“Meta Invites Job Aspirants to Bring Their AI Friends to the Coding Test Party!”

“Meta Is Going to Let Job Candidates Use AI During Coding Tests”

“In 2016, a peculiar Facebook post caught the attention of Sanjeyan Sivapalan. It was a series of job interview questions for a software engineer position posted by Facebook’s AI team. Sivapalan, a software engineer based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, set about trying to solve them.”

Now, certain perplexities often come with tech job interviews, especially when they start resembling hectic math exams more than the usual tell-me-about-yourself face-offs we’re fondly used to. Facebook’s AI team, or rather, the tech colossus Meta’s AI crew, has transcended far beyond the stratosphere in this regard.

This isn’t to trash the practice of pushing the boundaries of your job candidates’ capabilities. It’s a skimmed sour cream off your coffee. It’s just that when you’re deciphering centuries-old numerical patterns to land a gig, you might start to wonder if you accidentally signed up for a cryptology class instead of a job interview.

The brain-twisting ordeal of Sivapalan is an epic case in point. Willing to challenge this software engineer, a series of mathematically complex problems were fired at him to explore every nook and cranny of his computational skills. The challenge? He had to craft an AI that could predict the prime numbers up to 100,000,000 in less than a second.

Evidently, they’re not seeking programmers. No, they’re recruiting certified cryptanalysts with degrees in high-speed mathematics and a knack for quantum-encrypted programming. Sounds like they’re assembling an Avengers-level squad of mathematical sorcerers, doesn’t it?

But, millennials and Gen Z, hold onto your caffeinated beverages. This elite club in Meta’s realm doesn’t want you merely surviving their twisted labyrinth of job interviews. No, they want you to disentangle the enigma, take it apart and rebuild it, add some finishing strokes, and then voila, present to them an entirely new cipher.

Jokes aside though, it’s important to point out Meta’s motivations. The difficulty level is up there in the exosphere for a reason: building AI that understands the world as humans do is no kiddie pool, it’s an Olympic-sized endeavor. Real-world conversations and interactions are highly nuanced, and we’re factually far-removed from creating AI that can understand our world on its own terms.

Yet, the audacious puzzles they throw at prospective hires go beyond simply testing computational prowess. They’re a reflection of Meta’s ambitions; a not-so-subtle hint that they’re not just in the business of social media trendsetting. They’re in the game of stretching the limits of technology, breaking barriers, and reinventing paradigms.

While the average Joe might panic at the thought of having to solve complex mathematical sequences during a job interview, you have to admire the audacity of Meta’s approach. Love them or loathe them, there’s no denying that they’ve built an empire by constantly pushing the envelope, and this is just another flashy envelope in their royal arsenal.

Read the original article here: https://www.wired.com/story/meta-ai-job-interview-coding/