What Next: TBD | Is A.I. Taking Your Job?

Slate Technology

Slate

Society & Culture, Technology, History

4.6 • 636 Ratings

🗓️ 21 September 2025

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

If you’re hunting for a job, the odds are increasingly likely you’ll have an interview with an artificial intelligence “recruiter.” And why not? It’s also increasingly likely you’ll be working with A.I. anyway. Guest: Danielle Abril, technology-in-the-workplace reporter for the Washington Post. Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Here's the truth about AI.
0:02.0	AI is only as powerful as the platform it's built into.
0:05.0	ServiceNow puts AI to work for people across your business,
0:09.0	removing friction and frustration for your employees,
0:12.0	supercharging productivity for your developers,
0:15.0	providing intelligent tools for your service agents to make customers happier.
0:19.0	All built into a single platform you can use
0:22.2	right now. That's why the world works with ServiceNow. Visit ServiceNow.com slash UK slash AI for people.
0:30.7	Abby's just woken up. It's 731 and she's forgotten to ring the doctor. There's no point
0:35.7	ringing now. She needs to get to work. But she's not worried. She's got an HSBC Premier bank account with access to digital GP appointments, plus two second opinions a year should she need them. Everything's Premier when your bank account is. Search HSBC Premier. HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. The doctor will see you now.
0:54.8	Apply with £100,000 annual income or £100,000 savings or investments with HSBC UK or Premier Status Abroad.
1:04.2	When Danielle Abrill applied for a sales job with a jewellery company, the email she got in reply came not from a human, but from a
1:13.2	virtual recruiter. And they say, you know, I'd like to call you tomorrow at 3 p.m. or whatever to set
1:21.0	up a screening interview with you. Danielle is actually a reporter for the Washington Post who covers
1:26.6	the labor market.
1:38.9	But with the jewelry company's blessing, she wanted to go through a process that more and more workers are experiencing, interviewing for a job with an AI recruiter.
1:46.6	It sounded somewhat like a human. It was not like a robotic voice. In that sense, it sounded like human, but in another sense, it also sounded like a spam call.
1:51.1	Like if I didn't know any better, if I hadn't seen that email or text, I would have been
1:54.0	like, oh, this is some sales thing that I need to hang up on.
1:58.5	You gotta, I'm sorry to make you do this, but come on, you got to like do the voice. Oh, yes. It was like, hello, I'm virtual recruiter Danielle. And I'm here to talk about the job you recently applied for. And so what we found from job seekers who were getting these calls was exactly that experience where some people were like, is this a scam? Is this real? Is this virtual recruiter thing real? Or they just trying to get
2:20.8	information from me? Because obviously a lot of us, myself included, are getting those weird
2:27.1	scam job offer texts. But the process Danielle went through is real. It was just a little bit
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Slate and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.