New York Gov. Hochul touts NYC as first U.S. city to move forward with traffic congestion pricing
Pedestrians cross a street past traffic in the Midtown neighborhood of New York, US, on Saturday, June 17, 2023. New York City’s congestion pricing plan for the central business district is expected to get final approval this month.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
After New York City was cleared late last week to move forward with a congestion pricing plan, Governor Kathy Hochul on Tuesday said the largest U.S. city is leading the way to “achieve cleaner air, safer streets and better transit.”
The Federal Highway Administration, a division of the U.S. Department of Transportation, on Friday gave the green light for New York to go ahead with a plan to manage congestion, primarily through tolls in parts of Manhattan.
The measure could go into effect as soon as the spring of 2024, and would be the first of its kind in the U.S., according to New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority. State agencies have 310 days to stand up the tolling program and associated infrastructure.
“We are going to be the very first state in the nation, the very first city in America, to have a congestion pricing plan,” Hochul said in a press conference on Tuesday. “Others will look at us. Other cities are paying attention. How is it going to work here? Well, we’re going to show them. We’re going to show them how you do this.”
While it’s a new model for the U.S., congestion pricing plans have previously been implemented in London, Stockholm, and Singapore.
The cost of the toll is still being decided. A six-member Traffic Mobility Review Board is tasked with determining the specific pricing structure.
A report last August on the environmental impact of the plan included toll rates that ranged from $9 to $23 at peak times, $7 to $17 at off-peak times, and $5 to $12 during overnight hours.
Pedestrians cross a street past traffic in the Midtown neighborhood of New York, US, on Saturday, June 17, 2023. New York City’s congestion pricing plan for the central business district is expected to get final approval this month.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The toll area covers much of central Manhattan’s surface roads. Cars will be tolled at 60th Street and south, but not on FDR Drive along the East Side or the West Side Highway. There also won’t be tolls in the Battery Park Underpass or on any surface roadway portions of the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel connecting to West Street, according to the MTA.
Tolls will be collected via E-ZPass. For cars that don’t have E-ZPass, a bill will be mailed to the address of the registered vehicle, MTA says.
The congestion pricing plan, formally called the Central Business District Tolling Program, was put together by MTA, the New York State Department of Transportation, and the New York City Department of Transportation. It aims to reduce congestion in Manhattan, improve air quality and raise money to invest in the city’s public transportation system.
Before the Covid pandemic, approximately 700,000 vehicles entered the central business district per day, according to data from the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council shared by the MTA. In 2020, traffic dropped to just 10% of normal volume, but has since rebounded to more than 90% of pre-pandemic levels, a more robust recovery than mass transit ridership, the MTA says.
The MTA Reform and Traffic Mobility Act passed in April 2019 called for the traffic congestion plan, and included certain limits, including making sure passenger vehicles can only be charged once per day for entering the area. Residents of those neighborhoods who make less than $60,000 will be eligible for a state tax credit. The act also requires that overnight toll rates be lower than peak costs and that a discount be available to low-income drivers.
Janno Lieber, the CEO of the MTA, said at Tuesday’s press conference that the plan required a 4,000-page environmental assessment to get federal government to sign off.
“They studied it to death,” Lieber said. “And we studied every intersection almost all the way to Philadelphia. And they studied the air quality, and they studied all it means, and they said that this initiative — this dramatic historic initiative — will not have a significant impact on the 28 million people in the region under federal environmental law. That’s what this means.”
Some New Jersey Democratic lawmakers, however, are upset by the move and the associated costs.
“This is nothing more than a cash grab to fund the MTA,” Representatives Josh Gottheimer and Bill Pascrell and Senator Bob Menendez said in joint written statement published Tuesday.
They wrote that the plan represents an attempt by New York “to balance its budget on the backs of hard-working New Jersey families.”
WATCH: The $52.6 billion plan to save the NYC region from climate change
Technology
Meet the 21-year-old helping coders use AI to cheat in Google and other tech job interviews
A person walks past the entrance to a Google building in Dublin, Feb. 15, 2023.
Artur Widak | Anadolu | Getty Images
After landing internship offers from Amazon, Meta and TikTok, computer science student Chungin “Roy” Lee has decided to move to San Francisco.
But he won’t be joining any of those companies.
Instead, Lee will be building his own startup that offers a peculiar service: helping software engineers use artificial intelligence to cheat in their technical job interviews.
“Everyone programs nowadays with the help of AI,” said Lee, a 21-year-old student at Columbia University, which has opened disciplinary proceedings against him, according to documents viewed by CNBC. A Columbia spokesperson said the university doesn’t comment on individual students.
“It doesn’t make sense to have an interview format that assumes you don’t have the use of AI,” Lee said.
Lee is at the forefront of a movement among professional coders who are exploiting the limitations of remote job interviews, popularized during the Covid pandemic, by using AI tools off camera to ensure they give hiring managers the best possible answers.
The hiring process that took hold in the work-from-home era involved candidates interviewing from behind a Zoom screen rather than traveling, sometimes across the country, for on-location interviews, where they could show their coding skills on dry-erase boards.
In late 2022 came the boom in generative AI, with the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Since then, tech companies have laid off tens of thousands of programmers while touting the use of AI to write code. At Google, for example, more than 25% of new code is written by AI, CEO Sundar Pichai told investors in October.
The combination of rapid advancements in AI, mass layoffs of software developers, and a continuing world of remote and hybrid work has created a novel conundrum for recruiters.
The problem has become so prevalent that Pichai suggested during a Google town hall in February that his hiring managers consider returning to in-person job interviews.
Google isn’t the only tech company weighing that idea.
But engineers aren’t slowing down.
Lee has turned his cheating into a business. His company, Interview Coder, markets itself as a service that helps software developers cheat during job interviews. The internship offers that he landed are the proof he uses to show that his technology works.
AI assistants for virtual interviews can provide written code, make code improvements, and generate detailed explanations of results that candidates can read. The AI tools all work quickly, which is helpful for timed interviews.
Hiring managers are venting their frustrations on social media over the rise of AI cheaters, saying that those who get caught are eliminated from contention. Interviewers say they’re exhausted from having to discern whether candidates are using their own skills or relying on AI.
‘Invisible’ help
The cheating tools rely on generative AI models to provide software engineers with real-time answers to coding problems as they’re presented during interviews. The AI analyzes both written and oral questions and instantaneously generates code. The widgets can also provide the cheaters with explanations for the solutions that they can use in the interview.
The tools’ most valuable feature, however, might be their secrecy. Interview Coder is invisible to the interviewer.
While candidates are using technology to cheat, employers are observing their behavior during interviews to try to catch them. Interviewers have learned to look for eyes wandering to the side, the reflection of other apps visible on candidates’ glasses, and answers that sound rehearsed or don’t match questions, among other clues.
Perhaps the biggest tell is a simple “Hmm.”
Hiring managers said they’ve noticed that many candidates use the ubiquitous sound to buy themselves time while waiting for their AI tools to finish their work.
“I’ll hear a pause, then ‘Hmm,’ and all of a sudden, it’s the perfect answer,” said Anna Spearman, founder of Techie Staffing, an agency that helps companies fill technical roles. “There have also been instances where the code looked OK, but they couldn’t describe how they came to the conclusion.”
Henry Kirk, a software developer and co-founder of Studio.init in New York, said this type of cheating used to be easy to catch.
“But now it’s harder to detect,” said Kirk. He said the technology has gotten smart enough to present the answers in a place that doesn’t require users to move their eyes.
“The eye movement used to be the biggest giveaway,” Kirk said.
Interview Coder’s website says its virtual interview tool is immune to screen detection features that are available to companies on services such as Zoom and Google Meet. Lee markets his product as being webcam-proof.
When Kirk hosted a virtual coding challenge for an engineering job he was looking to fill in June, 700 people applied, he said. Kirk recorded the process of the first interview round. He was looking to see if any candidates were cheating in ways that included using results from large language models.
“More than 50% of them cheated,” he said.
AI cheating tools have improved so much over the last year that they’ve become nearly undetectable, experts said. Other than Lee’s Interview Coder, software engineers can also use programs such as Leetcode Wizard or ChatGPT.
Kirk said his startup is considering moving to in-person interviews, though he knows that potentially limits the talent pool.
“The problem is now I don’t trust the results as much,” Kirk said. “I don’t know what else to do other than on-site.”
Google CEO Sundar Pichai during an event at the Google for Startups Campus in Warsaw, Poland, Feb. 13, 2025.
Omar Marques | Anadolu | Getty Images
Back to the Googleplex
It’s become a big topic at Google, and one Pichai addressed in February at an internal town hall meeting, where executives read questions and comments that were submitted by employees and summarized by AI, according to an audio recording that was reviewed by CNBC.
One question asked of management was, “Can we get onsite job interviews back?”
“There are many email threads about this topic,” the question said. “If budget is constraint, can we get the candidates to an office or environment we can control?”
Pichai turned to Brian Ong, Google’s vice president of recruiting, who was joining through a virtual livestream.
“Brian, do we do hybrid?” Pichai asked.
Ong said candidates and Google employees have said they prefer virtual job interviews because scheduling a video call is easier than finding a time to meet in available conference rooms. The virtual interview process is about two weeks faster, he added.
He said interviewers are instructed to probe candidates on their answers as a way to decipher whether they actually know what they’re talking about.
“We definitely have more work to do to integrate how AI is now more prevalent in the interview process,” said Ong. He said his recruiting organization is working with Google’s software engineer steering committee to figure out how the company can refine its interviewing process.
“Given we all work hybrid, I think it’s worth thinking about some fraction of the interviews being in person,” Pichai responded. “I think it’ll help both the candidates understand Google’s culture and I think it’s good for both sides.”
Ong said it’s also an issue “all of our other competitor companies are looking at.”
A Google spokesperson declined to comment beyond what was said at the meeting.
Other companies have already shifted their hiring practices to account for AI cheating.
Deloitte reinstated in-person interviews for its U.K. graduate program, according to a September report.
Anthropic, the maker of AI chatbot Claude, issued new guidance in its job applications in February, asking candidates not to use AI assistants during the hiring process.
“While we encourage people to use AI systems during their role to help them work faster and more effectively, please do not use AI assistants during the application process,” the new policy says. “We want to understand your personal interest in Anthropic without mediation through an AI system, and we also want to evaluate your non-AI-assisted communication skills. Please indicate ‘Yes’ if you have read and agree.”
Amazon is also taking steps to combat AI cheating.
The company asks that candidates acknowledge that they won’t use unauthorized tools during the interview or assessment process, spokesperson Margaret Callahan told CNBC.
Chungin “Roy” Lee, a 21-year-old student at Columbia University, is the founder of Interview Coder, a startup that makes software to help computer programmers cheat in job interviews with the help of AI.
Courtesy of Chungin Lee
‘F*ck Leetcode’
If you visit InterviewCoder.co, the first thing that greets you is large gray type that reads “F*ck Leetcode.”
Leetcode is the program used by many tech companies to evaluate software engineers for technical roles. Tech companies such as Meta, Google and Amazon use it to keep tabs on the thousands of job applicants they evaluate.
“Every time I mention interviews, I get frustrated comments about Leetcode,” wrote Ryan Peterman, a software engineer at Meta, in a newsletter posted on Substack in December. Peterman said Leetcode problems are purposely designed to be much harder than what software engineers would do on the job. Leetcode is the best tool companies have to filter hundreds of applicants, Peterman wrote.
Coders said they hate Leetcode because it emphasizes algorithmic problem-solving and asks applicants to solve riddles and puzzles that seem irrelevant to the job, according to those CNBC spoke with as well as comments CNBC found from engineers across various social media platforms. Another downside is that it sometimes requires hours of work that may not result in a job offer or advancement, they said.
Leetcode served as Lee’s inspiration for building Interview Coder, he said. With the help of AI, he said, he created the service in less than a week.
“I thought I wanted to work at a big tech company and spent 600 hours practicing for Leetcode,” Lee said. “It made me miserable, and I almost stopped programming because of how much I didn’t like it.”
Lee’s social media posts are filled with comments from other programmers expressing similar frustrations.
“Legend,” several comments said in response to some of his X posts. Others said they enjoyed him “f—ing with big tech.”
Rival software Leetcode Wizard was also inspired by distaste for Leetcode.
Isabel De Vries, Leetcode Wizard’s head of marketing, told CNBC in a statement that Leetcode-style interviews fail to accurately measure engineering skills and fail to reflect actual daily engineering work.
“Our product originates from the same frustrations many of our users are having,” De Vries said.
Leetcode did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Henry Kirk, a software developer and co-founder of Studio.init in New York, is considering moving job interviews to be on site in response to software engineers using AI to cheat in virtual interviews.
Photo by Krista Schlueter for Inc. Magazine
When Kirk, of Studio.init, posted on LinkedIn in February to vent about his frustrations with AI cheating, he received nearly 200 comments. But most argued that employers should allow candidates to use AI in the hiring process.
“Even the SAT lets you use a calculator,” said one comment. “I think you just make it harder to succeed on purpose when in the real world Google and gpt will always be at my fingertips.”
Lee promotes Interview Coder as being “invisible to all screen-recording softwares.” To prove its effectiveness, he recorded himself passing an Amazon interview and posted the video on YouTube. Amazon and the other companies that had made offers to Lee then rescinded them.
Lee got hundreds of comments praising the video, which YouTube removed after CNBC reached out to Amazon and Google for this story. YouTube cited a “copyright claim” by Amazon as the reason for removing the video.
“I as an interviewer am so annoyed by him but as a candidate also adore him,” former Meta staff engineer Yangshun Tay, co-founder of startup GreatFrontEnd, wrote in a LinkedIn post about Lee and his video. “Cheating isn’t right, but oh god I am so tired of these stupid algorithm interviews.”
After YouTube removed the video, Lee uploaded it once again.
Cheating as a service
Lee said he never planned to work at Amazon, Meta or TikTok. He said he wanted to show others just how easy it is to game Leetcode and force companies to find a better alternative.
And, he said, he’s making money in the process.
Interview Coder is available as a subscription for $60 a month. Lee said the company is on track to hit $1 million in annual recurring revenue by mid-May.
He recently hired the internet influencers who go by the name “Costco Guys” to make a video marketing his software.
“If you’re struggling to pass your Leetcode interviews and want to get a job at a big tech company, you’ve got to take a look at Interviewcoder.co to pass your interview,” the Costco Guys say in their video. “Because Interview Coder gets five big booms! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boooooom!”
Leetcode Wizard bills itself on its website as “The #1 AI-powered coding interview cheating app” and “The perfect tool for achieving a ‘Strong Hire’ result in any coding interview and landing your dream job at any FAANG company.” Leetcode Wizard charges 49 euros ($53) a month for a “Pro” subscription.
More than 16,000 people have used the app, and “several hundred” people have told Leetcode Wizard that they received offers thanks to the software, the company told CNBC.
“Our product will have succeeded once we can shut it down, when leetcode interviews are a thing of the past,” De Vries said.
Lee said he’s moving from New York to San Francisco in March to continue building Interview Coder and start working on his next company.
Kirk said he understands software engineers’ frustration with Leetcode and the tech industry. He’s had to use Leetcode numerous times throughout his career, and he was laid off by Google in 2023. He now wants to help out-of-work engineers get jobs.
But he remains worried that AI cheating will persist.
“We need to make sure they know their stuff because these tools still make mistakes,” Kirk said.
Half of companies currently use AI in the hiring process, and 68% will by the end of 2025, according to an October survey commissioned by ResumeBuilder.com.
Lee said that if companies want to bill themselves as AI-first, they should encourage its use by candidates.
Asked if he worries about software engineers losing the trust of the tech industry, Lee paused.
“Hmm,” he mumbled.
“My reaction to that is any company that is slow to respond to market changes will get hurt and that’s the fault of the company,” Lee said. “If there are better tools, then it’s their fault for not resorting to the better alternative to exist. I don’t feel guilty at all for not catering to a company’s inability to adapt.”
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