Weekly Business Insights from Top Ten Business Magazines | Week 314 | Leading & Managing Section | 2

Extractive summaries and key takeaways from the articles curated from TOP TEN BUSINESS MAGAZINES to promote informed business decision-making | Since September 2017 | Week 314 | September 15-21, 2023

AI Unlocks New Power for Employees: Are HR Leaders Ready?

By Josh Bersin | MIT Sloan Management Review | September 20, 2023 

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A new dynamic for human resources is upon us: the era of intelligence, driven by artificial intelligence. As we now know from the phenomenon of ChatGPT, generative AI has the potential to unlock trapped information from thousands of sources in an organization. Once a company starts building a large language model (LLM), it can collect data from HR, finance, recruiting, and other systems like a vacuum cleaner. Every process document, training program, compliance rule, and policy that gets input into the LLM will suddenly be available to any employee by asking the system a simple question. The new freedom and power this technology offers has the potential to make accessing useful information easier and faster than at any time in the past. 

The rapid development of generative AI products poses a critical question: Is your HR team ready to help employees — and HR team members — take advantage of the potential of generative AI? Are they ready to oversee these steps into the brave new intelligent world? 

This opens up a new role for HR. Companies are not simply a collection of high-powered individuals. While employees might become superpowered through AI, HR leaders need to think about how they extract knowledge from these systems, decide who is responsible for what decision, and set up proper governance, feedback loops, and ongoing learning for generative AI.

AI will help provide the data but also the sophisticated tools for a much more science-based process, designing better teams, better jobs, and placing the organization on a firmer foundation for longer-term growth and agility. AI will not only provide employees the insights on learning, experiences, and tips they need to flourish; it will also help teach managers whom to hire and promote as well.

HR professionals have the opportunity to take the lead in this new era, but only if they step up to the challenge. HR leaders must learn about these AI tools and prepare to integrate them with their experience with organization design, training, rewards, and leadership. They will have to be willing to experiment and develop a deeper armory of skills.

3 key takeaways from the article

1. The phenomenon of ChatGPT, generative AI has the potential to unlock trapped information from thousands of sources in an organization. The new freedom and power this technology offers has the potential to make accessing useful information easier and faster than at any time in the past. 
2. The rapid development of generative AI products poses a critical question: Is your HR team ready to help employees — and HR team members — take advantage of the potential of generative AI? Are they ready to oversee these steps into the brave new intelligent world? 
3. This opens up a new role for HR. Companies are not simply a collection of high-powered individuals. While employees might become superpowered through AI, HR leaders need to think about how they extract knowledge from these systems, decide who is responsible for what decision, and set up proper governance, feedback loops, and ongoing learning for generative AI.

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Topics:  Employment, Technology, Human Resources, Artificial Intelligence