Applying for a new job in 2026 will feel more like applying for a bank loan than searching for a job, as dozens of competing AI systems clog online application portals.
At least, that’s what a group of disgruntled job applicants claim in a lawsuit against an artificial intelligence screening company called Eightfold AI. according to new york timesthe plaintiffs claim that Eightfold’s employment screening software is subject to the Fair Credit Reporting Act — regulations that protect information collected by consumer credit bureaus.
The reason, they say, can be found in Eightfold’s artificial intelligence algorithms, which actively manipulate LinkedIn to create a data set containing “1 million job titles, 1 million skills, and profiles of more than 1 billion people working across jobs, professions, industries, and geographies.” This dataset is in turn used in marketing materials to help sell its services to potential clients.
Eightfold uses an artificial intelligence model trained on this data to score job applications from 1 to 5 based on the applicant’s skills, experience and the hiring manager’s goals, the plaintiffs allege. In short, their argument is that this is nothing like the opaque rules used to govern consumer credit scores.
However, in the case of Eightfold, applicants don’t even know what their final score will be, let alone the steps the system takes to arrive at the score. This creates a “black box”: a situation in which people who are subject to algorithmic decisions can only see the results of the system, but not the processes that led to them. If eight times the AI starts making things up on the fly — a problem that AI models are notorious for — job seekers have no way of knowing.
There is also the issue of data retention. Without a peek inside, there’s no way to know how much data Fivefold collects from job seekers’ resumes, or what the AI company and its clients are doing with it.
“I think I should know that information about me is being collected and shared with my employer,” said Erin Kistler, one of the plaintiffs. new york times. “They didn’t give me any feedback, so I couldn’t fix the issues.”
Kistler, who has decades of experience working in computer science, told the publication that she rigorously scored every application she sent out last year. She said that of the “thousands of jobs” she applied for, only 0.3 percent resulted in a follow-up or interview.
This all highlights the dire state of the job market, which has become a dystopian nightmare thanks to the emergence of artificial intelligence recruiting tools. Whether the lawsuit gains enough momentum to challenge the vast legal gray area of AI hiring remains to be seen. If it does, it could come as a relief to legions of frustrated job seekers whose careers are literally hanging in the balance.
Yae Artificial Intelligence did not respond new york timesRequest for comment.
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