AI rejection letter for being born on the wrong date | Hacker News Reader

AI rejection letter for being born on the wrong date

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37 pointspersonjerry33 comments

I don't get what exactly people think is indicating an AI here, rather than a humourless and thoughtless HR rep. This is pretty standard formal business English. Have I managed to miss an actual strong sign here?

This feels like the dilution of "bot" where people have come to yell bot at any POV they disagree with without looking at the account profile.

EDIT: Amusingly, when I tried asking ChatGPT for a letter rejecting based on the birth date of 4/20 it lectured about the legalities and gave me a generic rejection letter that ignored it and would allow me to still reject the candidate for that reason, but without exposing my reason to the candidate so they could consider doing something about it. This, to me, if anything seems like the most likely safety issue with AI: Not that they turn Skynet, but that attempts at doing good will backfire into creating tools that are experts at circumventing laws and regulations and make dumb people far more effective at being bad.

> is pretty standard formal business English

It's American English. There is no American HR department that systematically provides reasons for rejection in writing.

That is a reason for thinking it is fake not for thinking it's an AI rejection letter.

I'm saying that regardless of whether it's AI generated or not, it looks fake.

That we can agree on.

"Computer Says No"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_says_no

Funny but most likely fake.

Everything on Reddit is fake.

Not always, but there are subreddits that are more fake than others, such as /r/antiwork.

Yeah Reddit is compromised by psyops

Would not be shocked if antiwork is one as it keeps people apathetic and in their seats by giving them an impotent rage echo chamber

Or it's just a bunch of dork-ass kids making up lame stories.

Seems like it. Wouldn't an LLM write "LinkedIn" instead of "linkedin"?

Or use "date of birth" or possibly "birth date" instead of "birthdate".

Also, we don't know what the LinkedIn info said. The submitter might have written "I was born on 4/20 so you know I'm really cool and laid back."

Maybe the LLM was prompt to write a rejection letter based on the cv and job description and the model couldn't find anything wrong and made stuff up.

Can she sue them for that? If companies think they're smart by outsourcing HR work to unreliable AI, then I hope the real costs of doing business like that comes around hard for them in the form of lawsuits.

Sue for what? Stupidity?

What would the desired outcome of a potentially costly and time-consuming lawsuit even be? For them to go "oh OK then, we'll hire you"? Would you even want to work for them after this episode?

In the US would be some deep trauma now that person is scarred thinking their birthday is inadequate and they'll never be able to work again. So $50m or so should do it.

There are a lot of comments in this (HN) thread responding as if this is true, without questioning whether it’s fake.

This just isn’t believable, and if something from Reddit seems unbelievable, it’s likely fake.

I don't think this really happened.

Specifically, no HR would want to give specific and articulate reasoning without human review, it’s a liability.

It's a risk a lot of companies are willing to take if it saves them money though, see also: unsubstantiated bans from platforms like FB, Paypal, Youtube/Google, etc. A lot done via automation, because at those scales, hiring people to do it is expensive.

They may well reject applicants for dumb and automated reasons, but they would not inform the applicant of the reason for the rejection.

Another thing to point out is that this subreddit is propaganda central for communists and socialists, I wouldn't be surprised if that thread is completely unsourced and provided by an individual with very little indication of being a genuine user of the reddit userbase.

There's thousands of examples of it happening and going by virtually unnoticed. I was pointed to a thread a while ago of a Dell employee who supposedly committed suicide due to a workforce reduction in the parking lot of one of Dell's facilities in Texas [1][2]. The thread was quite popular, and I presume was on the front page of reddit. It seems like it was eventually taken down, but as many know about websites like reddit, it only needs to stay up a few hours to reach critical mass.

[1] https://archive.ph/Bbyvc archive

[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/17809vp/dell_tech...

You're getting down-voted but it's extremely important to cast a cynical eye on everything you see posted on Reddit. Here too, to a lesser extent. Especially when something is highly believable and funny but no actual proof (such as the company name) is given.

People really do make stuff up, a lot, for no other reason than attention via imaginary internet points. Or the enjoyment of manipulating thousands of people into believing something they made up.

Never underestimate the stupidity and greed of business people.

This comment fron the thread:

The irony of calling someone unprofessional by not looking at a birth date for what it is versus seeing the funny weed number.

I don't think this is AI, but some human who thought they were being pranked on and they likely used AI to tone down the response. Even if company uses AI to filter they definitely won't send the raw response mentioning the issues with candidate. And no AI will say "upon reviewing the materials".

> And no AI will say "upon reviewing the materials".

What?

>Even if company uses AI to filter they definitely won't send the raw response

sure, companies are smart.

In conclusion we have very different views on reality, which is evidently a land of contrasts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem

And the /r/antiwork modteam removal message seems like an AI rejection message as well. We have gone full circle.

Right now its the date of birth. Later, it will be the applicant ID.

This is some great lawsuit material.

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