AI Appears to Be Trapping Certain Job Applicants in a Limbo Where They Never Get an Interview for "Reasons" That Are Completely Unfair

AI is described as a looming, uncertain threat that affects society even without clear knowledge of its impact. Workers already employed face anxiety about possible future disruption, while unemployed workers prioritize immediate survival and returning to stability. For disenfranchised workers, AI is portrayed as pulling them away from paths that could lead back to employment. Many people debate whether AI will automate jobs, but lived experience centers on hiring becoming increasingly difficult. The situation is framed as enshittification, where AI used in hiring makes even interviews nearly unattainable. Chad Markey’s experience is presented as an example of AI screening software contributing to repeated denials despite strong academic and research credentials.

"For workers already enmeshed in the US workforce, AI is akin to a far-off asteroid, a looming threat that could impact all life on Earth. Our best experts can't agree on its trajectory or even its distance from our planet, but knowledge of its presence is enough to throw society into a fervor. There's no way to know: it could hit with such force that it lays waste to all but a chosen few, or it might miss us entirely, as gravitational forces alter the conditions of a flight path not yet written in the stars."

"Then there are the masses of unemployed - maybe they're stranded astronauts, in this tortured metaphor - for whom worrying about the asteroid with two feet on solid ground would be a luxury. For these spacefarers, the asteroid takes a back seat to the more pressing issue of returning home. Yet the asteroid is already making that increasingly impossible, its gravitational force pulling their spacecraft further from the trajectory they need to make it back Earthside."

"This is the situation for disenfranchised workers across the world. As many debate whether AI will automate all jobs in service of a privileged few, others live with the reality that it's already made entering the workforce a Herculean task. It's not an automation story in the traditional sense, but an enshittification one, where many feel that AI as a hiring tool has made even landing a job interview a nearly unattainable fantasy."

"Having applied to 82 such programs for the 2025-2026 cycle, Markey was shocked at the number of flat-out denials coming in. He had good grades from an Ivy league school, Wired noted, as well as at least 10 published research papers to his name, and effusive lette"

Read at Futurism