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- [00:04]
Joseph
Hello and welcome to the 404 Media podcast where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds, both online and IRL. 404 Media is a journalist founded company and needs your support. Do subscribe, go to 404 Media Co as well as bonus content every single week. Subscribers also get access to additional episodes where we respond to their best comments. Gain access to that content at 404 Media co. I am your host, Joseph and with me are 404 Media co founders Sam Cole.
- [00:35]
Sam Cole
Hey.
- [00:36]
Joseph
And Jason Kebler.
- [00:38]
Jason Kebler
Hello.
- [00:40]
Joseph
I will say we've uploaded the One Year Subscribers Only podcast, so there should have been a trailer in your feed. If you like the sound of that, please subscribe and you'll get the full episode on the main subscribers feed. All right, this story from Sam. The community is in chaos. WordPress.org now requires you to denounce affiliation with WP Engine to log in. I'm going to be real. This is very confusing to me editing it. I'm very much an outsider looking in, but I understand this is incredibly important to a lot of different people. So before we get to the main story, Sam, I've got three definitions here that I'd really like you to spell out. First of all, what is WordPress.org?
- [01:35]
Sam Cole
I'M tired just thinking about the emails that I'm going to get after this because every time I define any of these in any way, people email me to say I'm wrong and they contradict each other. So no one really understands what the fuck this is. But so as I understand it, and I've checked this with many people, WordPress.org is part of the WordPress foundation, which is a nonprofit organization and it's a open source project. So it creates software that is open source. There's this big community of people who collaborate and develop tools and parts and pieces of the WordPress open source project. And that's the.org which is very important.
- [02:28]
Joseph
Right? And I put it in the wrong. I pull it in the wrong order. Yes, I put it in the wrong order. But when you say sort of WordPress software, broadly what you're referring to is basically the publishing tools and the CMS which many websites around the web use. Okay, so they're connected to that. And then I guess just the other part that we need to define is what is WP Engine?
- [02:53]
Sam Cole
WP Engine is a. It's an independent company that It's. It hosts WordPress sites. So as a company, you can take from the WordPress Community Project the open source project and make your own kind of like what they've done, which is like a hosting service, you know, you can kind of build off of it on your own because it's open source and lots and lots of companies have done this and you're kind of expected to like as part of using the WordPress project and taking part in that, you're expected to kind of give back and contribute back to open source in some way or another and kind of uphold the same values. And then I guess we should also define WordPress the dot com, the commercial entity which is owned by Automattic, which is owned by Matt Mullenweg. It took me a long time to realize Automattic has two T's because it's automatic, because it's matte foreshadowing for you. And so Automattic funds and contributes to the code base of WordPress the project. That they're separate things like in theory.
- [04:17]
Jason Kebler
You know, I feel like WordPress.com yeah, WordPress.com though is as Sam said, a for profit entity. But it's also like a whole like hosted version of WordPress where you can just like go on there, pay them a monthly fee and spin up a WordPress site. It is sort of like Ghost Pro, which is what we use, where we are using a version of Ghost, but it's all like one package where you can like set up a website on that entity.
- [04:57]
Joseph
Yes.
- [04:58]
Jason Kebler
Does that make sense?
- [04:59]
Sam Cole
I think most people are more familiar with dot com. If you were going to say I'm going to make a WordPress site, you're probably going to go to WordPress.com and you're immediately going to have all the tools right there. It's very easy out of the box. You're probably not going to get super into the coding of using the dot org stuff, which you could. It's not that hard. But the dot com is kind of like if you're just going to take home the full thing without having to fuck with it too much.
- [05:27]
Joseph
But then some people go to WP engine as well, almost as an alternative way of doing that. So then with all of those definitions in place and hey, if you didn't understand it, hit that rewind button. Just listen to that bit over and over again because I don't know, it's very, very crazy and confusing, but I think we established it. So before we get into the news really broadly, before we get into those specifics, what is the conflict happening here between these various parties? Because this has kind of been brewing For a little while, right?
- [06:03]
Sam Cole
Yeah, yeah. So in September, Matt Mullenweg, which I just mentioned, owns or he founded, he co founded WordPress.org he owns and founded Automattic, which owns dot com. He posted, he wrote a blog post on the WordPress.org site saying that WordPress engine basically accusing WordPress engine of not contributing enough to open source and also for confusing people by calling itself WP Engine. Like confusing people into thinking that WP Engine was WordPress, like an official thing.
- [06:48]
Jason Kebler
Yeah, yeah.
- [06:49]
Sam Cole
And have I maybe I've been saying WordPress engine. That's not really what. That's not what it's called, by the way. See, people are already. People are already mad at me. I can feel them. I feel my ears tingling. WP Engine is the name of the company. And he's like, well, it's confusing people.
- [07:05]
Jason Kebler
What does the WP stand for?
- [07:07]
Sam Cole
Who could say?
- [07:10]
Joseph
We don't really know. I'm just reading it. I'm just reading it as it's written in the document. I'm trying to be really careful right now.
- [07:17]
Sam Cole
Well, yeah. And so Matt writes his blog and he's like, WP Engine confused my mom into thinking that they are part of my company. Which, by the way, why is he talking about WP Engine with his mom? Who knows, you know, that may come to light someday. But yeah, so he's saying that they are confusing people and that they need to, they need to pay for a trademark license to use that name. He's pissed off. He's accusing their investors of not contributing enough to the open source project and kind of throwing out all these things. And then basically WordPress WP engine. WP engine, right. Does like, sends him a cease and desist and is basically like, stop trashing us in public and. Or sends him and automatic a cease and desist. And then automatic sends them back a cease and desist saying, you know what I just said Matt accused them of.
- [08:17]
Joseph
Yes.
- [08:18]
Sam Cole
And then WPE Engine files a lawsuit, which we'll get into, but that's enough for right now. Yes.
- [08:27]
Joseph
Yeah, that. That makes sense. So you have these accusations that, hey, you're taking this code base, but you're not contributing enough to it. It's a brand confusion thing as well. And then there's firing back and then firing back to the firing back, et cetera. Last week, I think at this point, there was an update to a login page. What exactly was that update and what was it sort of asking users to do?
- [08:56]
Sam Cole
So the updates on this is on the WordPress.org login it says, so if you want to log into your account for WordPress.org, that gets you into support forums and to be able to contribute. So contributors to the WordPress.org project need to log in using this. There's now suddenly, as of last week, a checkbox that you have to check before you log in or register a new account that says, I am not affiliated with WP Engine in any way, financially or otherwise. You have to check that. You have to agree to that before you log in. Which is complicated because a lot of people are affiliated with them because they're doing like, if they're part of the project, they're doing like consulting for them or they have clients who have clients who are of theirs. Like, WP Engine has a lot of, they have a lot of stake in this, like, ecosystem, as does Automattic. They're kind of, I don't want to say competitors, but they're kind of doing the same thing. So it's a very tricky thing all of a sudden for community members and contributors to even just access.org because now they have to, like, they're like, is this legally binding? This is dragging us into this kind of like, for profit beef. And we were on the nonprofit side. So it all gets very hostile and complicated and drags a lot more people into it that didn't really expect to be, I think.
- [10:23]
Joseph
Yeah. And so they've basically put up a wall saying, if you're affiliated at all with WP Engine, we're not going to let you in. You said it sounds like that's quite confusing potentially for users because as you say, well, they might be affiliated, they might not. They just want to log in and continue to do their job or their projects. I mean, how did users that you spoke to react to this login box change?
- [10:54]
Sam Cole
I mean, they were freaked out. There's a Slack that is for people who are contributors to the project. And they were asking, Matt's in the Slack and they're asking Matt all these questions. And then Matt confirmed in the Slack that this box is part of him banning WP Engine from using any of WordPress.org's resources, which is a whole other part of this. People were asking, like, you know, like, what's the deal with this? Like, can you explain? And then he's just kind of saying, like, well, it's your choice whether to check it or not. Lots of people lie all the time. And it's like, man, this is crazy. Like, what are you talking about? Like, this is it just feels like very petty to them that this has even reached this level. So, yeah, the folks I talked to were very upset. And then in the slack, which is another kind of part of this, people were getting banned for even just, like, questioning it. It seemed like there were a few contributors who had been contributors for a really long time.
- [12:03]
Joseph
I mean, you spoke to someone who had been doing it for 10 years, right?
- [12:06]
Sam Cole
Yeah, yeah. Like a really. Like, this has been part of their life and part of something they've been doing for a really long time and got kicked out of the slack. So. So now he doesn't have access to this community resource that he was using to help keep the project going. And he was like, a really important part of this, like, maintaining lots of different parts of the open source. So that's kind of the drama where we left it last week. And of course, much has happened since then. There's a whole lot of drama with a plugin being altered and banned.
- [12:46]
Joseph
Well, give me. I don't even know about the plugin thing, so give me your version of.
- [12:54]
Jason Kebler
That before you do that. And this has come through. But I just want to stress, like, this is so. Besides being complicated, it's so messy. It is like, messy, messy. Drama. Drama to the, like, 15th power. Like, people. Like, there's a lot of, like, vindictiveness here. There's a lot of people who have been contributing to these projects for a long time getting kicked out of communities that they, like, were in for a while. There's like, a lot of Matt Mullenweg posting blog posts, then deleting the blog post, then posting altered versions of the blog post. Like, he's going on other podcasts and, you know, it's super messy. And I know, like, we're being very careful because it just is. One, it's complicated. Two, it's messy. Like, there's not a better word for it than, like, this is drama, drama, drama, drama, drama. And it's like, such a distraction and.
- [13:58]
Joseph
It might be having a real impact. Well, it is having a real impact on people because now they can't get in and they can't, you know, contribute potentially. And, yeah, very distracting as well.
- [14:07]
Sam Cole
I think the worry is, like, it's going to break because it's like the people working for Automattic are. And also the people contributing in the community, like, WordPress is running a lot of sites on the Internet at this point. I think it's like something close to, like, the number that gets thrown around is like 40%. I don't know if that's accurate, really, but it's a lot of sites out there that depend on WordPress to function and if things are kind of imploding, which they seem to be within automatic and within the larger project and the foundation, that puts a lot of the Internet at risk and the way it functions. So just very quickly, the plugin thing happened late last week where dot org took over a super popular WP engine plugin and just took it out. Just like, just took it over and invoked some kind of like, guideline and that feels vindictive, but, you know, who knows really. And then also a couple weeks ago, Matt offered people working at Automattic this big alignment offer where if they didn't agree with him and his actions, they could take a. It's basically a severance agreement where they got paid out and were told, you know, you're free to go, which a lot of people took. It was like 159 people took that offer. God knows how many stayed. Because they need healthcare and like. And need a job.
- [15:56]
Joseph
Yeah. While your boss is doing these various things, you know, like, I just, I want to work on WordPress.
- [16:02]
Sam Cole
Yeah, yeah. It's like, I'm here to do a job. I'm here to do my coding job, not. Not get involved in all this drama.
- [16:09]
Joseph
So I will say that yes, you know, allegedly 478 million websites built on WordPress. That's according to a particular hosting provider who would potentially have at least some insight into that. But so that's a lot as. Yeah. And of course, if it continues, maybe there could be a dramatic impact on at least some of those sites. Right. You mentioned this lawsuit and that's going a little bit back in the timeline, I think. But like, I mean, we don't have to do a play by play of what is exactly. But is it just like a more formal sort of manifestation of the beef here? Like, what is the lawsuit?
- [16:50]
Sam Cole
The lawsuit is from WP Engine against Automattic and it accuses them of extortion and abuse of power.
- [17:01]
Joseph
Well, we'll leave that there.
- [17:04]
Sam Cole
Based on everything else we've just said, I will leave it there. I mean, it's, you know, it's. We linked to it in the story, the lawsuit, but basically, you know, Debbie Fanjun is accusing Matt and Automattic of not letting them have the freedom to run their company the way that they want to, even though that's kind of what was the agreed upon. That's the premise of why they built their company on WordPress.
- [17:36]
Joseph
Yes. Because there's an open source license and you're supposed to be able to go use it and you can't or you shouldn't just add extra terms later when you feel like it, that sort of thing. And I guess it just leads to our last thing, which is sort of. What's the latest in that? It seems that Mullenweg is now making potential enemies with other high profile people in this space. There was sort of a blog post and then a response to the blog post. I mean, what's happening there? Is it just more of the same or.
- [18:08]
Sam Cole
I mean, it's more of the same. I actually have not had time to read way into what's going on. But yeah, I don't know. Jason, did you read the DHH blog?
- [18:19]
Jason Kebler
Yeah. I mean the short version of it is there's a beef between Matt Mullenweg and David Heinemeyer Hansen, better known as dhh, who is a race car driver slash open source developer. Better. Better known in this world for his open source development. He created like Ruby on Rails. He created Campfire, which was like an open source version, like a predecessor to Slack and a couple other pretty big tech software things. Very successful, highly successful. He runs this software development firm called 37signals. And basically DHH criticized Matt Mullenweg and then Matt Mullenweg wrote a blog post basically railing against DHH and that claimed he was not as successful as he should have been because like companies like Slack took his general idea and turned and made them into like gigantic companies. So he was pretty much to paraphrase, saying like, you're not as successful as me, more or less. And then he edited that post to be like, sorry, I was mad. And that all happened in the last 24 hours as we're recording this.
- [19:47]
Joseph
Yeah, it's not the sort of communications you expect from a senior person or a leader of a company. And not just a company in the organization, but one with this very, very important to the Internet. And I know it sounds like, it sounds like, oh, on one side we're just talking about drama, that sort of thing. And that is true in some way because, well, they've got, they've done that, they've brought it upon themselves. But there is like significant impact here for people's jobs for the tech industry and potentially the web, you know, writ large, depending on what happens now. So I hope people don't listen to this and then just think, oh, you know, this is like silly gossip or something because no, this could actually be very, very real. And it is very, very real for a lot of people as well.
- [20:35]
Sam Cole
Yeah, people are really scared for their jobs. I think people are. It's. I mean, we've all worked at a unstable workplace. Like many people work at places where they don't have any control over the whims of the people to higher ups, executives, owners, CEOs. What, what craziness they get up to. Not saying math is doing craziness, but like, you know, can relate to a workplace. Things are unstable and confusing and people are leaving en masse and taking offers to like shut down whole departments and it's just, it's not fun and it's honestly very scary for a lot of people because they need, they need this stable work. And it's just, you know, it seems to be this drive from this one kind of beef occurring.
- [21:26]
Jason Kebler
I think without knowing the intense specifics of Open source licensing and these specific projects and their histories and all of that, there is like probably space to have some sort of nuanced conversation about like open source contributions and licensing and who can profit off of Open source software and in what ways and how is that ethical? And naming conventions like, should something like WP engine, like should they, should it be called WordPress engine? Is WP engine okay? Like, are they contributing enough to the project and in what ways are they contributing to the project? Blah, blah, blah. Like all of this sort of thing, these are conversations that we sort of talked about before, and I think that we most talked about them when there was like a social engineering attack on this really important part of Open Source software. And it's like in general Open Source software, it can be the case where there's like a few people who contribute to a project and then a bigger company takes and spins that off and makes a lot of money on it. And the people who contributed to that project feel taken advantage of in some way. I'm not saying that's what's happening here. I'm saying like, that is a constant topic of conversation and this is like a very nuanced thing that people are gonna need to continue talking about. But like, what is happening here is there is like a central figure, like in this case, Matt Mullenweg has like a very, he's very outspoken, he's very powerful. And rather than having like the nuanced conversation, it's like playing out in court, it's playing out in like on social media. It's playing out in people getting, feeling like they have to take a buyout to leave their jobs. People feeling like they're being kicked out of a community that they work on, so on and so on and so forth. And it's like at the core here, there's a very important thing, but the way that it's playing out feels, frankly to me, like very immature, very, like I said, messy. And people don't like that.
- [23:49]
Joseph
Yeah, for sure. All right, we'll leave that there. I'm sure we'll have more updates in the future, but we'll be right back. And then when we return, we're going to talk about how Jason used AI to apply for a crap ton of jobs while he was having breakfast. I think we'll be right back after this.
- [24:21]
Jason Kebler
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- [25:07]
D
Babbel speech recognition tech helps improve your.
- [25:10]
Jason Kebler
Pronunciation and accent just like this.
- [25:13]
Joseph
Arrivederci.
- [25:15]
D
Arrivederci.
- [25:17]
Jason Kebler
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- [27:16]
D
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- [28:48]
Joseph
All right, and we are Back. This is one that Jason wrote, quote, I applied to 2843 roles, end quote. The rise of AI powered job application bots. This is crazy. First of all, walk us through the story you tell at the top of the article. Sort of where were you, what was happening and then what were you doing?
- [29:13]
Jason Kebler
Yeah, so I was at a coffee shop working and I had found this thing called auto jobs applier AI hawk bot on GitHub and it does what it says in the, in the name. It automatically applies to Jobs for you using AI. And specifically it does it on LinkedIn. And it's a Python script that plugs into OpenAI more or less, or you can use it with Gemini and a couple of other LLMs. And I had seen it going like a little bit viral on Twitter earlier that week. And so basically I wanted to see if it worked. So I installed Python, I like set up the script and I am in this coffee shop. I've ordered my food.
- [30:09]
Joseph
What did you. What food? I'm trying to do narrative journalism.
- [30:13]
Jason Kebler
It was scrambled eggs, there was a sausage involved, there was a salad. I was in Taiwan, which is maybe important and will be the subject of future stories. But anyways, that was the important bump.
- [30:32]
Joseph
I don't know why he's saying anyways, that's like crucial context. So you have this food. I have this food.
- [30:38]
Jason Kebler
To be totally honest, it was the first coffee that I had in a month, which is good. It went well. The coffee went well. Didn't get too jittery from it, so that was a win. But I typed, I clicked enter, I had a terminal window up, which is really cool. Anytime you're in the terminal, it's very cool. And you're heading hacking, essentially.
- [31:01]
Joseph
It's true, yeah. And then you change the color scheme to be like green, black. And then you're definitely hacking. So what happens when you hit enter?
- [31:08]
Jason Kebler
So I hit enter and the script starts running and like all of, so like lines of text like, you know, start going. And the bot is essentially explaining what it's doing. And so it opens up a Chrome window, it navigates to LinkedIn. I had already logged into LinkedIn, so it had access to my LinkedIn. And it starts searching for jobs. And it starts searching for jobs according to parameters that I had given the bot. Like I'd pre programmed it into the bot, you know, in according to the readme file that I had. It wasn't like that complicated to do.
- [31:44]
Joseph
That was probably like a configuration file or something.
- [31:46]
Jason Kebler
It was a configuration file and basically I in that configuration file I gave my name, my address, my, like, work history, stuff like that. Like, basically a base, very basic resume of my life. And then I also gave it information about the types of jobs that I wanted. So in this case, I had like, software engineering, marketing. I had, like, communications. I originally had editor and writer in there because that's the types of jobs I had had in the past. And it starts searching through LinkedIn for any jobs that meet this description. And when it finds it, the bot clicks on this button called Easy Apply, which is like, you can apply directly on LinkedIn.
- [32:36]
Joseph
And that's a native LinkedIn feature.
- [32:38]
Jason Kebler
It's a native LinkedIn feature where you can just go through the entire application process on LinkedIn. It doesn't send you to a second website, so you're applying on LinkedIn itself. And so then the bot, like in the terminal says, like, generating resume, generating cover letter. I can see it reading the, the job, like, description, more or less. Like, it will intake it and show like, hey, this is a job at Brilliant Earth, which is a jewelry company. And it was like a social media job at a jewelry company. So it like, read that and it said, like, oh, blah, blah, blah, like, we have precious gems and we're looking for someone who's passionate about jewelry. And I could see that it was reading that or like, the LLM was like, intaking that information. And then it generated a cover letter, it generated a resume, and it uploaded them into LinkedIn. And it also answered a bunch of questions. Like, it would input my name and address. A lot of job applications ask if you have, like, military experience, because there's like, all of these not because they're going to ask you to join their militia, but because there's like, job incentives for hiring veterans and things like that. Sometimes there's a question like, what makes you qualified to work here? And it would generate an answer to that question. And then I would see it click through all these, you know, these menus and click Apply. And like, I set this up, you know, right after I ordered my food at the cafe. And by the time I had finished eating the food, I had applied to 17 jobs.
- [34:30]
Joseph
That's crazy.
- [34:31]
Jason Kebler
So it was like, it was maybe like 45 minutes and it had applied to 17 jobs. There was one moment where I had to pee and I went to the bathroom for like 1.5 minutes and I came back and it had applied to two jobs while I was gone. And I don't even know what jobs they were because I was just like, oh, I wasn't looking at it. So it's pretty wild. Like it was pretty wild software. And as someone who has applied to jobs in the past, it's like I've spent days on a single job application before and this did it very, very quickly. Whether it did it well is something we can talk about, but it generated like a plausible looking job application in a matter of seconds for some of them.
- [35:19]
Joseph
So basically it's not only finding the job, it's also applying to it. It's like doing the whole end to end process of applying for a job, basically finding them and doing the process as well. Obviously you tried it and it was, I mean, successful in the sense that the script worked. Yes, as you say, I guess we'll see if you get any jobs.
- [35:41]
Jason Kebler
I guess I've been rejected from 10 of them so far, which is devastating. But there's still seven more that I'm up for. So could be, could be having some personal soon.
- [35:54]
Joseph
Yeah. If you could let us know as your co founders if you do get like, I don't know, I just, I'd appreciate the heads up, you know, I think that'd be nice. But many, many more people are using it. Tell us about this Telegram group where it seems these users, you know, gather and how many are in there.
- [36:15]
Jason Kebler
So before I wrote this, there was 4,700 people in it. There's now 5,000 in it. So it's been a few days. There's 5,000 people in it. And it's basically like a telegram group where people ask like, how do I set this up if they get stuck? Because it is. It took me, I want to say like a couple hours to get it to work, but that was primarily because I didn't have Python installed on the device I was using and there was like some troubleshooting involved there.
- [36:46]
Joseph
Installing Python is the worst thing you have to do when you get a new MacBook because it no longer ships by default. First thing to remember and it's a pain in the ass.
- [36:54]
Jason Kebler
It's a pain in the ass. And then I installed it. And then they're like, oh, actually we installed an old version. And then it's like, oh, now I installed the new version. And then it's like, well, actually this one isn't compatible with the new version. You need to go back. Yeah, so it was like a lot of that.
- [37:08]
Joseph
And then you have to make sure the script is using the correct version of Python. Sorry, I'm just really glad that you're feeling these pains as well.
- [37:15]
Jason Kebler
Dude, it's so crazy because it worked.
- [37:17]
D
It worked.
- [37:18]
Jason Kebler
I did it one day, I did it the next day and then on the third day I tried again and now it's like Python's not installed and I'm like what are you talking about? And it's like it's not in the correct directory or something. Like I have no idea what's going on. It's driving me crazy because I tried to do it again to test something else and I don't know where it went. But anyways, these people are in there.
- [37:42]
Joseph
And they probably have the same sort of issues because I think kind of the point, at least for some of them, these people aren't going to be software developers necessarily. They just want to apply to a bunch of jobs, right?
- [37:52]
Jason Kebler
They just want to apply to a bunch of jobs. And now there's like a couple startups that are like we are taking this tool and we're putting in a web interface so that you don't need to install Python. But basically people are like asking for tech support. But then there's also a like success room where people are talking about how many jobs they've applied to, whether they've gotten any offers or interviews. And like here's some of the quotes that I pulled from there. Ran it overnight, applied to around 150 jobs. Got an HR call this morning and I'm just getting started lol. I'm going to have it run 24 7. I've been using this platform for a little over three months now, during which I applied to 2,843 roles. In that time I've had four interviews. Receive one offer for a senior data engineer role at £85,000. Others are like, I've just started and already 20 applications sent in 20 minutes. The bot will be running all night, lol. So it's like a bunch of people saying this and a bunch of people using this and you know, it's the AI ification of an entirely new thing. But what I think is very interesting here is that companies and HR software developers and recruiters and stuff like that have been using AI to review job applications for a really long time and that has been really bad. There's been like a few academic studies about how you know, AI review is discriminating against people in an all new way. There's all of these people who just like apply for jobs and their applications are never ever reviewed by a human. Joseph, you wrote about a company where the person, the quote unquote person interviewing someone for a job was an AI So it's being integrated even further. And as someone who, like, if you are someone who's applying for jobs, I think that can be extremely demoralizing. There's tons of people who have applied for, you know, dozens and dozens and dozens of jobs manually and got no response. And that's really frustrating. So I think that this is a response to that state of affairs. And the other specific thing is I'm looking for what it's called right now, but there's a specific type of. There's specific language for the type of AI software that reviews resumes. So there's a specific type of AI software called Applicant Tracking System. And it is this HR automation tool that automatically reviews resumes and cover letters for specific keywords that are, like, in the job description itself. And we are already training humans how to write cover letters so that that type of AI is properly reviewing their resume and cover letter. Like, it's basically SEO, but for your cover letter, and it's like, make sure that you have these keywords and you'll get past the first, like, automated review process. And what this tool is doing is it is taking ats, this Applicant Tracking System lingo, and it is automatically writing a cover letter that applies to the best standards for that. And, you know, it's AI, so, like, lord knows it's probably making some mistakes, but basically, you now have an AI, large language model, writing cover letters with the explicit purpose of having it reviewed by other AI. And I think that is super bleak on one hand. And on the other hand, I'm like, I don't know, if I was someone who applied to a thousand jobs manually and didn't get them, maybe I would do this, because at that point, who gives a shit?
- [42:05]
Joseph
Yeah, exactly. It's almost like this arms race between the companies trying to use AI to streamline it for their own purposes, and then people, quite rightly, I think, being like, well, fuck you, I want to use AI as well. All right, let's leave that there. If you are listening to the free version of the podcast, I will now play us out. But if you are a paying 404 media subscriber, we're going to talk about how the National Archives in the US are pushing AI onto employees as well. We got chat logs, a presentation. We're going to go into all of those details in the next section. You can subscribe and gain access to that content at 404 Media co. As a reminder, 404 Media is journalists founded and supported by subscribers. If you wish to subscribe to 404 Media and directly support our work, please go to 404 Media co. You'll get unlimited access to our articles and an ad free version of this podcast. You'll also get to listen to the Subscribers only section where we talk about a bonus story each week. This podcast is made in partnership with Kaleidoscope. Another way to support us is by leaving a five star rating and review for the podcast. That stuff really helps us out. This has been 404 Media. We will see you again next week.