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Even as AI becomes a common workplace tool, its use in hiring raises serious concerns that employers cant afford to ignore. Recent research suggests companies are being overwhelmed by AI-generated résumés. LinkedIn reports 11,000 applications per minute submitted through its platform, a 45% increase over the past year. The temptation for hiring managers to rely on off-the-shelf generative AI tools like ChatGPT is strong, but a new study published on Cornell Universitys preprint server arXiv warns that doing so could open companies to claims of bias if a rejected candidate challenges the decision. The study evaluated several state-of-the-art large language models (LLMs) from tech giants including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta, analyzing both their predictive accuracy and fairness using impact ratio analysis across declared gender, race, and intersectional subgroups. These AI systems were tested on around 10,000 real-world job applications, revealing that the off-the-shelf tools most businesses would likely use to sift through résumés show significant bias. While some LLMs, such as GPT-4o, showed near-perfect gender parity in candidate assessments, they demonstrated racial bias. When both gender and race were considered together, none of the models succeeded in achieving fair hiring outcomes, according to the researchers own evaluations. (The researchers did not respond to Fast Company‘s requests for comment.) The models impact ratiosa metric that highlights potential disparate impact between groups, critical to fair hiring practicesfell as low as 0.809 for race and 0.773 for intersectional groups. These figures are at least 20% below the threshold typically considered impartial. The findings offer little comfort to those who study organizational behavior and workplace dynamics. The jobs market is chilly enough at the moment, so inflicting too much inhuman AI on job seekers seems like a cruel blow, says Stefan Stern, visiting professor in management practice at Bayes Business School. (Stern was not involved in the study.) There is a case for efficiency but there should also be humanity, especially if we are still interested in hiring human beings. Beyond legal risk, relying on AI in hiring can also alienate successful applicants, fostering a sense of distrust that can hurt the organization in the long run. Stern argues that candidates might reconsider joining a company that uses AI to screen them. Why work for a firm that isn’t interested enough in you to get a fellow human to interview and assess you? he asks. In a world where artificial intelligence is becoming the norm, Stern believes that emotional intelligencethoughtfully applied by hiring managers and leadershipcan significantly improve employee well-being and retention. It can also shape a companys culture and business practices moving forward. Too much heavy-handed use of AI would be a red flag to me as a job hunter, he says. I want to work for and with other humans, not for and with machines.
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When it’s our birthdays, were the ones who get gifts. But when it’s a companys birthday, sometimes they are the ones giving gifts away. Thats the case with convenience store chain 7-Eleven, which is celebrating its 98th birthday today. The chain, along with its Speedway and Stripes stores, is giving away free Slurpees on what it calls Slurpee Day. Heres what you need to know. What is Slurpee Day? Slurpee Day is the name that 7-Eleven gives to its annual birthday celebration, which it holds on July 11 every year. (The seventh month and eleventh dayget it?) While we think of convenience stores as modern-day conveniences, 7-Eleven has actually been around for nearly a century now. The chain was founded in 1927 as the Southland Ice Company, before becoming known as Tote’m Stores through 1946, after which the chain was bestowed with the name we know it by today. The Slurpee is, of course, 7-Elevens most iconic offering. It was invented in 1966, making it 59 years old this year. The slushy-type drink is currently sold at 7-Eleven stores as well as at Speedway and Stripes convenience stores, which are also owned by 7-Eleven’s parent company, Seven & i Holdings Co., Ltd. In celebration of Slurpee Day, 7-Eleven gives away free Slurpees to customers. How to get your free Slurpee on Slurpee Day All you have to do to get your free Slurpee on Slurpee Day is go to a participating 7-Eleven, Speedway, or Stripes store today, July 11, 2025. There, youll be able to grab a free small Slurpeeno other purchase necessary. But today isnt the only day that you can get a free Slurpee How to get a second free Slurpee 7-Eleven is actually giving people the chance to get another free Slurpee this month. In order to get a second free Slurpee, youll need to go into a store today and scan your rewards information. Youll then get a coupon for a free Slurpee that you can redeem anytime between July 12 – July 31, 2025. Full details of 7-Elevens free Slurpee offers can be found here. 7-Eleven parent company stock up 24% over the past year 7-Eleven is owned by Seven & i Holdings Co., Ltd. (OTC Markets OTCPK: SVNDY), based in Tokyo. The company just reported its first-quarter results on July 10, in which it posted a profit of 65.1 billion yen ($445.19 million). This profit was mainly due to the performance of its overseas locations, particularly those in the United States, notes RetailNews Asia. SVNDY shares are currently hovering just below $15 as of the time of this writing, with the stock down about 4.7% since the beginning of the year. However, over the past 12 months, Seven & i Holdings has seen its share price surge by over 24%, according to data from Yahoo Finance.
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The technology industry has always adored its improbably audacious goals and their associated buzzwords. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is among the most enamored. After all, the name Meta is the residue of his 2021 rebranding of the company formerly known as Facebook Inc. That was supposed to emphasize an utter commitment to building the metaversean ambitious yet fuzzy concept blurring aspects of virtual reality, augmented reality, and social networking. Except Zuckerbergs goals have already drifted. Now hes all-in on attaining an advanced form of AI called superintelligence. Its the focus of a new organization called Meta Superintelligence Labs, which Meta is stocking with some of the planets top AI talent. Whether the company is really dangling $100 million offers to snag some potential recruits remains unclear. But MSL is led by Alexandr Wang, who joined Meta in June as part of a deal involving it investing $14 billion in his startup, Scale AIan eye-watering sum all by itself. The term superintelligence isnt new (it was the title of a 2014 book by philosopher Nick Bostrom), but it may turn out to be 2025s buzzword of the year. A few more data points: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently declared that his company is a lot of things now, but before anything else, we are a superintelligence research company. One of Altmans OpenAI cofounders, famed AI scientist Ilya Sutskever, left a year ago to cofound a new startup called Safe Superintelligence, which just lost another of its founders, Daniel Gross, to Metas new lab. Last month, when Microsoft said it had trained AI to diagnose disease more accurately than doctors can, its AI CEO, Mustafa Suleyman, called the feat a genuine step toward medical superintelligence. So what is superintelligence? In an excellent piece on its emergence as a Silicon Valley obsession, Bloombergs Shirin Ghaffary defines it as AI that is not just at parity with most people, but even better than all humans at all tasks. Ghaffary says the industry is gravitating toward superintelligence because its a more tangible goal than artificial general intelligence, or AGI. Google DeepMind chief AGI scientist Shane Legg, who popularized that term, defined it for me as something that can at least match human capability in the sorts of cognitive tasks that people can typically do. Even better than humans at all tasks would seem to be a substantially loftier ambition than merely matching human capability in tasks that people can typically do. But over at IBM.com, an article says we definitely havent achieved AGI but arguably have achieved superintelligence. Thats because the IBM pieces far less sweeping definition of superintelligence only involves it outperforming humans at certain jobs, not all of them. It cites four existing examples: IBMs own Deep Blue (chess) and Watson (Jeopardy!) along with Google DeepMinds AlphaGo (Go) and AlphaFold (protein structure predictions). All of this leaves me with more questions than answers: If IBMs four examples arent enough to confirm that superintelligence has been attained, how many would be? Who gets to decide what better than humans means? What happens if AI sails past humans on some fronts while remaining stubbornly behind on others? Dont many of our skills involve the ability to interact with the physical world, making surpassing them as much about robotics as software? (Meta is working on that, too.) This we do know: Like AGI before it, superintelligence is inherently aspirational. It exists as a notion in part so that groups of people have something to race toward. In that sense, it bears some resemblance to past moonshots such as, well, NASAs Apollo program. The difference is that superintelligence offers no well-defined end point akin to landing a human being on the moon, which youve either accomplished or you havent. There will be no superintelligence equivalent of Neil Armstrong setting foot on the lunar surface on July 20, 1969. Back in March 2024, I wrote about the pointlessness of fixating on what AGI is and when it might be achieved. Swapping in superintelligence as fodder for this debate doesnt accomplish anything. Yes, we all need to gird ourselves for a world in which AI competes with people for jobs. I dont discount the possibility of it presenting existential risks to humanity. It will unquestionably cause trouble of types yet to be identified. Andfingers crossedit may help with some of our thorniest unsolved problems. These points remain true no matter how you define superintelligence and regardless of whether its ever reached. Which means that fixating on the race for it isnt a terribly productive way of readying ourselves for AIs future impact on our lives. Meanwhile, AI companies still have a spotty record at figuring out practical applications for AI in its present, less-than-superintelligent state. Thats especially tue for Meta, which has larded my Facebook feed with clueless Meta AI interjections wholly incapable of grasping the conversations theyre trying to join. Meta getting better at using the AI it already has would be an encouraging sign that its quest for superintelligence isnt just raw, unbridled ambition in search of actual useful purpose. Youve been reading Plugged In, Fast Companys weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to youor if you’re reading it on FastCompany.comyou can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, and you can follow Plugged In on Flipboard. More top tech stories from Fast Company Linda Yaccarino was supposed to tame X. Elon Musk wouldnt let herThe newly departed CEO was supposed to fix brand safety and win back advertisers. Instead, she became a corporate mascot for a platform in free fall. Read More Samsung fixed everything you hated about foldable phonesexcept the priceTheres no Fold Ultra, but Samsung still believes in foldables. Read More The internet is tryingand failingto spend Elon Musks $342 billionNew online games and TikTok trends challenge users to spend the Tesla CEOs fortunerevealing the absurd scale of his wealth. Read More YouTube to Hollywood: We are going to eat youYouTubes TV takeover is starting to feel inevitable. 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