Soul Sucking OpenAI

Written By Vaclav Vincalek

Finding a needle in a haystack. That is a marketing message of many companies specializing in matching job candidates with potential employers. The new entrant in this field is OpenAI with its 'OpenAI Jobs Platform'. And because it is OpenAI, it has to be something special of course. The announcement comes from the CEO of OpenAI applications. At OpenAI, every new initiative has to have its own CEO, naturally.

The media got little bit too excited with articles like:


They were predicting doom for the LinkedIn cash generating platform where every recruiter pays a hefty amount of money to browse the millions of potential recruits.

One would get the impression that LinkedIn is the only game in town and forget that there is also ZipRecruiter, Indeed or Workopolis to name a few. Add to it a sea of recruiting firms and recruiters, and it is a sizable industry continuously chasing the right candidate for the right opportunity.

Even before the arrival of AI there were attempts, especially by the large platforms, to automate as much as possible. Similar to the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your website, here, candidates tried to optimize their resumes with the right keywords (or buzzwords) and with slight exaggeration to promote their achievements. Guilty as charged - my LinkedIn profile includes my long term position as a movie critic, because of my Netflix subscription.

Many Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) were using various levels and methods of filtering for a long time. But now, now we have all the powerful AI, which can see through all the hyperbole. It can guide the HR department to write better job postings, it can help the candidate write a better resume, it can recognize that another AI wrote the resume and identify only the ones which truly, truly are worthy considering and really reflect the candidate potential.

Just reading the last sentence, you might get the feeling that the introduction of more technology might increase the throughput of the candidates through the system, but there is nothing indicating that it will improve the quality of the jobs nor the quality of the candidates.

Surely this must be a huge business opportunity. Bringing the true power of AI into a highly inefficient recruitment market, the winner can take all. How much is 'all' you wonder?

Well, LinkedIn revenue is somewhere around $16 billion, Indeed (the new partner or victim) about $4 billion, ZipRecruiter is limping at about $0.5 billion. These are revenues, not profits and includes various membership fees, advertising or other, not related directly to recruitment. Let’s assume $20 billion a year. Is that all? A company which is building technology which is already smarter than many humans, wants to disrupt a $20 billion industry.

There has to be something else.

And this is where the OpenAI Jobs Platform comes into play. It is educational to read the blog post from the new CEO there to understand the objectives here.

Let's start with their assumption: “If you’re a business looking to hire an AI-savvy employee, or you just need help with a specific task, finding the right person can be hit-or-miss. The OpenAI Jobs Platform will have knowledgeable, experienced candidates at every level, and opportunities for anyone looking to put their skills to use. And we’ll use AI to help find the perfect matches between what companies need and what workers can offer.”

Loosely translated - while the other platforms have only losers, our platform will have only the best of the best and only our system can determine that.

Another interesting statement: “That’s why we’re working with a broad range of organizations—from major employers like Walmart and John Deere, to professional services firms like Boston Consulting Group and Accenture, to job search and hiring platform Indeed, to community organizations like the Texas Association of Business and the Bay Area Council, to state governments like the Delaware governor’s office—to help everyone take advantage of the opportunities that AI has to offer.”

While the media are talking about the 'potential' demise of LinkedIn, OpenAI is going to work with Indeed. Also look at the spectrum - from the Walmart door greeter, all the way to a partner at the Boston Consulting Group! That's the brand promise - 'knowledgeable, experienced candidates at every level.’

Now, the real question is what Walmart and Boston Consulting Group have in common and what OpenAI Job Platform can offer that nobody else can??

Part of the value proposition is that OpenAI, through its platform, will deliver OpenAI Certifications so the candidate can demonstrate their skill in using AI or to be more specific ChatGPT by OpenAI.

Here, we are witnessing the beginning of a total scam. Do you really think that employees trained in AI will be able to elevate the shopping experience at Walmart to Nordstrom? The shopping experience there is such that during a hostage situation at Walmart, people were denying that they were even there!! How will AI change that?

Moving to Boston Consulting Group (BCG). You can read on LinkedIn about how to get a job at BCG - 'The ultimate guide to getting a job at Boston Consulting Group' or you can ask Google AI what it takes to apply for a job at BCG. Here is the answer “To get a job at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), you must apply through their official careers website, prepare for intense case and behavioral interviews, and pass a required aptitude test, such as the BCG Potential Test, or an online case test, or a Pymetrics Test. Resume preparation, showcasing a balanced profile of academic achievements, extracurriculars, and work experience, is critical for securing an initial interview.”

Pymetrics test? Which you learn is a “pre-employment assessment that uses neuroscience-based games and artificial intelligence to evaluate a candidate's cognitive and behavioral traits, such as attention, decision-making, effort, and risk tolerance.”

And this is what connects Walmart greeter with BCG partner. Under the disguise of teaching you AI skills, all the potential candidates will be thoroughly tested. Of course, everyone will pass the OpenAI certification and will be able to add it to their resume. It will mean absolutely nothing. In return, your soul will be sucked by OpenAI for training its own systems and it will create your digital twin.

The best part? You will upload your resume, you will get the certification and then you will wait and wait and you will never hear from anyone about any job opportunity. You will never hear from any HR department that your application is rejected. There will be an impenetrable, obfuscating AI wall shielding the companies from any complaints or lawsuits.

The OpenAI Job Platform is completely aligned with the OpenAi mission - in the words of Mr. Altman - “There will be very hard parts like whole classes of jobs going away.”

The recurrent pattern? Mr. Altman is dead set on reducing humans to training materials for his ChatGPT. As he states, we have to “Solve the alignment problem, meaning that we can robustly guarantee that we get AI systems to learn and act towards what we collectively really want over the long-term.” And by 'we' he means 'I'.

Vaclav Vincalek
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