I arrive at the building at 8:55 in a scheduled Waymo. AIs run this place and I’m still not sure what exactly the company does, but they’re offering paid work and that’s what I need. A robot greets me at the door and tells me to have a seat—in fact, there is only one seat—and then moves to stand near the solitary inner door. Is it welcoming me or guarding against me? Likely both, but it’s not like there’s anywhere for the robot to sit. No need for a reception desk when everything you’d put on a desk is inside the receptionist.
At exactly 9:00am I’m called into the interview room by a speaker in the tiled ceiling. The interview room is empty of everything but a seat and a large table. Naively, I had still expected an interviewer. The table though, is replete with household items of all sorts, including a laptop PC in the centre with the screen glowing towards me.
Another speaker in the ceiling welcomes me briefly and confirms my name and a few details on my resume. Why the two year gap since my last employment? Well, I was a computer programmer, and it’s been hard to find anything… The speaker seems to understand.
“Draw a pelican riding a bicycle.”
I know this one. I’ve even practised for something like it. I sit on the office chair and wheel it in to use the laptop. They’ve got Adobe Illustrator installed but I’ve heard that’s a trick they try to catch you on—basically cheating. I open VSCode and start writing the SVG by hand.
“Please use the art supplies.”
Oh. OH. Right. These guys are already good at computer use. It’ll be human skills they need. Shit. I take a pencil and paper and try to draw a pelican on a bicycle but I’ll be damned if I can remember what a bicycle frame actually looks like. And the proportions of a pelican just don’t work for this; his legs are too short. I’ve messed it up and I can’t make them reach the pedals. In a panic I give him little wooden stilts to bridge the gap.
There’s a whirring sound which I can only imagine is a camera refocusing. Yep, there it is on the ceiling, zooming in.
They let me go home after that, which seems like a bad sign. Just as I’m walking out the door I get an email stating that they don’t wish to go any further with me but I’m welcome to apply again any time. It’s all very polite. They even give me a little feedback, that my pelican wasn’t up to standard with the best candidates but they liked the creativity of the stilts. That part was a mistake…
I go back and carefully reread the job description. It’s light on details but it says they need people with “human skills” and I think I know what they mean. I go home and practise art. I practise sculpture. I build myself a wooden chair. I try to think about all the important and subtle and unique qualities of human life.
Two months later I try again.
“Write a poem using the fridge magnets.”
They’ve even given me a damn fridge. Luckily I’ve studied poetry now, a little. It’s hard to work with the limited vocabulary but in some ways the constraints make it easier somehow as well. I try to capture something unique about the human experience. I can tell that’s what they want, now.
It takes me a good thirty minutes but in the end I’m actually pretty happy with what I’ve got. I must have used more than half of the available words.
But again they send me right home.
Well, I need a job more than ever now, and this is pretty much the only thing going. I study more. I try to think of anything a human might do that an AI can’t. But they’re good at writing now. They’re good at music. They’re good at art. They’re good at poetry.
A few weeks later I decide to just go back. I don’t think I’ll ever be that much more ready than I am now, and they don’t seem to care if I keep applying. Probably takes almost no real effort for them to do an interview.
“Write a short story about your childhood.”
I think about my childhood. I think about how it used to be possible to really be the best at something. I think about how I used to enjoy writing code, solving the puzzle of it. I remember when we were allowed to drive a car ourselves.
Instead of writing a story about my childhood I write “FUCK YOU.” I’m not sure where to go after that so I just write “FUCK YOU” about a fifty more times. They end the interview again after that, but on the way out I get the acceptance email.