Augment or exit: what a 22-year-old Nigerian app builder and Accenture’s layoffs reveal about Al's real test

VIDEOS have been circulating on social media showing job candidates using AI tools to generate real-time interview responses.

- ANDILE MASUKU

AI AUGMENTATION is no longer optional for knowledge workers.

(AIDIN GERANREKAB on Unsplash)

The clips, spawned by an Instagram account called newschool-boosted, feature someone with an earpiece receiving Al-whispered answers while speaking to interviewers on camera.The account is run by someone who goes by Kagehiro Mitsuyami, who describes himself as CEO of Lockedin AI, the very tool being demonstrated. The content is essentially promotional material dressed up as candid footage, which adds its own layer to the authenticity question.

Luiza Jarovsky, co-founder of the Al, Tech & Privacy Academy, flagged one such video, arguing that HR departments are unprepared for this kind of augmentation.

Fair point. But I found myself asking a different question: if a candidate can genuinely deliver the work using whatever Al tools they have at hand, and if such use is disclosed and professionally acceptable, does that shift the practice from questionable to merely pragmatic?

The ethics crowd wants to debate whether it's cheating. The market, meanwhile, is busy answering a more brutal question.

In late September, Accenture announced it would cut approximately 11 000 staff as part of an USD 865 million business optimisation programme. CEO Julie Sweet was blunt about the rationale: the company is “exiting, on a compressed timeline, people where re-skilling is not a viable path for the skills we need.”

By early December, Accenture had announced expanded partnerships with both OpenAl and Anthropic. The OpenAI deal, announced December 1, rolls out ChatGPT Enterprise across consulting, operations and delivery work.

The Anthropic partnership, announced December 9, will train 30,000 employees on Claude-powered solutions and represents Anthropic's largest-ever deployment of Claude Code.