“Interviews are NOT real anymore.” So reads the opening caption of a TikTok posted in September, punctuated by the skull-and-crossbones emoji. In the video, a young woman interviews for a job on a video call. She has a smartphone propped up against her laptop screen, so she can read off the responses that an AI app has composed for her: “Um, yeah, so, one of my key strengths is my adaptability.” She’s got a point. Getting generative artificial intelligence to whisper into your ear during a job interview certainly counts as adaptable.

“面试已不再真实。”这是九月份发布的一段TikTok视频的开场字幕，旁边还配有一个骷髅头和交叉骨的表情符号。视频中，一位年轻女性正在进行一场视频面试。她的智能手机斜靠在笔记本电脑屏幕旁，这样她就能照着人工智能（AI）应用为她生成的回答来念：“嗯，是的，我的一大优势就是适应能力强。”她还真说对了。在求职面试时让人工智能（AI）在你耳边“耳语”（提供答案），这确实可以算作一种“适应能力”。

More clips from the same alleged job interview give the app a further showcase. “I prioritize clear communication and actively listen,” a woman says in one, as she reads from a phone instead of actively listening. Another such post, which has racked up 5.3 million views, is subtitled “My interviewer thought he caught me using Ai in our LIVE interview.” It shows the same potential boss from all the other videos asking her to share her screen and click through her browser tabs. After doing this, she resumes reading off her phone. “Little did he know,” the subtitle says.

来自同一个所谓的面试的更多片段，进一步展示了这款应用的功能。“我优先考虑清晰的沟通和积极倾听，”一名女子在其中一个片段里说道，而她实际上却是在看手机念稿，并非真的在积极倾听。另一个获得了530万次观看的类似帖子，配文是“我的面试官以为他发现我在直播面试中使用了AI。”视频中，其他所有视频里出现的同一个面试官要求她分享屏幕并点击浏览她的浏览器标签页。这样做之后，她又继续看着手机念稿了。“他却丝毫不知情，”配文写道。

AI-job-search anxiety has been growing for some time. In the past few years, employers started using AI to “read” and screen the thousands of résumés they may receive for each job posting; job searchers began to deluge HR departments (or at least their automated filters) with AI-generated applications; and companies began employing AI agents—fake people—to conduct their first-round interviews. Imagine eating a hearty breakfast, donning your best blazer, and discovering that you’ll be judged by a robo-recruiter.

与人工智能相关的求职焦虑已经持续增长了一段时间。在过去几年里，雇主们开始使用人工智能来“阅读”和筛选他们为每个职位可能收到的成千上万份简历；求职者开始用人工智能生成的申请材料大量涌入人力资源部门（或者至少是他们的自动化筛选器）；而公司也开始雇用AI代理——也就是“假人”——来进行第一轮面试。想象一下，你吃完丰盛的早餐，穿上你最好的西装外套，却发现最终评判你的竟然是一个机器人招聘官。

By this spring, the arms race had advanced to the point where, apparently, applicants were using AI assistants to supply them with material for computer-programming interviews on Zoom. In August, The Wall Street Journal reported that AI is “forcing the return of the in-person job interview,” and that big firms such as Cisco and McKinsey have been urging hiring managers to meet with candidates in person at least once on account of the technology.

到了今年春天，（求职中的）这场“军备竞赛”已经发展到这样的地步：求职者们显然开始利用AI助手，为他们在Zoom上进行的计算机编程面试提供所需内容。八月份，《华尔街日报》报道称，人工智能“正迫使面对面求职面试重新回归”，而思科（Cisco）和麦肯锡（McKinsey）等大公司也由于这项技术（的影响），一直敦促招聘经理至少与求职者进行一次面对面会谈。

The letter of these reports suggest a simple story of innocence and malfeasance. Some HR companies have even described the phenomenon as “interview fraud,” attributing something akin to criminal intent to the job seekers who might pursue it. But the more I investigated and considered the circumstances, the less that label seemed appropriate. Something weirder is taking place. In the context of a tightening economy, employers have turned a powerful technology against their prospective employees. Who could blame the job seekers for retaliating?

这些报道的字面意义似乎描绘了一个关于无辜与不端行为的简单故事。一些人力资源公司甚至将这种现象描述为“面试欺诈”，将某种近似于犯罪意图的东西归咎于可能采取这种做法的求职者。但我越深入调查和思考这些情况，就越觉得这个标签并不恰当。正在发生一些更奇怪的事情。在经济日益紧缩的背景下，雇主们将一项强大的技术转而用于对付潜在的员工。谁又能责怪求职者进行反击呢？

Is a lot of “interview fraud” even really happening? TikTok seems to show a rising trend; posts depict job candidates—especially young ones afflicted by a difficult, AI-degraded job market—who have started using AI to game the interviews themselves. But on closer look, many of these videos are not documenting a scandal so much as wishing one into existence—and monetizing the result. For instance, the ones described above, with the woman who had her phone propped up against her laptop, were posted by an account called @applicationintel, which displays a bio that urges viewers to download an AI app called “AiApply.”

大量的“面试作弊”真的正在发生吗？TikTok上似乎显示出一种上升趋势；许多帖子描绘了求职者——特别是那些在人工智能（AI）影响下、本就艰难的就业市场中苦苦挣扎的年轻人——他们开始利用AI来应对面试，甚至从中取巧。但仔细观察后会发现，许多这类视频与其说是在记录一个真实的丑闻，不如说是在刻意制造并希望其成真，从而从中获利。例如，上面提到的那些视频，其中一名将手机支在笔记本电脑旁的女士，其视频是由一个名为@applicationintel的账号发布的，该账号的简介便是在鼓励观众下载一款名为“AiApply”的人工智能应用。

I found many others of this kind. An AI-interview-software company called LockedIn AI posts on TikTok about how to “Crush Any Job Interview” with its tools. Kazuyoshi Fujimoto, a young professional engineer with a side hustle as a “career expert,” has a series of posts with subtitles like “My brother is interviewing for a $469k engineer job using AI.” Fujimoto answered my request to talk for this story, but stopped responding when I followed up to ask whether any of his posts were staged.

我还发现了许多类似的例子。一家名为 LockedIn AI 的人工智能面试软件公司在 TikTok 上发布视频，宣传如何利用其工具“轻松通过任何面试”。一位名叫藤本和义（Kazuyoshi Fujimoto）的年轻专业工程师，同时兼职“职业专家”，发布了一系列视频，配有“我弟弟正在用人工智能面试一份年薪46.9万美元的工程师工作”之类的字幕。藤本先生应我的要求接受了采访，但在我追问他是否有些帖子是摆拍时，他就不再回复了。

The fact that AI-interviewing services are being pushed by TikTok influencers suggests that there is money to be made from this idea, and that these products’ customers are real. I wanted to see whether those customers were buying something useful. In one of his TikTok posts, Fujimoto recommends a tool he likes called Final Round AI, which “listens in real time” and “suggests killer responses.” I decided to sign up to see how it worked. (A basic subscription is free; one that allows unlimited live interviews and hides the app during screen sharing costs $96 a month.)

TikTok网红推广AI面试服务这一事实表明，这个想法有利可图，并且这些产品的顾客是真实存在的。我想看看这些顾客购买的东西是否真的有用。藤本在他的一篇TikTok帖子中推荐了一款他喜欢的工具，名为“Final Round AI”，它能“实时听取”，并“提供绝佳回答”。我决定注册试用，看看它如何运作。（基础订阅是免费的；而允许无限次实时面试并在屏幕共享时隐藏应用程序的版本，每月收费96美元。）

After opening the Final Round “Interview Copilot,” you have to tell it about the role for which you will be interviewing. By default, there are a few dozen options—and almost all of them are in software development or its orbit. I settled on “content writer” (ugh) as the closest match to what I’m doing here and started on a practice interview. I asked Final Round AI to supply me with an answer to this potential question: “If I assigned you a story on people using AI to cheat on job interviews, how would you approach that topic?”

打开Final Round的“面试副驾驶”（Interview Copilot）后，你首先需要告知它你将要面试的职位。默认设置下，该应用提供数十个选项，且几乎都集中在软件开发及其相关领域。我选择了“内容创作者”（哎），这是最接近我目前工作内容的选项，并以此开始了模拟面试。我请Final Round AI就一个潜在问题提供答案：“如果我指派你撰写一篇关于人们如何利用人工智能在求职面试中作弊的报道，你将如何处理这个选题？”

It returned a lengthy, milquetoast answer that began, “First, I’d want to really understand the scope of the issue. How widespread is this? Are we talking about a few isolated incidents, or a growing trend? Also, I’d immediately flag the ethical considerations. This isn’t just about tech; it’s about fairness, integrity, and the future of work.” The entire thing was plausible in the way LLM responses often are; if an aspiring writer provided this response during a genuine interview, it wouldn’t be wrong so much as uninspired. It is the sound of a person performing the role of a job candidate, rather than one actually pursuing a job. (Final Round AI did not respond to my request to discuss its software for this story.)

它给出了一个冗长乏味的回答，开头是：“首先，我希望真正理解这个问题的范围。它有多普遍？我们是在谈论一些孤立事件，还是一个日益增长的趋势？此外，我会立即指出其中的伦理考量。这不仅仅关乎技术；它关乎公平、诚信以及工作的未来。”整个回答都像大型语言模型（LLM）的回复那样，貌似合理；如果一位有抱负的写作者在真实的面试中给出这样的答案，倒也说不上是错，只是缺乏灵感。它听起来像是一个人在扮演求职者的角色，而不是真正地追求一份工作。（Final Round AI 没有回应我为这篇报道讨论其软件的请求。）

Reading the app’s suggested interview response, and imagining myself actually delivering it with a straight face on a Zoom, brought to mind the opening scene from the 1990 film Joe Versus the Volcano, in which the title character arrives at work while his boss, Mr. Waturi, takes a phone call in the background. “I know he can get the job,” Mr. Waturi says into the handset. “But can he do the job?” Mr. Waturi repeats that sentence, varying his emphasis, over and over.

阅读这款应用程序建议的面试回答，再想象自己真的在Zoom（视频会议软件）上，一本正经地念出这些答案，这让我想起了1990年电影《乔战火山》（Joe Versus the Volcano）的开场片段。在那个场景中，片中主角来到公司，而他的老板瓦图里先生（Mr. Waturi）正在背景中打电话。瓦图里先生对着听筒说：“我知道他能得到这份工作。”接着又问：“但他能胜任这份工作吗？”瓦图里先生不断重复这句话，每次都强调不同的词，说了一遍又一遍。

On its surface, Mr. Waturi’s question is a good one: A person can carry out the rituals of employability—assembling a good résumé, performing effectively at an interview, even carrying out a satisfactory test-case work assignment—and still be unable to produce useful results in the workplace. Today’s AI-interviewing tools would seem to make this problem worse: Now almost anyone can get the job, with automated help. Whether they can really do it is irrelevant. Just as students can now fake their way through school and college, what’s to stop them from cutting corners on their way into Meta or McKinsey?

直观来看，瓦图里先生的问题问得很好：一个人可以完成求职的“仪式”——准备一份漂亮的简历、在面试中表现出色，甚至出色地完成一个测试性工作任务——但仍然可能无法在实际工作中产出有用的成果。如今，人工智能面试工具似乎让这个问题变得更糟：现在几乎任何人都能借助自动化帮助获得这份工作。他们是否真的能胜任这份工作，这似乎已经不重要了。就像学生现在可以靠蒙混过关的方式读完中小学和大学一样，又有什么能阻止他们通过走捷径进入Meta（脸书母公司）或麦肯锡呢？

But the film also makes clear that Mr. Waturi’s concern with job performance is vacuous. Joe’s dreary, squalid workplace, called American Panascope, is described as “Home of the Rectal Probe.” Given this backdrop of hostility toward the firm’s workers and its customers alike, Mr. Waturi’s incantation, I know he can get the job, but can he do the job?, comes across as bureaucratic nonsense, an exercise in the mere appearance of high standards. Joe, the defeated salaryman, takes all this in as he hangs his coat and hat: What would it even mean to do the job when the job is so meaningless?

但这部电影也清楚地表明，沃图里先生对工作表现的担忧是空洞的。乔那沉闷、肮脏的工作场所，名为“美国全景公司”（American Panascope），被描述为“直肠探针之家”。在这种对公司员工和客户都充满敌意的背景下，沃图里先生反复念叨的“我知道他能找到这份工作，但他能胜任这份工作吗？”听起来就像是官僚主义的胡言乱语，一场徒有其表、假装高标准的表演。乔，这位心灰意冷的上班族，挂上外套和帽子时，将这一切看在眼里：当工作本身毫无意义时，“胜任工作”又意味着什么呢？

This question reemerges in a twisted form today, when the same companies that worry over being duped by AI-assisted applicants would love to have a workforce that makes use of AI in lots of other ways. The people who use Final Round AI to get their software-engineering jobs might be superbly qualified, in fact, to do those jobs in just the way their bosses would prefer. And if consulting is an industry that steals your watch to tell you the time (as the classic line goes), then a junior consultant who used AI to fake his way into the role might well be on the road to make partner.

这个问题今天以一种扭曲的形式再次出现：那些担心被人工智能辅助求职者蒙骗的公司，却又非常乐意拥有一个能在许多其他方面利用人工智能的员工队伍。那些使用 Final Round AI 获得软件工程职位的人，实际上可能非常胜任这些工作，并能以他们的老板所期望的方式去完成。而且，如果咨询行业就像那句经典名言所说——“先偷走你的表，然后告诉你时间”，那么一个通过人工智能“蒙混”进入这个岗位的初级顾问，很可能正在通往成为合伙人的道路上。

For some time now , workers—and especially young ones—have become ever more detached from their work lives. David Graeber called the roles they end up taking for lack of any better option “bullshit jobs.” Internet culture has more recently nicknamed them “email jobs”: work whose purpose is so cryptic, its effort detaches from motivations and outcomes, personal or professional. The Millennials who graduated into the Great Recession talked about LARPing their own jobs in order to reconcile this divide. Cheating on a job interview with AI feels like a realization of that vision: You are no longer a job candidate, but a person playing the role of one.

长久以来，工作者——尤其是年轻人——与他们的工作生活渐行渐远。大卫·格雷伯将他们因别无选择而最终从事的工作称为“狗屁工作”。互联网文化最近则将其戏称为“邮件工作”：这类工作目的模糊不清，其付出的努力与个人或职业的动机和成果毫无关联。那些在经济大衰退时期毕业的千禧一代曾谈到，他们为了调和这种隔阂而“扮演着自己的工作角色”。在求职面试中使用人工智能作弊，感觉就像是这种设想的实现：你不再是一名求职者，而是一个扮演求职者角色的人。

But wait, isn’t a junior-associate position at McKinsey or “a $469k engineer job” distinct from the sort of dead-end, bullshit job that produces so much workplace alienation? Yes and no. If you can land a role like that, certainly it may pay you well, and confer a degree of social status. But the pursuit of nearly every form of office job, even those that demand a particular credential and specific experience, has become a hellish ordeal. Candidates submit forms and résumés into LinkedIn or Workday, where they may be chewed up by AI processors and then consumed without response, or else advanced to interviews (which may also be conducted by AI). No matter who you are, the process of being considered for a job may be so terrible by now that any hidden edge in getting through it would be welcome.

等等，在麦肯锡（McKinsey）的初级助理职位或者年薪46.9万美元的工程师工作，难道不与那种导致职场严重异化的死气沉沉的“狗屁工作”有所不同吗？既是也不是。如果你能获得那样的职位，它无疑能给你带来丰厚的报酬，并赋予你一定的社会地位。然而，即使是那些需要特定资历和经验的办公室工作，其求职过程也几乎都变成了一场地狱般的磨难。求职者在领英（LinkedIn）或Workday等平台上提交表格和简历，它们可能会被人工智能处理器“吞噬”，然后石沉大海，毫无音讯；或者被筛选进入面试环节（而面试也可能由人工智能进行）。无论你是谁，如今获得工作的这个过程可能已经变得如此糟糕，以至于任何能帮助你顺利通过的“隐秘优势”都将受到欢迎。

Rewatching the AI-interview TikToks with new empathy for the young professionals who seek employment in today’s chaotic marketplace, I noticed a pattern I had previously overlooked: a realpolitik of resigned desperation. Some presented themselves as using AI to generate bespoke résumés in response to specific job postings, an act that now seems necessary to get around the AI filters that may perform first-round culling. One young woman offered tips for using AI to prepare for job interviews: Instead of buying an app that listens in and tells you what to say, she suggested using the technology to generate sample questions that you might be asked, so you can practice answering them. She titled the video, “How to use AI to pass ANY interview.”

重新观看那些关于人工智能面试的TikTok视频，我对当下混乱市场中求职的年轻专业人士产生了新的同情，并注意到了一种我之前忽视的模式：一种无奈绝望的现实策略。有些人展示了他们如何使用人工智能来针对特定的职位发布生成定制简历，这种行为现在看来是为了绕开可能进行首轮筛选的人工智能过滤器而不得不采取的措施。一位年轻女性分享了使用人工智能准备面试的技巧：她没有建议购买那种可以实时监听并告诉你如何回答的应用程序，而是建议利用这项技术生成你可能会被问到的问题样本，这样你就可以练习回答这些问题。她将这段视频命名为“如何使用人工智能通过任何面试”。

This language struck me as both incisive and honest. Passing is a contemporary life philosophy, one adopted by habit rather than duplicity. Ironic detachment has moved well beyond LARPing a career. Now one simply attempts, against the odds, to luck into a career, or at least the appearance of one. Today, students might use AI to write college-entrance essays so that they can get into college, where they use AI to complete assignments on their way to degrees, so they can use AI to cash out those degrees in jobs, so they can use AI to carry out the duties of those jobs. The best one can do—the best one can hope for—is to get to the successive stage of the process by whatever means necessary and, once there, to figure out a way to progress to the next one. Fake it ’til you make it has given way to Fake it ’til you fake it.

这种说法让我觉得既深刻又真实。“顺利过关”成为了一种当代生活哲学，人们习惯性地采纳它，并非出于欺骗。那种讽刺性的超然态度，已经远远超越了像玩角色扮演游戏那样扮演职业的阶段。现在，人们只是在逆境中碰运气，希望能获得一份职业，或者至少是职业的表象。如今，学生可能会使用人工智能来撰写大学入学申请文章，以便进入大学；在获得学位的过程中，他们会使用人工智能来完成作业；然后，他们会使用人工智能来将这些学位“变现”为工作；最后，他们还会使用人工智能来履行这些工作的职责。人们所能做的——所能期望的——就是不择手段地进入过程的下一个阶段，一旦到达那里，再想办法进入再下一个阶段。“假装成功，直到你真正成功”的理念已经让位于“假装成功，直到你一直假装下去”。

Nobody has time to question, nor the power to change, this situation. You need to pay rent, and buy slop bowls, and stumble forward into the murk of tomorrow. So you read what the computer tells you to say when asked why you are passionate about enterprise B2B SaaS sales or social-media marketing. This is not an earnest question, but a gate erected between one thing and the next. Using whatever mechanisms you can to get ahead is not ignoble; it’s compulsory. If you can’t even get the job, how can you pretend to do it?

没人有时间质疑，也没人有能力改变这种局面。你得交房租，得糊口度日，然后跌跌撞撞地走向迷茫的明天。所以，当被问及为何你对企业级B2B SaaS销售或社交媒体营销充满热情时，你就照着电脑告诉你的答案去说。这并非一个真心想问的问题，而是一道横亘在你进入下一阶段前的关卡。运用一切可能的手段去争取机会，这并非不光彩，而是迫不得已。如果你连工作都得不到，又怎么能假装去做好它呢？