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What is the future of HR?  Is AI coming for the HR Generalist? The HR Manager? The VP of HR?  What does this look like in PEO?

 

Technology is rapidly changing the face of HR.  Of that there is no doubt.  But as of now it acts on the fringes of HR and acts mostly in silos. 

 

One of the interesting trends that we’re seeing across LLMs in general is that instead of AI coming for the “rules based”, “highly monotonous”, and “boring entry level jobs”… the disruption is happening at the MOST human level.  We’ve jumped right past passing the touring test (that uncanny valley where ai starts to sound human but still has this tinge of oddness to it) and landed squarely on the Uncanny Mountain where AI can produce information that sounds superhuman, at speeds no human could hope to produce it.  I could ask it to write this article and it would do so more succinctly and with more beautiful prose than I could possibly hope to muster if given 1000x the length of time (we don’t use AI yet at PEO Distillery outside of some of our art)!

 

What does all of this mean for HR?  Well the dream, at least in my mind, was always that AI would take over the least desirable jobs.  Data entry. Reconcilliation. Paper pushing.  Government filings. New state Tax setup.  These were the elements of HR I’d long hoped would get automated away by AI.  Unfortunately, it turns out it’s much easier to be super human with language/creativity than it is to be even on par with humans when it comes to being able to do large amounts of data manipulation according to complex rule sets.

 

Who would have guessed?! (probably our AI overlords)

 

It is because of this macro-trend of AI having more luck with human relations, language, and art that I predict we will see AI continue to disrupt what is traditionally viewed as the most “Strategic” elements of HR.

Predictions:

AI will be conducting interviews within the decade at scale.

AI will be analyzing culture and prescribing fixes to companywide dynamics humans can’t even put a finger on today and it will do it in minutes by analyzing communications over email watching video recordings of meetings and with audio and video captured at the jobsite. 

AI will be used at scale to manage worker productivity (see Amazon's warehouse bots coming to an office near you soon!)

AI will be used in performance reviews to analyze employee behavior, to deliver feedback in the most constructive way possible, and to ultimately manage will be prescriptive in nature.

 

If these predictions frighten you, they should.  If they excite you, they should.  If you’re wondering what bias gets baked into the black box that is the AI systems, what hallucinations may or may not come out of these systems that whole companies will act on, what will happen to VP’s of HR, VP’s of Talent Acquisition, Directors of HR… you should!

 

But what about all those other little niggling tasks that you’d like to see automated away!?  Well for the foreseeable future I think the answer will be PEO!!