AI was supposed to make job hunting easier, but it’s having the opposite effect. Companies are on high alert for candidates using AI to fix up their CVs, leading to a hiring crackdown that could make landing a job even tougher, Business Insider reports.

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It’s all in the numbers: Reports from Workday reveal that 72% of business leaders have raised their hiring criteria in the first half of 2024. Recruiters predict that this percentage will only increase as more companies — ironically — use AI to screen for candidates using AI to submit job applications. “Big companies are using AI to go through that stack, that AI has brought first place, and it’s becoming this ridiculous tit-for-tat battle,” said Recruit Rockstars CEO Jeff Hyman.

This is just the beginning: Job applications in 2024 have grown four times faster than job openings, overwhelming HR teams. Recruiters are now assessing candidates more closely, conducting longer interviews, and focusing on verifying whether a candidate’s CV matches their real abilities. Tim Sackett, president of tech staffing firm HRU Technical Resources, noted that AI-powered fraud detection tools will make the hiring landscape even more competitive than it already is.

Should we pull the plug on AI before it’s too late? Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, has expressed concern over computer systems developing the ability to self improve, warning that there may be unforeseen dangers in the rampant development. “We seriously need to think about unplugging it,” he was reported saying by Axios.

Why? Computers may soon begin “running on their own, deciding what they want to do,” he added. And that doesn’t seem too far away considering Google has already built an AI personal assistant that makes decisions for you without pulling the trigger — developing an ability to execute these decisions might be when the technology presents a danger to humanity. Schmidt hopes that pulling the plug at that point will prevent reaching a scenario where the technology could refuse to or prevent being shut down — that’s the plot of The Terminator right there.

Is leveling out the playing field a good thing? Once the tech becomes widely accessible and even more powerful, every single person is going to have a PhD-level intelligent being —not a human nor a computer, as Ethan Mollick put it — in their pocket. “We just don’t know what it means to give that kind of power to every individual,” says Schmidt.

No signs of stopping. The boundaries in the AI race have been continuously pushed over the past few years, and the companies are still aiming for larger advancements. “I’ve never seen innovation at this scale,” said Schmidt.

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