AI: My new low maintenance work colleague

My brother sent me a great quote today about HR and AI. “Innovation is not your IT people anymore. AI doesn’t work like IT, it works like a person. HR is your centre of development right now… Your innovations are not going to come from your IT department. They’re going to come from employees using AI” Ethan Mollick. For quite some time, I confess I avoided the webinars and articles on how AI was going to influence HR. My company has ‘being human’ as one of its core values and I have been choosing to sit with my belief that people will always deal with people better than AI.

Recently I have been working with a client and providing some employees with outplacement support. My recommendations to use AI to help with CVs and statement writing were met with some hesitation but also relief to find some help. However, one individual told me she decided not to use it, fearing it would be held against her in the selection process. It seems we are all still deciding where we sit with it: good or bad? Something to embrace or reject? The answer isn’t straightforward.

Personally, I have lowered my guard with what’s available to me; AI seems to be sneaking into my every day tool kit. As a remote worker I no longer have the office chat to solidify my thoughts, or spark new ideas; so the AI bot has been kind enough to step into the breach. While I have no doubt it cannot always understand the subtilties and complexity of human nature, it is brilliant at checking paragraph structure, spelling and grammar as well as conducting lengthy research in seconds. There are many of these tools that I haven’t engaged with yet; I was recently shown one which creates any picture you can imagine.  Although the generated image had too many fingers and it wasn’t ticking any diversity boxes, the scope of AI cannot be ignored.

With over 15 years of experience in HR and dealing with complex cases, I know that AI will not be replacing people anytime soon. However, I do see it as an enabler and facilitator, a low maintenance work colleague and a font of knowledge that I will continue to tap into.

Returning to the quote, I have definitely moved from a position of doubt to one of being much more open to possibilities. I specialise in HR infrastructure, and I want to engage with AI to find ways to automate our transactional processes and, dare I say, to think about ways of making them more human… That said I will continue to provide my services with a people-centric approach, sticking closely to my core values. For those of you who are still unsure. Maybe take a small step: ask a simple question or re-write a paragraph and see where you end up.  

Now if you’ll excuse me, I had better get my AI friend to give this a read before I hit publish.

P.S. Picture is a joint effort from my brain and Bing image creator.