Artificial intelligence and employment

When machines dialogue among themselves, rethinking our relationship to work becomes a human urgency. Thus, faced with the growing automation of recruitment, I propose to question our practices. Rather than optimizing CVs to seduce algorithms, let us cultivate the human relationships that give meaning to work.

The vicious circle of recruitment automation

We rightly deplore that recruitment processes are now dominated by artificial intelligences. On one side, candidates use ChatGPT to write CVs and cover letters calibrated according to ever-increasing algorithmic criteria. On the other, companies, overwhelmed by this influx of relevant applications, entrust their analysis to artificial intelligences to avoid spending infinite time on them. Some candidates send up to 200 AI-optimized applications without obtaining a single interview.

This double algorithmic filter is based on criteria that are far from objective. They rather reflect fluctuating imaginaries of efficiency and employability. These criteria constantly evolve, creating an endless race where candidates try to guess the keywords that will bypass automatic filters, while these same filters become more sophisticated to detect AI-generated content. Hannah Arendt, in The Human Condition (1958), already warned against the transformation of work into a mere technical process emptied of its human meaning.

However, the phenomenon of massive exclusion after sending hundreds of applications was not born with artificial intelligences. What fundamentally changes is the complete dehumanization of the process. Faced with this system that seems to run in a vacuum, what should we do? Returning to manual writing of CVs and cover letters would be futile, as these writings would be analyzed at lightning speed by automatic machines, making us lose precious time without guaranteed results.

Questioning the foundations: why are we looking for a job?

I believe we must return to the fundamental why of our endeavors. Why do we multiply CVs? Why do we seek to create the perfect document using artificial intelligence? The immediate answer seems obvious: to find a job. But this answer calls for another: why do we want a job? Most often, it is to regularly receive money allowing our material independence, to house ourselves, feed ourselves, lead a life we consider normal, cultivate ourselves, forge connections.

But let us continue the philosophical exploration: why do we desire this “normal” life and these connections? To participate in what I would call the magnificent expansion of consciousnesses, these encounters between beings, cultures, nature, history, and also the encounter with ourselves. As Martin Buber wrote in I and Thou (1923), “all real living is meeting”. There is therefore, in the ultimate why of our quest for employment, as far removed as it may seem from the CV and cover letter, the profound meaning of a life made of connections: connections to oneself, connections to others, connections to the world.

This chain of questioning opens a small paradox: when we write CVs and cover letters, are we in this logic of connections and mutual enrichment? No, we are in selective sorting, the will to convince or even manipulate, the fear of failure, the anxious wait to be chosen, etc. Most cover letters demonstrate an egocentric focus: candidates evoke their personal journey, the benefits they would derive from the position. But do they ask questions of their interlocutors? Do they seek to establish an authentic relationship with those they do not yet know? Very, very rarely. The sole objective is hiring, which reduces human exchange to a transaction, ultimately, and that’s quite unfortunate.

The technicization of connection, an existential dead end

We have technicized the professional relationship to the point of emptying it of its substance. We have reduced it to a purely conscious and rational dimension, limited by formatted texts exchanged between strangers. But what is true connection? It is what anchors us in humanity, what arises from authentic encounters with other human beings. From these encounters can emerge magnificent projects, fruitful collaborations, lasting friendships, creative exchanges, and yes, sometimes also employment, but in a logic of mutual enrichment rather than subordination.

The forms of human exchange naturally include the economic dimension. The exchange of goods and services, mediated by money, allows a certain independence compared to societies based on barter. But as Karl Polanyi explains in The Great Transformation (1944), the economy was once “embedded” in social relations, not the other way around. In the West, this hierarchy has been inverted: social relations have become alien to the economy, which considers humans as “resources,” just like other raw materials (which is the conception of the concentration camp, as Johann Chapoutot recounts very well in Free to Obey, Management from Nazism to Today (2020).

This inversion is particularly manifest in the very concept of employee. In the age of artificial intelligence, I consider this concept obsolete. The term “employee” and the notion of subordination reduce the human to a machine-like function in the service of others. Yet, what fundamentally distinguishes the human from the machine are precisely the mutual enrichments we can bring to each other, and not our capacities for obedience and subordination. Machines will always excel at executing predefined tasks; our strength lies in the creation of meaning and connections.

Weaving connections, a concrete alternative to the CV race

Instead of sending multitudes of CVs and cover letters, wouldn’t it be better to devote our energy to weaving real connections, and this in the present, which is perfectly accessible? I propose developing what psychologists call our psychosocial skills: going out to meet people, exchanging personalized emails, participating in video conference meetings, attending conferences, physically meeting other people at events. Traveling, taking the train, even economy trains, investing our time in building authentic relationships. This requires a lot of work, note-taking, care for relationships, spontaneous proposals, etc. But this work of connection is extremely enriching, nourishes us, makes us grow, unlike these anonymous letter sendings that drain our energy.

It’s about talking to our friends and acquaintances not in desperate expectation (“I’m looking for a job”), but in the creative invention of what we want to build in life. For work, in its etymology, does not only refer to the tripalium, the instrument of torture. It also shares its root with travel, the journey, the transformation. Authentic work is the transformative encounter and the connections that flow from it. André Gorz, in Metamorphoses of Work (1988), already defended the idea that work had to rediscover its creative and relational dimension.

Along the way, these encounters inspire us. We can sometimes discover the desire to create a company with people we have met. Do we share a passion for cooking with someone? This mutual discovery of complementary skills can give birth to a common professional project, even one that has nothing to do with cooking. There is no area of life that is disconnected from the question of human exchange. Paid work is not beside life: it is in life, it is our life, indeed we spend most of our time there.

Redefining our investment, quality over quantity

One might object that this approach requires much more time than sending mass applications. I answer that not only does it not take more time, but it proves infinitely more motivating and enriching. Truly taking interest in others, discovering within ourselves what we can bring them on several levels, this is what builds a true personal, therefore social transformation.

When we hold a job, we devote most of our waking time to it. We live multiple experiences there, varied emotions, complex relationships. We can become actors in the qualitative transformation of our existence by considering work from the outset through the angle of human connections. Our true investment lies there. This approach may seem indirect, but it paradoxically proves more effective. It’s also about not having specific expectations; let’s engage, take care of our terrain, and what must happen will happen, as if by itself. But for something to emerge, we must first cultivate connections and plow our terrain.

Cultivating connections begins with self-knowledge, a necessary condition for being fully ourselves in relationship with others. This authenticity protects us from what is called burnout, this overactivity of the non-self that distances us so much from ourselves that it becomes unbearable. As Byung-Chul Han noted in The Burnout Society (2014), professional exhaustion often arises from the gap between what we are and what we pretend to be to satisfy external criteria.

Artificial intelligence as a philosophical revealer

Artificial intelligence, with its incredible efficiency, can paradoxically produce great inefficiency, as shown by the current recruitment system. This should be an opportunity for us to reposition ourselves existentially. AI forces us to return to what founds the meaning of our shared humanity. Faced with machines that excel at optimization and execution, we must reaffirm what makes us irreplaceable: our capacity to create meaning in our own lives, to weave authentic connections, to innovate through encounter, risk-taking with the unknown, to the improbable and openness to the unpredictable.

Finally, the apparent threat of artificial intelligence to employment could become an opportunity for renaissance. Not by seeking to rival machines on their terrain, but by fully reinvesting what makes us human: the capacity for authentic encounter, creation of meaning, mutual transformation. Tomorrow’s work will not be that which resists automation, but that which arises from the creative encounter between free human consciousnesses engaged at every moment in the meaning of their connections.