How Rude Virtual Humans Are Helping Veterans Re-enter the Job Market
The USC Institute for Creative Technologies developed lifelike interviewers to help prep veterans for what they might encounter in the real world
The hostile script, while written by a team at USC, isn’t unrealistic for an interviewing veteran. In fact, some of the most offensive questions—“Did you kill anybody?”—came from real stories veterans told the writers.
“There’s an under-the-radar stigma,” says Skip Rizzo, the director for medical virtual reality at ICT. “Everybody says thank you for your service and all that but when it comes to hiring it’s like, well, is he all right?”
So far, the angry interviewers have been effective. U.S. Vets, a nonprofit for at-risk veterans in Los Angeles, started using an earlier version of the technology in 2016. In early tests, they found of the 37 veterans who practiced interviewing with the virtual humans, 36 were able to find jobs.
The interviewers are programmed to do a lot of human things—walk out of the office in the middle of the interview, check their notes, even sneeze. They are not designed to convince veterans they are human, though. In fact, Rizzo says part of the reason the device works is precisely because people know they’re not real.
See the full story here: https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/virtual-reality-interviews-veterans/