'Shark Tank' star Kevin O'Leary says pro-Palestinian student protesters are 'screwed' because employers can identify them through AI

Kwan Wei Kevin Tan
Updated ·3 min read
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  • Kevin O'Leary said students protesting Israel's war on Gaza might be ruining their career prospects.

  • The "Shark Tank" host said employers could use AI to identify applicants who took part in the protests.

  • "I can't believe the stuff I find in background checks now. These people are screwed," he said.

The "Shark Tank" host and investor Kevin O'Leary says pro-Palestinian student protesters will be "screwed" when they start job hunting.

This, O'Leary says, is because employers can now use artificial intelligence to screen applicants and filter out those who've taken part in protests. Advancements in technology have made it much easier to identify people on camera, the businessman says.

"Here's your résumé with a picture of you burning a flag. See that one. That goes in this pile over here, cause I can get the same person's talent in this pile that's not burning anything," O'Leary said on Fox News' "The Five" on Wednesday.

"There's plenty of consequences for all those people. Even an image that far away, AI can generate who they are by the way the body moves. I can't believe the stuff I find in background checks now. These people are screwed," he said.

O'Leary told CNN in an interview on the same day that protesters could still be identified via retinal scanning even if they tried to hide their identity by donning a mask.

"This is what's happening with AI. So if you're burning down something, or taking a flag down, or fighting with police, I'm sorry, you're trashing your personal brand," O'Leary told CNN's Laura Coates.

Representatives for O'Leary didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular business hours.

O'Leary isn't the only business executive who's weighed in on the pro-Palestinian student protests taking place at various campuses, such as Columbia University and UCLA.

ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods told CNBC in an interview last month that the oil giant "wouldn't be interested" in hiring students from universities that had been embroiled in pro-Palestinian protests.

"Harassment and intimidation, I think there's no place for that, frankly, at those universities, and certainly no place for that at a company like ExxonMobil," Woods told the outlet. "If that action or those protests reflect the values of the campuses where they're doing it, we wouldn't be interested in recruiting students from those campuses," he added.

Comments such as those from O'Leary and Woods suggest students may be inflicting damage on their own careers through their political activism.

In October, the law firm Winston & Strawn said it revoked a job offer for a New York University law student who publicly condemned Israel for Hamas' terrorist attacks. The announcement came on October 10, just three days after Hamas had attacked Israel.

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