How HR leaders can leverage A.I. to transform work—and where they often go wrong

HR has become the center of experimentation for leaders thinking about how A.I. will transform the workplace. Perhaps no one knows this better than Ravin Jesuthasan, global leader for transformation services at consulting firm Mercer, who advises some of the corporate world’s top HR executives on the rapid advances and changes in the ways employees perform their jobs everyday. One of his main areas of focus lately is generative A.I. and how it will affect HR practices. He spoke with Fortune about some of the new tech tools he’s evaluating, like ChatGPT, and how he believes they will change the role of CHROs. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Fortune: Where do leaders often go wrong when evaluating the latest A.I. tools like ChatGPT?

Ravin Jesuthasan: Not leading with the work and instead leading with the tech. Unfortunately, we’re seeing a lot of leaders get really enamored with ChatGPT-3, and even more so now, GPT-4, which is incredibly more powerful. But unfortunately, when they lead with the tech they see a binary narrative between the talent performing the work and that particular automation solution.

Alternatively, what we consistently see with companies who lead with the work is they see where highly repetitive rules-based work can get substituted. They see where the creative things that we do might get augmented by tools like A.I. They see where our critical thinking, and our ability to express empathy and concern, might be supercharged by some of these tools and make us even more productive. And they also see something that often goes missed, which is where the presence of these automations can actually create space for new human work or create the demand for new human skills. 

Do you think this technology is just another trend, or does it feel like it’s here to stay? 

Oh, it’s definitely here to stay. And it’s not unanticipated. You can go back to 2014 when Google bought DeepMind Technologies. DeepMind brought a lot of the advances in neural networks to the public’s visibility. We also started to see innovations with IBM Watson making some significant progress with [cancer] diagnoses, although it was very rough.

We always assume that automation is going to come in and substitute what humans do, but in 90% of the cases that automation is too blunt an instrument in its early days. It really needs the human alongside it, both to teach it as well as to apply that judgment to what the algorithm is telling us. I think that’s one thing that we have to really understand—it’s much more nuanced than we typically think.

We also often overestimate the near-term impact of emerging technologies and we underestimate the long-term impact of these technologies. But until we understand the nuances, we won’t get the full value from them. It goes back to the idea of needing to lead with the work and not with the next bright, shiny object.

How do you see the latest technological innovations enhancing the future of training and reskilling?

It’s got massive potential. Particularly with advances in virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality. One of the things we’ve talked about is as people redesign the work, how do we design in space for learning into the flow of work? There is real potential to compress the learning cycle and to blend it with the “doing cycle,” if you will.

What do you think these advances mean for the future of the HR department?

It advances HR as a strategic orchestrator of work and the development of the workforce. HR is going to need to orchestrate the perpetual upskilling and reskilling of the workforce and utilize systems and tools like skill taxonomies and skill prices. All of these tools give HR insight into the overall cost structure of the company and where value is being created. And, most importantly, as the demand for work changes, these advances will translate into direct signals for how the talent needs to be upskilled and reskilled so that the talent is ready at a time when you know the work will be in demand.

Amber Burton
amber.burton@fortune.com
@amberbburton

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