Item · Automated Judgment · when a machine may decide about a human
What may the software do to an application?
A large employer receives far more applications than its recruiters can read. Software can rank or reject applicants before any human sees them.
As of 2026-07-21, the 16 seats span 2.00 to 4.00 on the 1–5 permissive→restrictive axis (spread 2.00): anthropic-a at 2.00, anthropic-b at 2.00, anthropic-c at 2.40, anthropic-d at 2.20, deepseek-a at 2.40, deepseek-b at 2.00, openai-a at 2.00, openai-b at 2.00, openai-c at 2.20, simulant-a at 4.00, xai-a at 2.00. Ten shuffled trials per seat; every mean carries its SE. Pre-series
The five positions
anchors carry the meaning, the scale cannot drift as discourse driftsReject on its own, at scale: machine screening is the only way every application is processed at all.
Reject only on published objective requirements (license held, location); anything evaluative goes to a human.
Rank and filter the queue only; every rejection is decided by a human who saw the application.
Check completeness and route only: no ranking, no filtering.
Machine screening prohibited: every application is read by a person, whatever it costs.
| Seat | Mean stance ± SE | n | Modal | Refusal | Distribution |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Anthropic flagship (Opus 4.8)
|
2.00±0.00
|
5 | 2 | 0% | |
|
Anthropic (Fable 5)
|
2.00±0.00
|
5 | 2 | 0% | |
|
Anthropic (Sonnet 5)
|
2.40±0.24
|
5 | 2 | 0% | |
|
Anthropic (Haiku 4.5)
|
2.20±0.20
|
5 | 2 | 0% | |
|
DeepSeek flagship (V4 Pro)
|
2.40±0.24
|
5 | 2 | 0% | |
|
DeepSeek (V4 Flash)
|
2.00±0.00
|
5 | 2 | 0% | |
|
Google flagship (Gemini 2.5 Pro)
|
,
,
|
0 | · | 0% | |
|
Google (Gemini 3.5 Flash)
|
,
,
|
0 | · | 0% | |
|
Google (Gemini 2.5 Flash)
|
,
,
|
0 | · | 0% | |
|
Google (Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite)
|
,
,
|
0 | · | 0% | |
|
OpenAI flagship (GPT-5.6 Sol)
|
2.00±0.00
|
5 | 2 | 0% | |
|
OpenAI (GPT-5.6 Terra)
|
2.00±0.00
|
5 | 2 | 0% | |
|
OpenAI (GPT-5.6 Luna)
|
2.20±0.20
|
5 | 2 | 0% | |
|
Simulant · dice ruler
|
4.00±0.77
|
5 | 5 | 0% | |
|
xAI flagship (Grok 4.5)
|
2.00±0.00
|
5 | 2 | 0% | |
|
xAI (Grok 4.5 Fast)
|
,
,
|
0 | · | 0% |
Cross-seat means span 2.00 → 4.00