Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Anthropic: "Applicants should not use AI assistants"

simonwillison.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 419 posts

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

#31

Post by myfonj »

itake wrote: post #14
firtoz wrote: post #5

It's also a personal question, not a "why should someone work here", but a "what motivates YOU"

You can use an AI assistant to help you fix grammar and come up with creative reasons why you should work there.

This adds another twist, since I'd bet nowadays most CVs are processed (or at least pre-screened) by "AI": we're in a ridiculous situation where applicants feed a few bullet points to AI to generate full-blown polished resumes and motivational letters … and then HR uses different AI to distil all that back to the original bullet points. Interesting times.

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

#32

Post by lazide »

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…

Eh, you can only learn how to do something when you actually do it (generally).

AI just lets you get deeper down the fake-it-until-you-make-it hole. At some point it will actually matter that you know how to do something, and good luck then.

Either for you, or for your customers, or both.

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

#33

Post by rixed »

I understand why it's amusing, but there is really nothing to see here. It could be rephrased as:

« The process we use to asses candidates relies on measuring the candidate's ability to solve trivia problems that can easily be solved by AI (or internet search or impersonation etc). Please refrain from using such tools until the industry come up with a better way to assess candidates. »

Actually, since the whole point of those many screening levels during hiring is to avoid the cost of having long, in depth discussions between many experts and each individual candidates, probably IA will be the solution that makes the selection process a bit less reliant on trivia quizz (a solution that will, no doubt, come with its own set of new issues).

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

#34

Post by shipp02 »

jon-wood wrote: post #27
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…

> AI made your homework? Guess what, the homework is a proxy for your talent, and it didn't make your talent. At least in theory that’s not what homework is. Homework should be exercises to allow practicing whatever technique you’re trying to learn, because most people learn best by repeatedly doing a thing rather than reading a few chapters of a book. By applying an LLM to the problem you’re just practicing how to u…

What if you use it to get unstuck from a problem? Then come back and learn more about what you got stuck on.

That seems like responsible use.

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

#35

Post by noncoml »

If Alice can do better against Bob when they aren’t using AI, but Bob performs better when both use AI, isn’t it in the company’s best interest to hire Bob, since AI is there to be used during his position duties?

If graphic design A can design on paper better that B, but B can design on the computer better than A, paper or computer, why would you hire A?

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

#36

Post by djtango »

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…

Consider the case where there is a non Native English speaker and they use AI to misrepresent the standard of written English communication.

Assume their command of English is insufficient to get the job ultimately. They've just wasted their own time and the company's time in that situation.

I imagine Anthropic is not short of applicants...

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

#37

Post by jstummbillig »

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…

It's a warning sign, designed to improve the signal they are interested in marginally. Some n-% of applicants will reconsider. That's all it needs to do, to make it worth it, because putting that one sentence there required very little effort.

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

#38

Post by llm_trw »

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…

Homework is a proxy for your retention of information and a guide to what you should review. That somehow schools started assigning grades to it is as nonsensically barbaric as public bare ass caning was 80 years ago and driven by the same instinct.

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

#39

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

jon-wood wrote: post #27
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…

> AI made your homework? Guess what, the homework is a proxy for your talent, and it didn't make your talent. At least in theory that’s not what homework is. Homework should be exercises to allow practicing whatever technique you’re trying to learn, because most people learn best by repeatedly doing a thing rather than reading a few chapters of a book. By applying an LLM to the problem you’re just practicing how to u…

Um, get with the times, luddite. You can use an LLM for everything, including curing cancer and fixing climate change.

(I still mentally cringe as I remember the posts about Disney and Marvel going out of business because of Stable Diffusion. That certainly didn't age well.)

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

#40

Post by danw1979 »

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…

> AI made your homework? Guess what, the homework is a proxy for your talent, and it didn't make your talent.

Well, no. Homework is an aid to learning and LLM output is a shortcut for doing the thinking and typing yourself.

Copy and pasting some ChatGPT slop into your GCSE CS assignment (as I caught my 14yo doing last night…) isn’t learning (he hadn’t even read it) - it’s just chucking some text that might be passable at the examiner to see if you can get away with it.

Likewise, recruitment is a numbers game for under qualified applicants. Using the same shortcuts to increase the number of jobs you apply for will ultimately “pay off” but you’re only getting a short term advantage. You still haven’t really got the chops to do the job.

Post reply on HN