Last month, satirical influencer Graham Zip shared a hilarious video of himself pretending to hallucinate during a job interview with a virtual AI avatar. When he started the robot with plausible gibberish, it went off the rails and berated him, displaying terrifying facial expressions in the process.
The rabid trend of employers using AI to make screening calls to interview candidates has generated a lot of frustration among increasingly desperate job seekers who face dire job prospects – thanks in large part to AI’s effects on the marketplace.
Now, Graham has moved the narrative forward with a crazy new stunt. In a new video he shared on YouTube, the comedian invited his own AI, nicknamed Victor, to participate in yet another interview with an employer’s chatbot – an unusual conference call that quickly degenerated into absurd chaos.
I sent an AI to my job interview. Society too.
After generations of young job seekers brought their parents to interviews, recording their own “helicopter AI” may be the final form of this trend.
“Pat, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” Victor AI said after thanking Graham for launching his opening statement. “We are both excited about the Marketing Manager opening at Brightwell Home. Graham is an absolute powerhouse in the world of marketing and I can’t wait to find out why he is the perfect fit for your team.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you both,” the company AI responded. “You are incredibly impressive and easy to work with, Victor.”
At one point, Graham had to intervene to correct his AI, telling Victor that it was “a little too nice”, clarifying that he was a marketing coordinator and not a manager with direct reports.
After a confusing back-and-forth, with the two AI models constantly trying to talk to each other, Graham told his AI to move to the sidebar.
“Uh, I like what you do, man,” Graham told his assistant. “You make me look really good, but I think you make me look a little too good.”
“I think you can probably increase the volume of my experience by ten percent, but right now you’re just making things up that aren’t true,” he added.
Victor AI even tried to throw Graham under the bus by saying he was willing to accept a salary of just $60,000.
“Wait. Wait,” Graham said, looking frustrated. “Let’s not take the next steps at $60,000. Pat. Pat.”
Towards the end of the video, Graham briefly leaves the call and lets the two AI models negotiate his salary without his presence.
“We’re going ahead with the $85-95,000 range,” the company’s AI finally told him after he returned, much to his horror.
While it’s a fun watch, the video perfectly skewers the potential horror scenarios of a not-so-distant future where we need an AI chatbot to negotiate on our behalf.
It also highlights the complete disregard with which companies treat potential recruits. By outsourcing the interview process – or even just the early screening of candidates – to AI, they are sending a clear signal that they care little about identifying the right candidate for the job.
It is a dystopian vision in which the intrinsic value of human labor continues to be undermined as companies push for AI agents to be designed to assume our identities. As Graham’s latest experiment shows, maybe we’re better off representing ourselves after all.
Learn more about AI job interviews: AI appears to trap some candidates in a void where they never get an interview for completely unfair “reasons”
Gn tech
