Unsurprisingly, there are quite a few questions to answer if you’re thinking about applying for a job with the U.S. government. It stands to reason that the Feds want the most honest and accurate answers possible, so they’ve done some tinkering and found what might be a better way to vet their applicants.
This new method involves subjecting applicants to something not quite human, but still evokes a very human response.
Recent research conducted by the National Center for Credibility Advancement (who knew that was a thing?) set out to discover whether applicants would be more truthful with a pen-and-paper application or with a computer-aided questionnaire.
That doesn’t sound particularly newsworthy until you get to the fun part: the computer application was accompanied by an animated ?talking head? ? or avatar ? meant to approximate human interaction. You may be familiar with the concept of the uncanny valley, which describes a situation where human features and mannerisms are imitated imperfectly, leading to uncomfortable feelings or even revulsion. This research represents a primitive, but arguably very important, step in human-computer relations, and it seems to have side-stepped the uncanny valley issue almost entirely.
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Before we get to the results: a quick word about the methodology. The two groups of applicants began the study by taking part in a face-to-face interview with a flesh-and-blood interviewer. This was meant to serve as a baseline with which to compare their findings.
So what kinds of questions were asked? They ran the gamut of the usual personal background questions: applicants were quizzed about everything from past drug and alcohol abuse to criminal charges and mental health problems.
Responses about drug and criminal charges were ? perhaps unsurprisingly ? similar for both pen-and-paper and electronic applicants. Such things are, after all, a matter of public record in most cases and can easily be verified. Researchers did find some discrepancy with the alcohol use and mental health issues, however; the applicants who were assigned the avatar were ?significantly? more likely to divulge their personal histories than those assigned the pen-and-paper application.
As reported by Motherboard, this system is being considered as a potential permanent addition to the process whereby the US government awards individuals with national security clearance.
If the word Skynet means anything to you, you’re probably feeling the hairs rise on the back of your neck.
Make no mistake: the computer trickery used in this study doesn’t begin to approach ?true? artificial intelligence; the goal was to make applicants feel more comfortable by roughly approximating human interaction ? not by mimicking it entirely.
This research could complicate the already convoluted world of criminal record disclosures on job applications. Earlier in 2014, a federal district court determined that employers are within their rights to revoke employment offers based on the applicant’s failure to disclose past misdemeanors and convictions. Only time will tell how our laws will need to adapt once pseudo-artificial intelligence enters the mix.
No matter where things go from here, if you’re like me, you’re still feeling a touch of unease about having our national security clearances handed out by a computer construct. And with frequent warnings from Stephen Hawking about AI bringing about the end of the human race, those fears don’t feel totally misplaced.
Nevertheless, we’re an extremely long way away from ?true? AI, and in the interim, applying this technology to the world of government employment is exciting for a much more mundane reason: because it saves money. By removing the human element from the interview process, we’re apparently now able to improve the veracity of the applicants? responses as well as cut down on the cost of the whole affair. It sounds like a win-win ? that is, until the inevitable Machine Uprising.
