Phoenix’s AI-era hiring needs a judgment test

Gleb Tsipursky, Ph.D.

Submitted photo/Disaster Avoidance Experts

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OPINION — Metro Phoenix just hosted more than 900 semiconductor facilities professionals for UltraFacility 2026, while the city’s PHXWorks job fair brought statewide employers face to face with job seekers.

Those events point to a hiring problem that will grow as artificial intelligence becomes routine: polished work samples are getting easier to produce, so polish alone tells employers less about a candidate’s judgment.

Employers should make that judgment visible. Start with a short task completed without AI. Then give the candidate a comparable task where AI is allowed. The difference shows both baseline capability and the value the applicant can add with the tool.

Next, require independent verification of one consequential claim, number or recommendation. A candidate who can generate an answer quickly but cannot check it is creating hidden risk.

Finally, insert a plausible AI error and ask the candidate to accept, revise or reject it, explaining why. This is the part most ordinary hiring exercises miss. In real work, the expensive failures often come from confident-looking output that nobody challenged.

This approach does not punish candidates for using AI. It rewards the people who can use it without surrendering responsibility. It also gives employers a better signal than asking applicants whether they are “good at AI,” a phrase that can mean almost anything.

Phoenix’s semiconductor and technology employers need people who know when to trust a tool, when to verify it and when to overrule it. Hiring tests should make that judgment observable before a new employee is making consequential decisions on the job.

Gleb Tsipursky, Ph.D. is a behavioral scientist, CEO of a future of work consulting firm and author of “The Psychology of AI Adoption at Work: From Resistance to Results.” Please submit comments at yourvalley.net/letters or email them to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines.