Paradox.Ai: Companies Face Growing Controversy as Hiring Mandates Personality Assessments with Blue Humanoid Aliens

By Moon Harper

Mar 21, 2024 06:17 AM EDT

Applying for many common customer and food service positions involves completing a lengthy and peculiar personality quiz that includes blue humanoid aliens, which informs employers about potential hires' rankings regarding traits like agreeableness and emotional stability.

AI is now involved in the hiring process, with companies like McDonald's, Olive Garden, and FedEx requiring job applicants to take mandatory and strange personality evaluations, which are then assessed by an AI system with unclear operations, 404 Media reports.

Companies Adopting Paradox.Ai

These companies have all partnered with Paradox.ai, a conversational recruiting software with peculiar personality assessments featuring images of blue-skinned humanoid aliens that applicants are expected to identify with.

In a Reddit post by 404, an applicant described a peculiar scenario where they were presented with a photo of two blue aliens in a restaurant kitchen. One alien appeared to be tearing up spices while another stood nearby. Applicants were instructed to click Me if the image described them and Not Me if it did not. The word Traditional was written above the image confusingly. The Reddit user commented, "I just want a dishwasher job."

Paradox.ai's personality quiz has gone viral on Reddit in the past weeks, and based on the reactions, many people seem unfamiliar with the process. The Paradox.ai test has gained attention due to its peculiar scenarios, and including blue humanoid aliens despite personality quizzes in job applications is not new. According to its website, other clients using Paradox include CVS, GM, Nestle, 3M, and Unilever.

To explore further, Emanuel Maiberg from 404 completed an application for a bartending position at an Olive Garden location in New Mexico. He discovered that the traditional image was just one of over 80 slides and was not even the most peculiar among them.

Maiberg described one scenario where an alien is depicted sitting next to a bicycle with a bruised knee, seemingly from an accident. The headline reads, "Things Happen to Me," and applicants are prompted to respond with Me or Not me. However, the implications of either choice in this existential AI-generated dilemma remain unclear.

As mentioned in the report, the Olive Garden assessments are conducted through Paradox's "Traitify" product, which utilizes the peculiar slides to categorize applicants into "Big Five" or "OCEAN" personality groups that assess individuals on traits such as openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

The Olivia Chatbot

Upon completing the quiz, Maiberg received a five-page summary of his results, which indicated to both him and the Olive Garden location he applied to that he was categorized as a producer. According to the summary, he is described as "unconcerned with external rewards" and "self-sufficient and adept at monitoring" his productivity.

Interestingly, the AI aspect of Paradox's offerings is not the lengthy Traitify quiz slides; the company's Olivia chatbot guides users through the application process and is designed to assist managers in sorting through applications.

According to the Paradox website, the chatbot, portrayed by a grainy avatar of a smiling white woman, is described as having a "passion to serve the community and deliver amazing service." In her "other life," the chatbot is depicted as "the Executive Director of the Arizona Coyotes Foundation," although the significance of this detail is unclear.

Naturally, the company is not divulging much information about what is included in Olivia's secret sauce, so it is unclear what criteria the chatbot uses to make its recommendations. However, given the peculiarity of the rest of Paradox's offerings, critics were not optimistic about its coherence.