Latest news with #AI-assisted
Business Insider
2 days ago
- Business
- Business Insider
Is your job application being rejected by AI? We asked 7 big companies.
It's the great mystery facing frustrated job seekers: Who — or what — is rejecting my application? As more companies turn to AI to boost productivity,applicants often tell BI that they wonder whether a human ever reviewed their résumé. We reached out to seven major companies and found out that AI's role in the hiring process varies widely. Mark Grimwood, Salesforce's SVP of Recruiting, said the company received "tens of thousands" of applications for account executive roles in the first quarter of this year — a position the company is investing heavily in. Grimwood said two key factors help manage this volume: skilled recruiters who know how to spot talent with the right skills and experience, and Agentforce — the company's AI-powered tool. He said Agentforce helps recruiters scan for valued skills like collaboration, storytelling, and AI literacy, and identify promising candidates. "Our human recruiters are overseeing this process from start to finish, but using AI in our hiring processes really helps our recruiters be more productive and prioritize their time on the most relevant candidates," he said. Grimwood said the company's recruiters strive to give every application the attention it deserves, but not every one is reviewed by a human. "The sheer volume we see — especially in areas like sales, where we are really growing and investing — means we have to be strategic," he said. AI is playing a growing role in the hiring process. Some job seekers have used AI tools to optimize their résumés, submit hundreds of applications, and navigate interviews, while some businesses are using AI-assisted applicant tracking systems to evaluate and prioritize candidates. While AI has helped streamline parts of the process, it's also created headaches on both sides: Some applicants have told Business Insider they worry they're being rejected by algorithms with little or no human review, while companies are overwhelmed by AI-generated applications that aren't always accurate or well-crafted. While job seekers' concerns are understandable, most companies haven't offloaded their entire application review process to AI, though many are using it to assist. Business Insider asked seven companies — Salesforce, Google, Kraft Heinz, McKinsey, Verizon, Exelon, and Allstate — what role AI plays in evaluating applicants. Have you landed a new job in the last few years and are open to sharing your story? Please fill out this quick Google Form. Struggling to find work? Please fill out this Google Form. How AI is a tool in the job candidate evaluation process Some companies are trying to strike a delicate balance: using AI to help evaluate applicants without relying on it too heavily, and ensuring substantial human involvement. Google, Allstate, Kraft Heinz, and Exelon all said recruiters still review every application and decide who moves forward. Sean Barry, Allstate's vice president of talent acquisition, said the company uses technology to pinpoint strong candidates, which has helped speed up the early stages of the hiring process. He said it used to typically take about 22 days for the company to follow up with promising candidates — asking for details like location and salary expectations — but that now it's happening in just 11 days. "When you get 1,000 people applying for a single job, we use the technology not to decide who's the right fit, but to figure out which, say, 50 look like they could potentially be the right 50 to begin screening," he said. However, Barry said every application is still reviewed by a human, and that humans continue to decide which candidates move forward, and who ultimately gets hired. A Google spokesperson said the company's recruiting teams are exploring ways to make the application review process more efficient, and AI is a part of that effort. "We use machine learning to suggest candidates for open roles based on their skills and experience, which in turn, frees up recruiters to focus more on building relationships with the best candidates," they said. While this technology helps prioritize candidates, the spokesperson said every application submitted to Google is still reviewed by a human. Denise Galambos, chief people and equity officer at Exelon, said the company uses AI to help rank candidates based on various criteria, but a recruiter looks at every résumé. "We are not using AI to just right off the bat, exclude people," she said. Some companies are still relying heavily on recruiters Some companies have been slower to adopt AI for candidate evaluation, or have focused on other ways to apply the technology in hiring. Spring Lacy, Verizon's vice president of talent acquisition, said the company doesn't use AI tools to filter or rank applications — that job still falls to its recruiters. She said Verizon is open to using AI to make hiring more efficient, potentially freeing up recruiters to spend more time with top candidates. But any technology, she said, would need to function properly. "We want to make sure that any tools that we use are fair, and that there's no bias in the AI," she said. "That it can accurately and equitably screen résumés based on our qualifications." Blair Ciesil, partner, global talent attraction at McKinsey, said the company doesn't use AI to rank applicants during the screening process. Applications are reviewed by humans who have a set of criteria they're looking for in candidates. "We do not use AI to evaluate cover letters or résumés," she said, adding that AI's primary role in the hiring process is a "candidate bot" that helps employees prepare to interview applicants for open roles. Allstate is also exploring alternative ways to use AI in hiring — including to revisit past applicants. Barry said the company adopted a tool last year that helps flag qualified candidates who were initially turned down and recommends them for other roles. Through this process, Allstate has hired more than 100 people, many of them for claims roles. "While they might've been a no-go for that role at that time, it certainly doesn't mean that they're not a fit for the company and potentially a fit for another need," Barry said.
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Yahoo
College Says Every Student Is Now Required to Use AI
Forget the debate about whether AI has a place in education: Ohio State University went ahead and announced that, starting this fall, every single one of its students will be forced to use AI in class. We hope your eyeballs are nice and lubricated, because prepare for them to do some major rolling, courtesy of this zinger by the institution's executive vice president and provost, Ravi Bellamkonda. "Through AI Fluency, Ohio State students will be 'bilingual' — fluent in both their major field of study and the application of AI in that area," Bellamkonda said in a statement. "Grounded with a strong sense of responsibility and possibility, we will prepare Ohio State's students to harness the power of AI and to lead in shaping its future of their area of study." You heard that right. Ohio State isn't capitulating to the tech industry — it's benevolently teaching "AI Fluency" to prepare its bright-eyed pupils for a world in which typing "can you do my homework please?" into ChatGPT is somehow an indication of resourcefulness. The writing has been on the wall for a while now. Large language models have become incredibly popular with lazy students — much to the chagrin of their professors, if they aren't using chatbots themselves — and many universities have already partnered with tech firms to integrate the latest AI tools. Duke University, for example, just began offering unlimited ChatGPT access to students, along with its own "DukeGPT" tool. Students are supposedly pretty enthused that they've been given the green light to use AI in class. We wonder why. "A student walked up to me after turning in the first batch of AI-assisted papers and thanked me for such a fun assignment," said Steven Brown, an associate professor in OSU's department of philosophy who's already using AI in his classes, as quoted by NBC4. "And then when I graded them and found a lot of really creative ideas. My favorite one is still a paper on karma and the practice of returning shopping carts." By his own admission, Brown encourages students "to write papers using AI however they'd like," including an exercise using AI to create Platonic dialogs between two people taking opposing viewpoints on a controversial topic, which helps "them understand how intelligent and thoughtful parties might disagree about that issue." Brown added that banning AI in class is "shortsighted." "It would be a disaster for our students to have no idea how to effectively use one of the most powerful tools that humanity has ever created," Brown said, per NBC4. "AI is such a powerful tool for self-education, that we must rapidly adapt our pedagogy or be left in the dust." This is an incredible claim to make, because "AI" — a catch-all marketing buzzword, let's not forget — is still plagued by factual hallucinations. As in, the tool that Brown is having his students learn stuff with gets the facts wrong all the time, lacking the expertise in a particular field that someone like Brown has. The tech's rapid adoption also means there's little long-term evidence of its benefits in education — whereas there's plenty of worrying signs to the contrary, with multiple studies linking ChatGPT use with plummeting grades, memory loss, and diminished critical thinking skills. But Ohio State, along with many other institutions, are rushing to adopt AI anyway. Starting in the Fall 2025 semester, OSU students will now have to take a mandatory AI skills seminar, tailored to each field of study. As an example OSU provided to NBC4, education majors could be asked to use AI to create a lesson plan, which they'd then evaluate and revise. Then they'd write a reflection — every student's favorite — on their AI usage. Maybe some students could benefit from learning about the downsides of AI from these courses. But on the whole, university policies like these could foster a climate where AI usage is not just openly acceptable but desirable, having students believe they're being empowered by some all-knowing sci-fi tech, when in reality it's still very experimental with a future that is anything but certain. More on AI: Are Children Losing the Ability to Read?
Forbes
04-06-2025
- Health
- Forbes
Code Meets Cabinet: How AI Is Whispering In The Halls Of Government
Arpan Saxena is the COO/CIO at (based out of Harvard University), a leading healthcare AI solutions company. getty In recent years, efficiency has become more than a budgetary aspiration—it's a political imperative. Government agencies around the world are under pressure to modernize legacy processes, deliver faster services and meet rising expectations from citizens who've grown accustomed to the responsiveness of the private sector. In this climate, AI—particularly generative AI (GenAI)—has begun to play an increasingly influential, if quiet, role in government agencies. While debates around AI tend to swing between utopian dreams and dystopian fears, a quieter transformation is taking place in the government back office. In pilot programs and procurement meetings, GenAI is being evaluated not as a sci-fi curiosity but as a pragmatic tool for paperwork-heavy bureaucracies. GenAI's utility in government is not found in headline-grabbing robots or automated surveillance systems. It's showing up in the trenches of civil service—where policy briefs are written, compliance forms are reviewed and workflows are clogged with procedural friction. Governments are experimenting with GenAI to: • Draft regulatory summaries. • Analyze and synthesize public comments. • Review contracts and legal language. • Generate templates for benefits processing. • Translate bureaucratic language into plain English. In the U.S., for example, the Department of Veterans Affairs has piloted the use of GenAI to help streamline correspondence and claims processing, areas long plagued by backlogs and inconsistencies. In the U.K., HM Revenue and Customs is exploring AI-assisted tax advisory tools to better support tax advisors. These are not moonshots. They are efficiency plays—designed to support, not replace, the civil servant. Based on the current use cases, Boston Consulting Group predicts that the "government market for GenAI applications is projected to grow at more than 50% per year." Three converging pressures led to the adoption of AI in government agencies: 1. Operational Complexity: Government systems are layered with regulation, exceptions and historical patchwork. Human processing alone is no longer sustainable. 2. Public Expectation: Citizens expect digital government experiences to match the convenience of private platforms. Waiting weeks for a decision or form now feels outdated, if not unjust. 3. Cost Containment: With budget constraints tightening, governments are seeking ways to 'do more with less.' AI tools promise marginal gains at scale—translating into massive impact. Despite the potential, GenAI in government is not without its risks—and governments know it. Accuracy, bias, explainability and security are front and center in pilot discussions. The same GenAI model that summarizes a dense policy brief could also, if left unchecked, 'hallucinate' legal interpretations or misrepresent regulations. These tools cannot operate in a vacuum of oversight. Moreover, transparency is non-negotiable. Citizens have a right to know how decisions are made, particularly when those decisions impact healthcare, benefits or legal status. Any deployment of GenAI must come with clear auditability, ethical review and human-in-the-loop safeguards. This is why many governments are proceeding carefully: piloting, sandboxing and pairing AI output with expert validation. In this regard, slow may be smart. As AI quietly enters the policy sphere, the most forward-thinking agencies are not asking if they should use AI—but how. Some questions worth considering before getting started: • Where are our most friction-heavy processes? • Which use cases can benefit from GenAI without compromising trust? • How do we build AI governance that aligns with public values? • Are we investing in the right partnerships to maintain human and AI collaboration? These questions will shape the difference between AI as a trend and AI as a transformative tool. Generative AI's role in government isn't about flashy disruption. It's about quiet transformation. About supporting overburdened systems, improving public trust and returning time to the people who keep the engine of the state running. Whether this becomes a long-term success story depends not on the tools but on how thoughtfully they're deployed. As code begins to whisper into the ears of cabinet members and civil servants alike, the responsibility isn't to blindly follow—but to listen, validate and act wisely. This article was co-written with CEO and cofounder Amber Nigam, a Forbes Business Council member. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
AI can immediately boost worker productivity—but it comes at the cost of motivation and makes employees bored with their jobs
As more workers incorporate AI into their day-to-day lives, a surprising dichotomy is taking shape: employee efficiency may be increasing, but it could come at the cost of motivation. Once workers use generative AI to complete a task, their desire to do a task without AI takes a major hit, according to a recent study published in Scientific Reports. Employees reported an 11% decline in intrinsic motivation, and 20% increase in boredom. The researchers conducted four different experiments, in which 3,500 participants were tasked with various real-world assignments, including writing a Facebook post, drafting an email, and writing a performance review for a subordinate. Some participants used ChatGPT on their first task, and then worked without AI assistance on their second, whereas others completed both assignments without any help. 'Our findings have big implications for companies looking to leverage gen AI's potential gains without hurting their employees' drive when it comes to their other responsibilities,' write the study researchers Yukun Liu, Suqing Wu, Mengqi Ruan, Siyu Chen and Xiao-Yun Xie in an accompanying article published in the Harvard Business Review. The researchers concluded that the motivation dip lies in AI's role of making workers feel disconnected from their tasks. When workers felt that they were not fully in charge of the output of a certain task, it undermined their connection to the assignment. In the case of the performance review, when the critical thinking and personalized ideas are removed via automation, employees reported that the task became less engaging. Corporate America is captivated with the promise of AI, but still struggling to figure out how to train employees, and how the new tech can best contribute to workflow. As companies race to win the productivity game, the latest study offers a cautionary warning about the emotional spillover effects that bosses need to watch out for. But while the latest data may be concerning for employee morale, it doesn't mean that it's time to abandon the AI ship. In an effort to both maximize productivity and engagement, the authors suggest five potential solutions for employers. The first suggestion is to blend AI and human contributions. For example, instead of having AI write the performance review itself, the authors recommend having gen AI draft an outline, which a manager then customizes and tailors. The second is designing engaging solo tasks, which allows a give-and-take when it comes to AI-assisted work, like brainstorming. The third suggestion is to make AI collaboration transparent via clear communication to employees about the technology's role as an assistant, not a replacement. Fourthly, organizations should also rotate between AI-assisted and independent tasks, in an effort to maximize workflow productivity. And finally, the researchers suggest offering employees AI trainings that teach them to use the technology mindfully. 'By thoughtfully designing workflows that integrate gen AI, businesses can unlock its benefits without compromising workers' motivation and engagement,' the researchers write. 'After all, the future of work isn't just about what AI can do—it's about what humans and AI can achieve together.' This story was originally featured on
Indian Express
29-05-2025
- Indian Express
AI-based identification, simpler registration: ETS to introduce changes in TOEFL, GRE
From next year, the English language test TOEFL will be offered as a personalised test which will adjust in real time based on how a student performs and will feature AI-assisted identity verification, according to the Educational Testing Service (ETS). While some of the changes in exams like TOEFL and GRE have been implemented from May 30 onwards, and the remaining will be introduced from 2026. According to officials, ETS will implement a multi-stage adaptive design for the reading and listening sections of the TOEFL iBT starting in 2026.'The test will use content that is relevant, accessible and carefully reviewed to reduce cultural bias,' said Rohit Sharma, Senior Vice President of Global Mobility Solutions at ETS. In addition to the traditional scoring system, TOEFL will introduce an intuitive score scale of 1 to 6. Score reports will display both the new 1 to 6 banded scale and the traditional 0 to 120 scale. Institutions will receive training and resources to facilitate a smooth transition to the new scoring system, as mentioned in the press release. Starting from May 2025, the home edition of the test will be redesigned to provide a more seamless and supportive experience. New features will include ETS-trained in-house proctors for consistent support throughout the testing session, AI-assisted identity verification (ENTRUST) to confirm test takers' identities while reducing check-in issues, and a simplified registration and test-day workflow to lower stress and administrative challenges. 'This additional score will directly align with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) – the world's most widely recognised English proficiency framework, making score interpretation simpler and more consistent,' Sharma said. In 2023, the ETS had executed a series of changes in the 60-year-old test to create an optimal experience for those taking it. Reducing the duration to less than two hours instead of three and allowing candidates to be able to see their official score release date upon completion of the test were among them. The Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) is a standardised test that measures the English language abilities of non-native speakers who wish to enrol in English-speaking universities. The test is recognised by over 12,000 institutions in more than 160 countries and is universally accepted in popular destinations such as the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Additionally, over 98 per cent of universities in the UK accept it, as per a statement by the ETS.
