#People Post #7: Rise of the machines
Always thank Alexa, Siri, Cortana or Google, you want to be last against the wall when the singularity occurs.
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What is AI? If you think about Arnie in Terminator, or <some other AI thing> you’re not that far from the mark, although you’d need some crazy cybernetics or organic technology to really utilise an army of HR robots. Anyway...
AI is, apparently, going to talk all of our jobs. It’ll do things we can’t do, quicker and with more accuracy. If this makes you feel like you need to get out, plant some potatoes and start keeping your own chooks - chill out a bit, it’s not that bad (probably). We all use AI to some extent every day, the algorithms where serve up your facebook feed, or google search results. Siri (or Alexa) working out what you mean by “How long would it take to defrost a chicken in the microwave for tonight’s dinner with my partners mother?” To Google working out your quickest route to the Indian takeaway if you leave now. You also use AI in your job - if you’re using LinkedIn or any other kind of recruitment platform, there is AI at work to help you find the best candidates. Without doubt, AI makes life a lot easier.
Should we depend on it though? I don’t believe we should. AI could screen more CVs in a few seconds than you can in a day, but it doesn’t have the same gut feel for a great CV that you do (neither could it be trained, until it’s advanced enough to have it’s own gut feel, then it’s probably a sentient robot and we should start building bunkers) because you’ve seen hundreds of the same CV but this one just seems to bite. I’ve seen AI used for onboarding too, which, while horrendously efficient, is probably a bit cold for the first few days of an employees new life at your company. You need a warm body helping someone acclimatise and learn where the fridge, toilet and best sandwich shop is.
It’s not all bad though, AI can really help - it’ll help with repetitive, laborious tasks and save you a heap of time if you use it properly (which you can use for being a human being and interacting with people). One fascinating way that AI can help HR is reading and understanding sentiment and culture. There are bots and apps that monitor your platforms (Slack for example) and learn how people are talking to each other, than analyse these conversation to tell you how your workforce is feeling. Of course, this brings up a whole bucketload of privacy concerns - but inevitably, any kind of convenience like this is a privacy trade off - remember how you’re asking Jeff Bezos how to defrost a chicken? Yeah, that..
AI On the Web
Are we ready for our robot overlords?
“the message is clear: companies want AI, but they don’t have the talent, leadership or confidence in their human resources team to make it happen. “ Apparently not. It’s not because we’re scared of AI - we’re slowing being acclimated to it - it’s a training issue. Industries aren’t evolving fast enough to keep up with the oncoming AI benefits. AI is coming — and HR is not prepared
So, so clever, yet dumb as a stump
Computers, by their very nature, can’t actually “think”, then can only do what we tell them to do. We can tell them everything in the world, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be able to understand them. “As another example, Google Photos put together a collage of accidental photos of the carpet in one of our homes. It then identified that collage as a recent highlight on a Google Home Hub. Google Photos knew the photos were similar but didn’t understand how unimportant they were.”. The Problem With AI: Machines Are Learning Things, But Can’t Understand Them
Ethically speaking, machines can have bias too
As above, if humans are the one who program computers to do learning and be artificially intelligent, can humans also accidentally make AI as bias as humans are? Maybe. “Today, when computers are routinely making decisions about whether we are invited to job interviews, eligible for a mortgage, or a candidate for surveillance by law enforcement and security services, it’s a problem for everybody.”. Artificial Intelligence Has A Problem With Bias, Here's How To Tackle It
From the channel
Not much this week but:
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End #Post
There we have it, another post done. I enjoyed researching this one. There’s definitely a change coming for HR and AI, we need to understand what that change is and what we need to do about. For now, it’s enough to educate yourself on what the future means, but remember, AI can never replace you. Hugs. x
If there’s something in particular you’d like to see in here, then let me know. I enjoyed putting together this issue, so any other topic you’d benefit from hearing about would be great.
In the mean time, tell your friends about the email and the slack channel: http://hashtagpeople.co.uk/ .