's a reasonable request, and I'd have nothing against complying. sshine reply above is coming from a very conflictual mindset. "Can I still use…

It's not that there's anything wrong with this in particular. It's just that the general market seems much more optimistic about AI impact, than the AI companies themselves.

Companies, especially large, are not interested in fads unless directly invested in them. The higher and steeper the initial wave the bigger disappointment, or at least unfulfilled expectations happen, not always but surprisingly often.

This is just experience and seniority in general, nothing particular about LLMs. For most businesses, I would behave the same.

Re: Anthropic: "Applicants should not use AI assistants"

#169

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

rapidaneurism wrote: post #8

Do they also promise not to use ai to evaluate the answers?

I would 100% expect a company to not use AI to evaluate candidates and, if they are, I wouldn't want to work there. That's far worse than using AI as the candidate.

Re: Anthropic: "Applicants should not use AI assistants"

#170

Post by dist-epoch »

jusomg wrote: post #119

I do lots of technical interviews in Big Tech, and I would be open to candidates using AI tools in the open. I don't know why most companies ban it. IMO we should embrace them, or at least try to and see how it goes (maybe as a pilot program?). I believe it won't change the outcomes that much. For example, on coding, an AI can't teach someone to program or reason in the spot, and the purpose of the interview never wa…

It's a new spin on the old leetcode problem - if you are good at leetcode you are not necessarily a good programmer for a company.
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