This week on The Interface: is AI quietly sending your CV to the graveyard?Karen starts with the growing role of AI in hiring and why it may be far more powerful, and more worrying, than most jobseekers realise. Automated hiring systems are now used across large parts of the labour market, and Stanford researchers say a handful of dominant models are creating an “algorithmic monoculture”, where the same software can shape outcomes across multiple employers. Their recent study of more than 4 m...
This week on The Interface: is AI quietly sending your CV to the graveyard?
Karen starts with the growing role of AI in hiring and why it may be far more powerful, and more worrying, than most jobseekers realise. Automated hiring systems are now used across large parts of the labour market, and Stanford researchers say a handful of dominant models are creating an “algorithmic monoculture”, where the same software can shape outcomes across multiple employers. Their recent study of more than 4 million job applications found repeated racial disparities in AI‑based screening, raising the stakes for anyone applying into a market where software may judge you before a human ever does. We look at how these systems scan CVs, how candidates are trying to game them, and what happens when tools designed to “streamline” recruitment start quietly deciding who never even gets a chance.
Also this week: Thomas asks whether slow messaging might actually be better for us than instant messaging. After trying Roost — an app that sends messages at deliberately different speeds, from snail mail to carrier pigeon — he steps back to ask how we got so used to the pressure of instant replies in the first place. Messaging once felt novel; now it is the default form of contact, with Americans sending billions of texts a day and younger users often preferring texts to calls. But that speed comes with emotional costs: reply anxiety, relationship strain, and a culture in which silence itself can feel loaded. Tom asks whether slower communication might feel frustrating at first but ultimately more humane.
And Nicky looks at Silicon Valley’s latest genre experiment: tech CEOs turning themselves into entertainment. With Founders Fund launching MAFIA the GAME - a game show featuring Sam Altman, Palmer Luckey, Bryan Johnson and other tech luminaries - the people building the future increasingly seem to want control not just of products, but of the story around them. Nicky asks what this says about a culture where power depends not just on having the best technology, but on telling the best myth about yourself.
The Interface is your weekly guide to the tech rewiring your week and your world. Hosted by journalists Thomas Germain, Nicky Woolf, and Karen Hao, each episode unpacks, week by week, how technology is shaping all our futures. No jargon. Just three sharp voices debating the stories that matter — whether they shook a government, broke the internet, or quietly tipped the balance of power.
New episodes drop every Thursday on BBC Sounds in the UK. Outside the UK, find us on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts, or watch the video version on YouTube (search “The Interface podcast”).
To get in touch with the team: theinterface@bbc.com
The Interface is a BBC Studios production.
Producer: Natalia Rodriguez Ford
Executive Editor: Philip Sellars
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