The UK’s sole trade union for surgeons has joined calls from surgical training associations to scrap virtual interviews, over fears that trainees are using AI to skew outcomes and get jobs in positions they are not suitable for.
The Confederation of British Surgery (CBS www.cbsgb.co.uk) echoes concerns raised by the Association of Surgeons in Training (ASiT) and British Orthopaedic Trainees’ Association (BOTA) around worrying reports of ambient AI being used in specialty interviews, which are interviews to decide who is accepted into surgical training vacancies.
Ambient AI is a type of artificial intelligence system that can run in the background, constantly active and responsive. In the context of interviews, it can listen, analyse and respond without prompting, meaning that the interviewee will get real-time suggested answers displayed on their device screen. As the interview will also be on a screen, and the AI response appears as an overlay, the candidate will exhibit few telltale eye movements, and there will be no need for them to type the questions into the software. For this reason, it is very difficult to detect if a candidate is using it. The real-world issue with this is that a candidate could appear to be prepared, well-structured, and knowledgeable about a certain subject, thus falsely enhancing their potential, whilst potentially knowing very little about what they are speaking about.
Virtual interviews and virtual technical assessments have recently been in the news due to big tech companies having concerns around candidate integrity and national security. Google has re-introduced in-person interviews for this very reason, amid reports that over 50% of candidates are using AI tools to solve coding challenges during virtual interviews.1 Other major corporations reimplementing face-to-face interviews, or rejecting remote hiring include major global employers McKinsey, Cisco, and Deloitte.2 In addition to concerns over candidate integrity, the FBI has gone as far as to warn US companies that thousands of North Korean nationals are using AI to create fake profiles and gain remote employment at US tech companies.3
The virtual interviews in question are overseen by Medical and Dental Recruitment and Selection (MDRS), the national body responsible for running and coordinating recruitment for all postgraduate medical and dental training across the UK. MDRS manages the entire application, including virtual interview and selection, and sits under NHS England (NHSE). MDRS brought in virtual interviewing during and after Covid, allowing applicants to log in remotely and take their interviews online. They have the ultimate say in whether interviews can revert to face-to-face, or to introduce AI-detection measures. Solutions to this threat posited by MDRS have been: enhanced monitoring of applicants, candidate declarations of honesty, and an expectation to avoid cheating for the threat of GMC referral.4
Senior Registrar Oliver Townsend, CBS board member and president of BOTA, says: “Seeking ‘partial solutions’ to mitigate AI use but continue with virtual interviews risks falsely assuming the issue has been solved, which may be impossible to verify with undetectable tools, and introduces further costly and burdensome solutions such as invigilated virtual interviews at test centres or additional software commissioning. Ambient AI is pretty much undetectable, and the risk of it being used to assist a number of applicants to cheat completely undermines and invalidates the fairness of the process.
"The best way to definitively eliminate AI use in interviews is to conduct them face-to-face. We therefore strongly urge MDRS to immediately revert to face-to-face interviews for the upcoming recruitment rounds for both Core Surgical Training and for Higher Specialty Training, to protect the validity and integrity of the selection process, and the safety of our patients.”
Core Surgical Trainee Raiyyan Aftab, who is a CBS board member, and president of ASiT, says: "We have anecdotal reports of a number of candidates using ambient AI such as Cluely AI which prides itself on offering answers the candidate did not study for. Virtual interview selection allows this vulnerability to persist. Without the safeguards of in-person assessment, current selection ceases to reflect genuine competence. If left unchecked, we risk the appointment of candidates who are not truly prepared for clinical responsibility, ultimately compromising patient safety."
Consultant plastic surgeon Mark Henley, president of CBS, adds: “CBS wholeheartedly supports this call for a return to face-to-face interviews in light of a situation that seriously compromises fairness and integrity. Our profession is built on trust and accountability, and by allowing applicants who have not upheld those values at the very first stage of their careers, we risk undermining the credibility of the surgical training system as a whole.”
References
