I was interviewed by an AI bot for a job

Millions of people are on the job hunt right now — and for many people, landing a job in the AI era feels more intimidating than ever. That’s why the onset of AI avatars running your job interview via one-on-one video call, asking you questions, and analyzing how well you respond has generated a lot of discussion — and controversy.

There are a handful of companies behind the rise in AI-led interviews, like CodeSignal, Humanly, Eightfold, and more. The creators of these AI tools say the benefit is that it allows companies to hear from virtually everyone who applies for a certain role instead of just a small subset, at least when it comes to an intro interview. Some claim that these tools operate with significantly less bias and prejudice because they’re simply analyzing your responses rather than other video cues. But as we’ve covered again and again, a bias-free AI system is an impossible-to-achieve standard, since models are trained on large swaths of the internet, which contain sexism, racism, and other biases.

For this video, I tried out three AI interviewers myself for a range of jobs, either ones created for the exercise based on my current position or real jobs currently listed at Vox Media. Some of the platforms felt a lot more natural than others, but no matter what, each time I wished I was talking to a human instead. Watch the video to check out my experience.