mjohn

Sure, why not, I'm just thinking out loud to be honest and am probably biased towards feeling quite comfortable using something like ChatGPT. I don't ask ChatGPT to write code for me but regularly use it to explore, a bit like a rubber duck that talks back.

Just curious - why would you not feel comfortable using it in an interview? Interesting to hear a different POV.

I've never tried it, but in the age of AI why not ask candidates to interact with ChatGPT to solve a problem?

In my (limited) interviewing experience the good candidates were the ones who had a good mental model for solving novel problems, were inquisitive and asked good questions. I think these attributes are also a reasonable indicator of general intelligence.

The people who I hired that were less successful were the ones who solved the coding exercises but had a poor mental model of how to solve novel problems and did not ask good questions.

Trying to use ChatGPT could take the pressure off from regurgiating coding minutae. The interviewer would be able to observe how the candidate approaches the problem and whether they can spot where ChatGPT goes wrong. It might also help introverted candidates since it feels less confrontational and there is likely to be less anxiety about unimportant details (after all any syntax mistakes would be ChatGPT's mistakes).

No, because it's often very hard to estimate until you're actually working on something. It's common to get a consensus estimate that something is "easy" only for some poor developer to be left with something that is "hard" and takes much longer than estimated.

Also, something might genuinely be easy for someone who has worked on that part of the codebase before. But it could take someone new a long time to get up to speed, again making that developer look bad (this is not to advocate that only devs familiar with the code should work on it - you want to spread the knowledge around).

In the UK there are regulations that require casinos and other gambling venues to block access if a problem gambler doesn't show restraint. It's much like how we would expect a barkeeper to tell a alcoholic who has had too much that they won't be served more and shouldn't drive home.

Similar addictive behaviour occurs with these apps and the games are designed to be as addictive as possible. While users should take personal responsibility, it would be trivial for these app producers to provide users with some protections from themselves.