HackerRank's AI interviewer Chakra cuts cheating flags 70% to 80%

HackerRank built its business on coding challenges after launching at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2012, and it now counts more than 3,000 business customers and a developer community of over 30 million. The traditional product largely tested whether developers could solve problems correctly.

With Chakra, the company is betting that AI has made that earlier model less useful for measuring engineering ability. CEO Vivek Ravisankar compared the shift internally to Apple moving from the iPod to the iPhone: the old product still has value, but the new one represents where HackerRank believes the market is headed. He said Chakra is going to be the headline and the way the company moves forward.

The stakes may hinge on how employers weigh AI's role in evaluation. Ravisankar argued that AI can be less biased than humans if tuned properly, but automated hiring tools can inherit or amplify biases from the data, models, and criteria used to build them, and regulators are already scrutinizing their use. How well HackerRank addresses scrutiny such as New York City's bias-audit requirements could shape how readily employers adopt an AI that scores candidates.