Anthropic might have advertised its Claude chatbot as proficient in writing, but there’s one writing task that the startup doesn’t want people to use the AI chatbot for: filling out Anthropic’s own job applications.
All of Anthropic’s close to 150 open job positions ask applicants to write their materials themselves and not use AI like Claude or ChatGPT to help. It doesn’t matter if the position is in finance, communications, or sales — the job application asks all candidates to agree not to use AI in their submissions.
The agreement is outlined under a section in the application titled “AI Policy for Application,” which was first spotted by open-source developer Simon Willison earlier this week.
The section is the same across positions and reads: “While we encourage people to use AI systems during their role to help them work faster and more effectively, please do not use AI assistants during the application process. We want to understand your personal interest in Anthropic without mediation through an AI system, and we also want to evaluate your non-AI-assisted communication skills. Please indicate ‘Yes’ if you have read and agree.”
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Entrepreneur confirmed that all roles had the policy at the time of writing. Even roles like mobile product designer, which did not have the AI Policy for Application as of a Monday report from 404 Media, now have the policy.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. Photo by Chesnot/Getty Images
Anthropic’s preference for no-AI applications isn’t unique. Many other major U.S. employers will not tolerate AI use by job candidates. According to an April survey from Resume Genius, AI-generated resumes were the biggest red flag for 625 U.S. hiring managers, with 53% stating that they were less likely to hire a candidate based on it.
Still, candidates are using the technology. An August report from the Financial Times found that about half of job applicants were using AI to help their job applications stand out, from writing cover letters to infusing their resumes with keywords. Applicants can quickly generate cover letters and resumes, leading to about twice as many job applications per posting.
What Is Claude?
Anthropic’s Claude is a popular AI chatbot that can provide everything from health coaching to legal advice, with the New York Times calling it the “tech insiders’ chatbot of choice” last month for its willingness to express opinions and act as a therapist. It has a free tier, an $18 per month Pro tier, and a $25 per person per month Teams tier. Users told The Times that talking to Claude felt more like talking to a smart human than a chatbot.
“It’s eerily good,” one user wrote on X in October. “This is the first time ever that I’m interacting with an LLM and have to keep consciously reminding myself that it’s not actually sentient.”
People were saying that Claude Sonnet works great as a coach/therapist so I’m trying it out now and it’s indeed eerily good. This is the first time ever that I’m interacting with an LLM and have to keep consciously reminding myself that it’s not actually sentient.
— Kaj Sotala (@xuenay) October 29, 2024
Claude isn’t as popular as rival ChatGPT, which draws over 300 million weekly users as of December, but its webpage still drew 73.8 million visits in December, according to Similarweb.
As of last month, Anthropic was in advanced talks to raise $2 billion in a deal that would value it at $60 billion, making it the fifth-most valuable U.S. startup after SpaceX, OpenAI, Stripe, and Databricks.
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