Empowering, Not Replacing: A Positive Vision for AI in Executive Recruiting

By Terri Davis

“Once these artificial intelligences get smarter than we are, they will take control. They’ll make us irrelevant…” — Geoffrey Hinton, Father of AI

Modern AI often feels like a threat, especially when the warnings come from the very people building it. Sam Altman, the salesman behind ChatGPT (not an engineer, but the face of OpenAI and someone known for convincing investors), has said with offhand certainty, as casually as ordering toast or predicting the sun will rise, that “the majority of white-collar jobs will be taken over by AI.” That includes roles in health, education, law, finance, even HR.

Some companies now won’t hire people unless AI fails at the task, even though these models still hallucinate, invent facts, and make critical errors. They’re replacing people with a tool we barely understand.

Even leaders in the field admit they don’t fully understand how AI works. In May 2025, Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, said the quiet part out loud:

“People outside the field are often surprised and alarmed to learn that we do not understand how our own AI creations work. They are right to be concerned: this lack of understanding is essentially unprecedented in the history of technology.”

In short, no one is fully in control of AI. A handful of Silicon Valley technocrats have appointed themselves arbiters of the direction of AI, and they work more or less in secret. There is no real government oversight. They are developing without any legal guardrails. And those guardrails may not arrive for years, by which time they may be too late to have any effect on what’s already been let out of Pandora’s Box.

So we asked ourselves: Using the tools available to us today, why not model something right now that can in some way shape the discussion around how AI is used? In our case, this is in the HR space.

What if AI in executive recruiting didn’t replace people, but instead helped companies discover them?

Picture a CEO in a post-merger fog. She needs clarity, not another résumé pile. Why not introduce her to the precise leader she didn’t know she needed, using AI?

Instead of turning warm-blooded professionals into collateral damage, why not use AI to help, thoughtfully, ethically, and practically solve problems that now exist across the board in HR, recruitment and employment?

This is the founding vision behind our new platform, oolu (oolu.ai) launching this summer. This isn’t a sales pitch, but rather an introduction to a real use case in HR that can put AI to work for people instead of working against them.

An Empathic Role for AI

Most job platforms still rely on keyword-stuffed resumés and keyword matching algorithms. As a result, excellent candidates often get filtered out simply for using the “wrong” terms. That’s not just inefficient, it’s fundamentally malpractice. It’s also hurting companies and candidates. It’s an example of technology applied very badly. But this is the norm today.

Our AI application does something completely different and, we think, better: it helps candidates develop richer, more dimensional profiles that showcase what we call their ‘superpowers’: the unique strengths, instincts, and character that shape real-world impact. This goes beyond job titles to the qualities that actually differentiate equally experienced candidates and give companies a better fit.

One leader, as an example, may bring calm decisiveness in chaos. Another may excel at building unity across silos. Another might be relentless at rooting out operational bloat and uncovering savings others missed.

Our system helps uncover those traits, guides candidates to articulate them clearly, and discreetly learns about each candidate to offer thoughtful, evolving insight. We think of it as an AI advocate. Not a gatekeeping nemesis. A private partner and champion in self-discovery and career navigation.

Outcome-Focused Matches

For companies, our platform reframes job descriptions around outcomes, not tasks. Instead of listing qualifications, we help hiring teams articulate what they’re trying to achieve: whether it’s growth, turnaround, post-M&A integration, or cost efficiency, to find a more suitable candidate match.

Fairness by Design

Bias is endemic in HR today: ageism, sexism, disability, race. Our vision actively discourages bias. Gender, race, age, and even profile photos are optional. The system doesn’t reward those who include a photo, unlike most recruiting platforms. It doesn’t penalize those who don’t know how to game a resumé.

Success then becomes about alignment. Deep expertise. Purposeful outcomes.

This design gives companies what they want: competence. And gives candidates what they want: a fair chance.

A World-First Vision

To our knowledge, our platform is the first executive recruiting platform that uses AI in the role of multi-layered support for candidates, while also supporting the needs of companies to find leaders better fitted to their needs.

This is more than an innovative way to use current AI technology. It’s a value statement about prioritizing people with AI.

Why Now

We’re at an inflection point.

Researchers like Daniel Kokotajlo, Scott Alexander, Thomas Larsen, Eli Lifland, and Romeo Dean forecast in AI 2027 that superhuman AI (AGI, then superintelligence) will bring changes in the next decade more disruptive than the Industrial Revolution.

If they’re right, then the decisions being made today by a small circle in Silicon Valley will affect lives everywhere.

That’s why we’re stepping in to have our say in the role that AI plays in a real-world example. The more human-centred, altruistic, practical uses of AI we can build and model now, the more likely, we feel, these values are to shape laws, norms, and infrastructure later.

This is a historic moment. How we use AI now will shape the future.

We Believe in People-First Design

Every technology revolution sparks fear. But this one with AI is unique: it’s the first since the Industrial Revolution where machines are being designed to replace people as an explicit goal. Entire roles and careers may vanish.

But that isn’t inevitable either. It’s a choice.

AI can be built to assist, not erase. It can guide a leader to their next opportunity. It can help a CEO find a partner who unlocks transformation. It can amplify people, not overshadow them.

We invite others in talent tech and AI to take the same stance. Let’s build tools for people. Let’s avoid displacement and instead elevate talent. Let’s embed honesty, fairness, clarity, and alignment in everything we make.

We don’t control the base models. But we do control how we use them. And how we build with them.

AI should amplify human potential not replace it. That’s the choice we’re making.