Matt Shumer’s “Something Big Is Happening” essay has been ricocheting around tech and business circles this week. It’s a warning that the latest frontier models, specificallyOpenAI’s GPT-5.3-Codex and Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6, mark a real inflection point in AI capabilities, not another incremental step. He’s arguing that the “future” has already arrived for developers, and that they are the canaries in the coal mine for the rest of us.

OpenAI says that GPT-5.3-Codex was “instrumental in creating itself,” describing how early versions helped debug training and deployment. Anthropic’s CEO has written that AI already writes “much of the code” at Anthropic, accelerating the feedback loop toward models that can build the next generation.

There’s an obvious piece of pushback worth calling out up front: Shumer is the co-founder and CEO of OthersideAI, so yes, he benefits from all the attention that his essay has been attracting. And obviously OpenAI and Anthropic have a vested interest in hyping the capabilities of their latest models.

Still, I don’t think that we can hand-wave this away as hype marketing. Because we’ve all been feeling a lot of what Shumer lays out in his piece.

Talent acquisition is also knowledge work. Among other things, it is search, pattern recognition, evaluation, process, coordination, persuasion, documentation, and risk management.

We’ve recently published thoughtful pieces like this one by Ravi Subramanian arguing that what humans uniquely bring to talent acquisition is experience, trust, and relationships. I agree with the spirit of that. I also think that all of us in TA need to ask ourselves if these things are actually the moats we think they are in today’s hiring market?

Because candidates don’t think we’re doing a great job.

Greenhouse’s research has found that 72% of U.S. candidates say they’ve experienced a “bait and switch” in the hiring process. An earlier Greenhouse report also found that 61% of job seekers said they’d been ghosted after a job interview. Surveys by The Talent Board show that candidate resentment is at an all time high.

If that’s the “human recruiter” baseline many candidates are experiencing, then “trust” is not a protected asset. It’s a liability we have to earn back.

So when people say, “AI can’t replace relationships,” I get the intent. But if models keep improving at the pace he’s describing, the question isn’t “can AI be empathetic?” It’s “can AI be better than what candidates are getting now?”

That bar is lower than we want to admit.

— David

P.S. If you found this newsletter valuable, chances are your colleagues will too. Feel free to forward it along—and if it landed in your inbox by way of a friend, you can subscribe here to get the next one directly.

Sponsored Content

Bring Teams Together with a Meal Benefit They'll Love

Employees love free meals—in fact, they say it’s their #1 perk (ezCater Food for Work Report). With a high-quality meal program like Relish by ezCater, you can provide delicious, healthy meal options from their favorite restaurants. It’s a great way to offer an inclusive benefit that can help attract and retain talent, drive employee morale and engagement, and foster a sense of happiness. That’s the power of lunch.

Featured Story

The New Talent Architecture: Building Organizations for the AI Era

This week Ravi Subramanian writes about how AI is forcing the talent function to reimagine how talent models are designed. Organizations need a new “talent architecture” that rebuilds roles, workflows, and development around human plus AI collaboration, skills-based systems, and more fluid teams, while reserving judgment, trust-building, and accountability for people. (ERE)

More Recruiting Insights

Podcast: Unfolding the Eightfold Lawsuit. Kudos to Chad Sowash & Joel Cheesman for landing a big guest on their podcast this week - Rachel Dempsey, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs in the Eightfold class action suit. In it, they discuss what it could mean for AI hiring, including claims about “black box” scoring, enriched candidate profiles, and whether recruiting technology vendors need clearer consent, disclosure, and accountability. (Chad & Cheese)

Kombo raises a $25M Series A. Kombo raised a $25M Series A from their existing investors, bringing total funding to $30M since launching in 2022. The company is positioning itself as the interoperability layer for “people data” across HR, recruiting, payroll, and IT systems, taking advantage of the accelerating tool sprawl with solutions for data integration. (Kombo)

Conferences

ERE Recruiting Innovation Summit

Atlanta, GA
May 5-6, 2025

The ERE Recruiting Innovation Summit is a practitioner-led event built for talent acquisition leaders who want real answers, not hype. Join us for practical sessions, meaningful peer connection, and live “Ask Me Anything” office hours with our speakers.

If you care about where recruiting is headed and want ideas you can put to work immediately, you belong in this room.

(ERE Recruiting Innovation Summit)

Webinars

Tech Demo Tuesday: Discover the Hottest Tools in Recruiting

February 24, 2026 | 2:00 PM EST | 1 Hour

In this installation of Tech Demo Tuesday, we will get hands-on demonstration of how CoderPad’s job-relevant evaluations that reflect how engineers actually work today — including the use of AI. We’ll also dig in to how the iCIMS Talent Acquisition Suit helps organizations attract, engage, hire, and advance top talent. (ERE)

Detecting and Defending Against Candidate Misrepresentation

March 26, 2026 | 2:00 PM EST | 1 Hour

In this webinar we will tackle the rise of fake applicants, from AI-generated resumes and deepfake interviews to third-party test takers. We’ll cover practical tactics such as screening “traps,” interviewer training, verification tools for technical and non-technical roles, and legally defensible documentation. (ERE)