Curated Intel from the Talent Tech Industry
April 17-23, 2023:
• Bringing it to a screeching halt: OpenAI’s CEO says the Age of Giant AI Models is already over;
• Focusing on what employers want: Indeed intros Pay for Results pricing for cost-effective hiring;
• Building barriers: Steve Case opines on America’s biggest mistake in the war for high-tech talent;
• Wondering where the leaders were: Meta recruiter claims she was paid $200K to do nothing;
• Finalizing Big Apple’s Brave New Rule: NYC outlines compliance requirements for AI bias law.
PLUS
• If you’re in the job board or talent technology business and tired of seeing your company treated like a second-class subset of HR Technology, you deserve the recognition and support you’ll receive at TAtech North America & The World Job Board Forum, coming up in Austin, Texas USA on May 22-24, 2023. It is the only conference totally dedicated to your bottom-line success in the North American market. The content and connections it delivers will accelerate your sales, reinforce your brand and give you a sustainable competitive advantage in the market. So, don’t delay; register today.
OpenAI’s CEO Says the Age of Giant AI Models Is Already Over
THE STUNNING CAPABILITIES of ChatGPT, the chatbot from startup OpenAI, has triggered a surge of new interest and investment in artificial intelligence. But late last week, OpenAI’s CEO warned that the research strategy that birthed the bot is played out. It's unclear exactly where future advances will come from. OpenAI has delivered a series of impressive advances in AI that works with language in recent years by taking existing machine-learning algorithms and scaling them up to previously unimagined size. GPT-4, the latest of those projects, was likely trained using trillions of words of text and many thousands of powerful computer chips. The process cost over $100 million. But the company’s CEO, Sam Altman, says further progress will not come from making models bigger. “I think we're at the end of the era where it's going to be these, like, giant, giant models,” he told an audience at an event held at MIT late last week. “We'll make them better in other ways.” Altman’s declaration suggests an unexpected twist in the race to develop and deploy new AI algorithms. Since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November, Microsoft has used the underlying technology to add a chatbot to its Bing search engine, and Google has launched a rival chatbot called Bard. Many people have rushed to experiment with using the new breed of chatbot to help with work or personal tasks.
Indeed Introduces Pay for Results Pricing To Help Employers Hire More Efficiently at Any Budget
Indeed, whose mission is to help people get jobs, is taking its pay for performance value to a new level with Pay for Results pricing, which includes pay per application (PPA) and pay per started application (PPSA). This pricing offering aims to help employers hire faster and easier. PPA delivers quality applicants that meet an employer’s preferences and charges them only when they receive an application, rather than when they receive job ad clicks. Employers can review the price per application, set an application limit based on their budget, and automatically reject applications that don’t meet their needs by setting predetermined requirements. Additionally, employers have 72 hours to manually reject any application before being charged. With PPA, employers who post jobs directly to Indeed pay when they get completed applications. With PPSA, employers only pay when applications are started from higher-intent job candidates. PPSA primarily supports large employers whose jobs are available on Indeed.
Opinion: America’s big mistake in the war for high-tech talent according to Steve Case
It’s a classic case of the left hand not knowing what the right is doing. After making a substantial investment in the industries of tomorrow — the recently passed CHIPS and Science Act provides $39 billion for companies establishing plants for semiconductors and other sophisticated products in the US — the government now is leaving many of the very workers required to staff those new facilities at risk of deportation. What we’re doing is counterproductive, yet here we are. Even amid the fallout from Silicon Valley Bank’s recent failure and layoffs at some of the largest tech companies, America’s high-tech sector is still growing. In fact, the sector is poised now to create so many jobs over the next decade that the domestic supply of scientists and engineers won’t suffice. Already, some 40% of software engineers working here are born outside the US, according to Bloomberg News, and many positions remain unfilled. Deloitte predicts that within seven years the United States will need upward of 1 million additional skilled workers in the semiconductor industry alone. Yes, some of the big-tech companies are cutting back, but startups in rapidly expanding sectors such as artificial intelligence, decarbonization, advanced manufacturing and health care are greatly in need of talent to expand.
A former Meta recruiter paid about $200,000 a year says her team 'did nothing' as there 'really wasn't enough work'
A former Meta employee says there "wasn't enough work" to do and her entire team was often "doing nothing" while she was at the company. Maddie Machado, who joined as a talent sourcer in 2021, said in The Independent's Voices section that the Facebook owner had an "inefficient process" for recruiting. "I wasn't just sitting around and not doing anything for $200,000; it was a whole team of recruiters doing nothing because of an inefficient process," she said. She added that there "really wasn't enough work" for her team. Machado's comments come with Meta having begun a new round of layoffs this week. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced it was cutting 11,000 jobs in November, followed by a further 10,000 in March. Insider analysis shows it's cut almost a quarter of its workforce since last year.
NYC Outlines Compliance Requirements for AI Bias Law
New York City issued its final rule regulating the use of automated employment decision tools (AEDTs) in hiring and announced that enforcement of the law will begin July 5. The law took effect on Jan. 1, 2023, after rules were proposed in September 2022 and later revised in December 2022 following a public hearing. The final rule adopts the December proposal, with modest amendments and clarifications related to important definitions contained in the law and how bias audits will meet compliance. "The AEDT law restricts the use of automated employment decision tools and artificial intelligence by employers and employment agencies by requiring that such tools be subjected to bias audits and requiring employers and employment agencies to notify employees and job candidates that such tools are being used to evaluate them," said Simone Francis, an attorney with Ogletree Deakins in New York City and St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. "For employers that utilize automated employment decision tools in a manner that comes within the scope of this law, the issuance of final rules provides some long-awaited clarity about their obligations related to obtaining a bias audit and providing information about the results of the audit," she said. "The final rules include a number of changes to earlier versions, including expanding the scope of 'machine learning, statistical modeling, data analytics, or artificial intelligence,' modifying bias audit standards, and clarifying information that must be disclosed."
Get the Recognition & Support You Deserve
If you’re in the job board or talent technology business and tired of seeing your company treated like a second-class subset of HR Technology, you deserve the recognition and support you’ll receive at TAtech North America & The World Job Board Forum, coming up in Austin, Texas USA on May 22-24, 2023. It is the only conference totally dedicated to your bottom-line success in the North American market. The content and connections it delivers will accelerate your sales, reinforce your brand and give you a sustainable competitive advantage in the market. Whether your company is a niche or general job board, aggregator, talent marketplace, programmatic platform, conversational AI solution, chatbot, ATS, recruitment marketing solution, recruitment advertising agency, CRM platform, interviewing or assessment system or talent technology consultancy, this event will supercharge your company. So, don’t delay; register today.