AI represents the next wave of technological advancement for society, and is expected to transform how work gets done across every industry. In this episode of Honest HR, SHRM CHRO Jim Link, SHRM-SCP, joins host Monique Akanbi to discuss everything HR professionals and business leaders should know about AI and integrating it into their organizations.
AI represents the next wave of technological advancement for society, and is expected to transform how work gets done across every industry. In this episode of Honest HR, SHRM CHRO Jim Link, SHRM-SCP, joins host Monique Akanbi to discuss everything HR professionals and business leaders should know about AI and integrating it into their organizations.
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Monique Akanbi:
Welcome to Honest HR, the podcast for HR professionals, people managers, and team leads, intent on growing our companies for the better.
Amber Clayton:
We bring you honest forward-thinking conversations and relatable stories from the workplace that challenge the way it's always been done. Because after all, you have to push back to move forward.
Wendy Fong:
Honest HR is a podcast from SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management, and by listening, you're helping create better workplaces and a better world. I'm Wendy Fong.
Amber Clayton:
I'm Amber Clayton.
Monique Akanbi:
And I'm Monique Akanbi. Now let's get honest.
Monique Akanbi:
Hello and welcome back to Honest HR. I'm your host, Monique Akanbi, SHRM Field Services Director East at SHRM. On our episode today, we're going to talk about everything an HR professional and business leader should consider as it relates to the world of artificial intelligence, better known as AI. This podcast is approved to provide 0.75 SHRM PDCs if you listen to the full episode. We'll share the Activity ID at the end of the show. Our guest for this podcast is none other than SHRM's Chief Human Resources Officer Jim Link. Welcome to Honest HR, Jim. I'm excited to have you on our podcast and to talk about a topic that's at the forefront of every business leader in HR professional's mind, AI. Jim, tell our listeners just a little bit about yourself.
Jim Link:
Hi, Monique. It is such a pleasure to be here with you today on this Honest HR podcast. This topic is fascinatingly interesting to me for all kinds of reasons, and the chief one among those obviously, is the potential that artificial intelligence has to really be a game changer for those of us who work in this human resources space, at any level. You ask a little bit about me. I am Jim Link. I'm the Chief Human Resources Officer at SHRM, the largest human resources association in the world with more than 330,000 global members.
What's interesting is that so many of our members today are asking us, as thought leaders and content providers in this space of human resources, "What's up with all things related to artificial intelligence." What I thought I would do today, Monique, if that's okay with you, is just outline this world of artificial intelligence just a little bit as we see it at SHRM, and then we can dive into some of the specifics that I know you and our listening audience will be interested in hearing more about.
Monique Akanbi:
Absolutely. Well, take us away, Jim.
Jim Link:
Thanks, Monique. Well, today, artificial intelligence in the workplace really has four goals, and the first one of those goals is the goal of optimization. That means helping make workers more efficient in completing tasks that can't be automated. They're trying to optimize what they have because it can't be automated. The second goal is enhancement, and that's really to enhance options for services and to offer greater decision-making capability for HR practitioners at all levels. The third one in my mind is where it really starts to get interesting, and that's in the space of prediction, and that allows us to see farther into the future and into the past to predict trends and outcomes that we currently don't have the capability to see because of the proliferation of all the data that's out there. And then the fourth one, and this is the one that everybody's talking about, is generation, to create new work products never before conceived or in ways never before explored.
Now Monique, when we're talking about those four areas, optimization, enhancement, prediction, and generation, I bet that most of the listening audience today is already doing some version of those first two, optimization and enhancement, even if they don't realize it. Most technological applications today that many of our human resources organizations out there are using are already doing that. But where this starts to get really exciting and really interesting is in this whole space of prediction and generation. And when you think about the future, that's where I would encourage human resources practitioners to really be thinking about what's not just possible, but what today is impossible that might become possible tomorrow.
Those are the four big areas of artificial intelligence and technology today as we think about it. And now that we know those four, I'm really ready to dig in wherever you want to.
Monique Akanbi:
Absolutely. Thank you so much Jim for laying out that foundation. I know that this is a topic that excites me just because of not only the possibilities, and going back to what you said and focusing on what's impossible. What does the future look like? How do we as HR professionals and business leaders can truly leverage artificial intelligence and not run away or shy away from something that is new? In your words or in your thoughts, how do you think AI will change HR in the realm of the three and four goals, prediction and also generation?
Jim Link:
Well, I believe it's a game changer for the human capital space in general. If you think about what we have historically done as human resources practitioners, we have been gatherers of information. We have gathered that information and we've used it for all those things we have to do like compliance, and regulatory reporting, and ensuring that we know the stats, the basic numbers, how many employees we have, how many are male, how many are female, how many people are signed up on our healthcare plans, all of those kinds of things. It's a look back reporting methodology that we have historically done.
What we haven't done is use the proliferation of all of that information that we now have, aggregated in such a way that it becomes either predictive or if using the right AI tool, even possibly generative. To me, that's the most exciting part of that is taking what capability we already have in our organizations and actually doing something with it that's used to guide and steer the business.
There are learning and development examples, there are performance management examples, there are employee engagement and feedback examples. The list goes on and on and on. It's that combination of formerly disparate pieces of information that can be loaded into a generative AI platform to give you all kinds of insight that we hadn't even thought about yesterday.
Monique Akanbi:
Thank you so much for sharing that, Jim. If I think back to when I was a practicing HR professional, things like this would definitely excite me in terms of looking in the future and using those predictive analysis or tools to help me and my organization look into or be able to predict where we're going. How does that align with our strategy in terms of an organization and how we can then move the organization forward?
However, I know that there are some HR professionals, some of my colleagues that I have spoken to that are still practicing HR where they get a little concerned, if we think about anything that is new, for HR, we are always excited about it, but there's also that risk that comes with, "What does this mean? What does this new tool or resource means as it relates to my role as an HR professional?" If I am in HR and I am a little hesitant, I'm concerned, I am scared and I don't know where to even start as it relates to artificial intelligence, what would be your advice?
Jim Link:
Well, the first thing to do is to go to SHRM.org and download the AI Playbook. That AI Playbook is free to anyone, and we certainly want to share the knowledge that we have across the organization and across the general public to help people really understand that first and foremost, this is not something of which you should be afraid. And I understand that hesitancy, it is something new. It represents change. You may think that you don't have the requisite skills you need in order to be able to utilize these systems. I will tell you that in my own trial and error related to all things related to artificial intelligence, if you can find a way on your phone or on your laptop to toggle over to an open screen where that you can access the internet, that's the worst of it. That's literally the worst of it.
And I bet that 98.9% of the people on this call do what I just said multiple times a day. They open a new tab in their browser and off they go. The question is knowing where to go once you get there. Google it. There's all kinds of opportunities out there. Google itself even has a platform called Gemini. That's the one I've been playing around on the most because it's free and you just type in Google Gemini and off you go. There are others that are paid and there are others that are specific to industries or professions or to degrees of sophistication. But just go on there and pick up that skill and pick up some of the terminology and some of the language. Let me give you one that spooks people, literally spooks people. It's a term in AI called, "A hallucination."
What happens with a hallucination? That's when you load something, some prompt, which is another one of the buzzwords. A prompt is simply a question that you put into the AI tool, and that prompt can be anything. I ask it silly things just to see what I can get. I also ask it very professional oriented things so I can compare and contrast that against the capabilities that I know that we have here at SHRM from our own content. And you utilize that information then and you read through it to ensure that it's not giving you information that's been gathered inappropriately or that is flat out wrong. That flat out wrong information is where that the AI tool has taken various and disparate pieces of knowledge and information and drawn a conclusion from them. It's generated an outcome. But it's up to us as responsible human beings and human resources practitioners to believe, and read through, and vet that outcome so that we're all comfortable that the knowledge and information that was generated by the AI tool is actually believable. If it's not, and you get a bunch of things that are not believable, that's why it's called a hallucination.
And Monique, what's important here is that even though we're talking about utilizing technology, you just heard me say that the human element is still required and it will be for the foreseeable future. We're not talking about a world where any type of machine or technology is actually making decisions for us. Rather that technology is giving us more information for which we can make our own decisions, and that's what people need to understand and to realize.
All that to say, get familiar with the nomenclature, get familiar with the tech itself, and go out there and experiment with this. Don't be afraid of it, because remember, there were probably people that were afraid of the first cell phones. I still remember trying to convince my mother to actually buy a cell phone so she could text me. I had to teach her how to text me. Now she's a master texter, and that only took a few short years. But anyway, that capability and that style of grasping what's new, you don't have to be an expert or a pro at it, but you have to be engaged enough to at least know the possibilities. And we in human resources here are all about mastering the possibilities.
Monique Akanbi:
Thank you so much, Jim. And that beautifully sums up a term that our President and CEO, Johnny C. Taylor, Jr. has coined, which is, "AI, plus HI, equals ROI," return on investment. And while we have artificial intelligence as that resources or that too, there's also still a need for that human intelligence components and how we can leverage the two to get a greater return on investment.
Jim Link:
Yeah, that's perfectly well said, Monique. And I 100% agree, not just because Johnny's my boss, but because this is exactly right. And the terminology is AI, plus HI, equals ROI. Let's break that up just a second. Artificial intelligence is what we're obviously talking about here, but it's just a new form of technology. That's all it is. We've never just relied on technology in the past, and for the foreseeable future, we won't just be relying on it in the future, no matter how advanced or how easy it becomes. That's the AI part of that mathematical equation.
The HI piece is arguably the one that's the most valuable and the most important to businesses. Because you can have all of the artificial intelligence and technological tools that you want, but if you don't have the addition, AI plus HI, if you don't have the addition of that human intelligence and human capability, then you're stuck. The equation is not AI equals ROI. That's not it. The equation is AI plus HI, human intelligence, equals that return on the investment.
Let's face it, AI is not a standalone solution. It really becomes only powerful and useful when it's paired with that uniquely human thing that we have called human intelligence, right?
Monique Akanbi:
Yeah.
Jim Link:
Today, technology cannot discern in the way that we cannot discern. It does not have free choice. It does not necessarily make productive outcomes of things that are seemingly remote or completely disparate. We still rely on human knowledge and human capability and human skill to do that, and that's where the AI, plus HI, equals ROI equation came from. Now, Monique, I actually have another mathematical solution to this.
Monique Akanbi:
Let's hear it.
Jim Link:
I actually think that if it's more of a situation where you're looking at exponents, and I think if you use HI as your base, and then your exponent becomes ai, almost like a chemical equation, I think that equals ROI to the X power, because that's how big I think this has the potential to be. If you think of the math in a slightly more complicated way, the outcomes are so much bigger, so much exponentially bigger of the capability and the possibility of what we can generate together with human intelligence as the base, and then utilizing that exponent artificial intelligence to help us continue to have that return on investment for organizations. That's where I think the real power lies.
Monique Akanbi:
Thank you so much, Jim, for sharing that additional equation. And a little earlier you talked about some of the ways that HR professionals and business leaders can truly leverage artificial intelligence in the areas of talent acquisition or learning and development, performance management. What are some ways that you can share that your team at SHRM, the HR team at SHRM, has leveraged artificial intelligence?
Jim Link:
Well, we're utilizing it in every way that we have the possibility to leverage it today. Why is that? Well, first of all, it makes us much more productive than we have ever been as a human resources organization.
The second thing that we're doing and paying lots of attention today is where we can learn new things from combining data, having artificial intelligence look at data in different ways than we would have done it in the past, simply because we didn't have time to do it that way, or we didn't understand that if you combine different sets of variables, you get a completely different view of the world.
Let me give you some very, very specific examples. Today, we're clearly using artificial intelligence to help us in the recruitment of potential employees into SHRM. That's everything from the use of chatbots all the way up through helping us determine from a hiring perspective how we would go about it getting people interested in us at SHRM. What would be the ideal way to attract this particular candidate to come to work for us?
You can then use artificial intelligence once someone decides to join your organization to help continue the outreach to that individual before they actually join. You can then use it for onboarding. You can then use it for talent management. You can then use it for performance identification, leadership identification and development assessments if your organization uses that. And what I like to do is put together performance with learning and development, with engagement, and with feedback, those four pieces, because then you can really look at people who, because of their engagement, because of their performance, because of their potential to be future leaders in the organization, you can do a better job of looking at who those people are based on the data rather than it being a wet thumb in the wind approach to determine who your next best leader's going to be.
You're combining all of these different ways, and we are in full-blown experimental mode, to be completely fair. For example, I can't tell you Monique, the last time that anybody on my team wrote a job description from soup to nuts, from beginning to end. I can't tell you when we did that because we very, very early on learned that one of the most valuable pieces of things that we could do here is take things that were previously very, very time-consuming and ask artificial intelligence to give us a first pass, to give us that first edit. Job descriptions are one of those perfect examples. It used to take us between 45 minutes to an hour to tailor a job description for a new role. Now, we had the bank of job descriptions like most companies do, but for a new role, it would take us about an hour of time to do that.
Now, once you learn how to prompt correctly in artificial intelligence, we can prompt the artificial intelligence tool that you're using to write a job description for a, you name it. Let's say a CHRO. I hope SHRM's not doing that by the way, anytime soon. But write a job description for a chief human resources officer. In seconds, certainly under a minute, you get a first draft of something, and then when you read through that, you can redo the prompt again if you see that something's missing or you don't like the way that it was produced, you can just change one word in the prompt and get a completely different outcome. Once you're satisfied that artificial intelligence has given you everything that it can give you in that particular prompting request, then you sit down and you spend 10 to 15 minutes editing what came out instead of 45 minutes to an hour writing it.
You have saved literally 75% of the time that you would've put on that task just by doing it in the way that I just described. That frees up people to do what we do best, which is to think, to plan, to coordinate, to organize all of those uniquely human traits and characteristics, which artificial intelligence, at least in the foreseeable future, is going to have a hard time emulating because we as humans still have that unique capability to add empathy, to add emotional intelligence, to be active listeners, to read the room and change your inquiry in such a way that you get a different response from an employee, or a vendor, or a provider, or a member of SHRM.
That's where I'd rather my team be spending their time is thinking about how to build better employee and member engagement than writing job descriptions. And now this tool has allowed us to free up, at least in this particular case, a good 75% of our time in that particular task to focus on the things which are really, really more important, which is employee and member engagement.
Monique Akanbi:
Thank you so much for sharing that, Jim. It makes me think about my time. In my role as a field services director, I support our SHRM affiliates, and I was with one of our state councils a few months ago back in October, and we were going through the strategic planning process. They've asked me to lead their strategic planning process. There was some pre-work that we had done, and so when we all gathered together, one of the first things that we did was a re-evaluation of their mission and vision statement. And your example of creating those efficiencies and utilizing artificial intelligence to minimize the amount of time of the back and forth.
And I'm a firm believer not recreating the wheel if we don't have to, but after about 20 minutes as a group of everyone going through the mission statement, vision statement, and really looking at is this an accurate reflection of the state council at that time, one of our volunteer leaders said, "Well, I just put it in ChatGPT, and this is what it gave me." And I will tell you what took us, the group actually about 20 minutes to come up with, in a matter of a couple of minutes, we had a solid foundation in terms of a revision of the state council's mission statement. And I see where utilizing artificial intelligence can create those efficiencies and really reduce the amount of time that we're spending on the things that we can leverage artificial intelligence to help us fill that gap and focus on some of those human intelligence components.
Jim Link:
Oh, you are 100% right. Let me give you an example that happened to me back in January. I teach in an executive MBA program overseas. This was my 13th year of doing that, and I am one weekend where I teach strategic human capital management to this particular cohort of students. I go over there every year and provide this instructional time, 16 hours worth of instructional time to these students. This was the first year where as I was presenting slides, and charts, and I was talking about facts and figures and those types of things that the students were fact checking me utilizing artificial intelligence. I'm sitting there standing at the front of the classroom thinking, "Okay." It irked me at first, and then it was a, "How dare they," thing. There is some hubris involved here.
But the bigger thing that got my attention, the need to be right. As you're thinking about this, whether you're a leader, a practitioner, an instructor or professor, the role I was playing that particular weekend, what that reinforced for me is that because you can be fact-checked and spot-checked with anything that really comes from you that you're providing as knowledge, information, or content, in this case to students, or in the case that you and I live every day, Monique, to employees and to members, we got to be right. They just reinforce that need in my mind that there are so many ways out there now to validate the knowledge and information and capability that you're hearing. And students can do it on the fly, members can do it on the fly, that ups the ante for us at SHRM, to ensure that the content that we're providing to our members on any topic is not only truthful and accurate, but also reflects the most recent thinking that's available to us.
Yep, those students spot-checked me on the moment, even raised their hand and said, "You know what? I didn't believe that, but I loaded it into ChatGPT, and you were right, Mr. Link." I'm like, "Okay, thank you very much. I appreciate that and thanks for spot-checking me." It's reconfirming the things that so many of us hold dear, which is authenticity, and trust, and genuineness, and capability, and knowledge. And if we use it appropriately and we vet the responses, we're going to provide better capability to our employees, to our members, and to our families. Whoever it is that you serve in your life, this gives us a unique opportunity to really go down a different path of assuredness and authenticity. And I actually love that. I think it is going to be a game changer for not just our business of human resources or the industries in which we live and work, but our communities, our families, and other things that are near and dear to us.
Monique Akanbi:
That's good, Jim. The need to be right, and thank you for sharing that. Hopefully we put our listeners somewhat at ease as it relates to being an HR professional in ways that they can leverage artificial intelligence. But I want to take a slight shift on focusing or how do we prepare or support our members that are HR professionals in putting their business leaders like their CEO at ease as it relates to artificial intelligence? What advice would you give me as an HR professional to really support my president or CEO as it relates to artificial intelligence?
Jim Link:
Well, the first thing that I would encourage all HR professionals to do, whether they're utilizing artificial intelligence or not, they're using whatever technology they have available to them to speak to business leaders in the terms in which they speak, which is the language of numerics, measurement, outcomes and possibilities. Usually that's expressed numerically. Artificial intelligence in the human capital space gives us the ability for the first time to really talk about forecasting and predicting in a way that a chief financial officer does. It gives us that same capability and skill in a skill set that previously was not overly valued in the human resources space. Now we get that capability just based on the current knowledge and information that we have and new ways to present it. That's the first thing I would advise human capital leaders to do, or human capital employees at all levels, is to speak in the language of the business, which is numbers. That's number one.
The second thing that I would advise those folks to do, and we've already touched on this just a little bit, Monique, and that is to get comfortable with the technology that you have, and don't be afraid to experiment with the technology that's out there and available and free of charge. SHRM absolutely supports the responsible use of artificial intelligence and almost every facet of the workplace. Why? Because we know the numbers show that it's going to create new economic job creation and skill-based capabilities for people at all levels. And artificial intelligence doesn't care if you are a man or a woman, old or young, black or white, or anything else. It cares that the capability is there, and it is clearly, hopefully in the way that people utilize it, fully competent and capable of discerning that same result for people regardless of how the input is provided.
That brings us to this idea of bias and those types of things that can exist in artificial intelligence. Now, there's been a lot written about this, a lot studied, and at the end of the day, the knowledge base today suggests that artificial intelligence certainly eliminates more bias than it generates. Now with that being said, you have to remember that everything that's data oriented that the artificial intelligence is using to draw those conclusions was most likely created or input by a human being. And those human beings inherently have some type of bias. A thorough scrutiny of the responses that come from artificial intelligence is where you begin. If people are worried about those kinds of things, this is where the AI plus HI component comes in very handy, because it's still going to require human intelligence to present information generated by artificial intelligence in a way that's responsible and fair and equitable to the end user. That's our job as humans to ensure that that happens.
We as human resources professionals in my mind, have the unique opportunity to not just embrace this as I've described to you, but to see it as an opportunity and upside for all of our organization's capabilities, because it's going to give us new ways of looking at solutions to complex problems that we probably had never conceived prior to that.
The fourth thing that I would like to challenge our colleagues in the human resources space to do is own this, own it. Just flat out own it in your respective organization. Let's face it, lots of people and lots of things are flying around out there now, all around this artificial intelligence space, and it's going to take a calm, rational, logical approach to the effective use of artificial intelligence in your organization for it to be maximized by your business.
There's nobody in an organization better positioned to provide that calm, rational, logical, intelligent approach than a human resources practitioner. Just own it. Just own it. Get your arms around it, own it, learn to love it, learn to embrace it, grasp it, become creative with it. And the outcomes, I think for us as human resources professionals are exciting, and interesting, and even required for us to be effective in the future.
And then finally, I would encourage those same HR practitioners to spread that knowledge, skill, competency, and capability throughout their organization. You should become the person who establishes the rules of engagement for your company about artificial intelligence. You become the person who takes those things and builds the playground upon which people can operate within artificial intelligence within that construct of your company.
And the way we look at this at SHRM is we have an AI in the workplace resource hub, which is available for people. I've already mentioned the AI Playbook, which is free to everybody who's listening to this call, whether they're a SHRM member or not. And if not, we certainly hope that you will be soon. But that that capability is certainly there. For SHRM members, there are research reports out there on a variety of topics related to artificial intelligence. We have in our knowledge department where you can actually talk to a person about questions that you might have. Folks are able to answer this.
And finally, we are sponsoring what we're calling the AI Plus HI Project. It's out at Microsoft's Silicon Valley headquarters in Mountain View, California. That event is going to be March 4th through the 6th. It's coming up here in just a couple of weeks. And we are super excited to be bringing together some of the world's leading thinkers, experts, and practitioners all in one space as we talk about AI, plus HI, delivering ROI for our respective organizations. Hopefully some folks will be able to sign up for that and seize that opportunity to learn more in joining us out in Mountain View, California on the Microsoft campus. Lots of resources out there, Monique, lots of possibility and lots of new tools for people to explore, many of them free of charge in the generative AI, or some people call it the ChatGPT space. ChatGPT is just one of the tools that are available for people in the generative AI platforms.
Monique Akanbi:
Thank you for sharing that, Jim. I know that I am grateful not only just as an employee of SHRM, but the resources that are available related to artificial intelligence. A few weeks ago, I downloaded that playbook and really took a deep dive into some of the information and resources that were available and was able to actually share that with some of my colleagues that are HR practitioners, to let them know that this is a resource that is available and the work that SHRM is doing to support our members in the space of artificial intelligence. And you talked a little bit about risk in terms of biases, but are there any other risks HR professionals or business leader should consider as it relates to artificial intelligence?
Jim Link:
Yeah, there are a few obviously. We talked about bias already as you indicated. That's the thing that I pay the most attention to because I think of all of the places where that we have the biggest opportunity to improve. It's certainly in the space of ensuring that whatever technology we create, it's devoid of bias of any type. And I think that's going to be something we'll have to think about and continue to determine approaches to eliminate bias from any type of technological application that we have. And there are a lot of really smart people out there thinking about this right now. This is their life's work. If we're going to have all of this great knowledge and information, let's by all means ensure that it's bias free.
The second area, I think besides bias, where people really need to pay some attention is in the area of intellectual property. When you think about intellectual property in the AI space, there are really two primary concerns that are there. And that is the developers, the people who are doing this have a concern that's focused on sharing intellectual property that would render their algorithms or their particular science non proprietary. If you worked all your life to build a proprietary engine of some type or tool of some type, and then that becomes lost to you because of the use of artificial intelligence, that's not a good thing. We have to think about intellectual property as something we want to protect.
I talked about the developers and the risk of intellectual property. The users of generative AI have concerns that are regarding the ownership of content developed, utilizing tools like ChatGPT, or Magic Design, or name your new tool that's out there. This was really what was a lot of the issue in some of the recent labor actions that we've seen around the use of creative skill and competency and capability.
The idea of creation has traditionally been a uniquely human component, but now we see creation occurring from the use of artificial intelligence as well. As generative AI gets better and better, we have to think about where those bright lines are between the human contribution to creativity and the artificial intelligence to creativity. And that usually surfaces in the form of intellectual property.
There's another thing we have to be aware of. It is got a fancy word. I love saying it. It's called spurious prediction. And this is still being explored, but what spurious prediction actually says is that as we get better with all the machine learning and massive data competencies and capabilities that data analytics provides us with, is artificial intelligence going to find relationships amongst the magnitude of all of that data and knowledge out there that are spurious? They make no sense.
For example, in the old days, you could say that something A and something B was correlated, but yet that has no value or contribution to the world of mankind or humankind. They're unrelated events. In HR in particular, you can think about spurious prediction leading to faulty assumptions, or resulting in detrimental selection decisions, or serving up the wrong people for promotion, or automating things that it doesn't make sense to automate because the outcomes are not predictable. That's our spurious prediction in this space. That's another thing that we have to be a little bit leery of. And there are also things that we should be thinking about that I don't think anybody's really thinking about yet as we continue to advance in this space of artificial intelligence. One is this is going to be an opportunity for the disingenuous and bad actors of the world.
We've already seen just utilizing current technological capability, we have spammers, we have hackers, we have people who are doing nefarious things with our email. We have people who are posting things that are not from the source. That's the bad actor syndrome. And we have to be super careful about that with artificial intelligence, just like we do with any other piece of technology. I wonder, in my own mind what this does for the human capability to think. If we are relying more and more on technology to do some of our base thinking for us, then we have to ensure that we are not in some way engaging or activating cognitive decline and growth for us as human beings. We have to think about that. We saw a little bit of this whenever the pandemic, whenever a lot of kids were out of the structures where humans normally thrive. And we saw, I think the evidence is quite clear that there was some degrees of cognitive decline in certain areas of education.
Perhaps that same thing might happen with the advanced further use of artificial intelligence. I hope not, but I hope there's some smart people out there really thinking about this and helping us determine how we can prevent that from happening as we continue to advance in the world of artificial intelligence. There's also all this idea of deep faking and things that can be created from the world of deep fakes and what value they are. And we all know that there are going to be gullible people out there who believe these deep fakes regardless of their authenticity. Unfortunately, there are some folks in the world who value the deep fake as a thing of reality as much as other people detest it. That whole world of deep faking and the value that that brings, or lack of value that it brings into our society is probably an ethical and moral problem that we haven't given enough consideration to yet.
And then the other thing we have to think about is that, I don't know if this is good or bad, but we need to think about it, artificial intelligence gives us the opportunity to create what I think of as unbound performance. And when you think about that, should performance actually be unbound? And if so, how are we as the humans in that AI plus HI factor going to adjust to that capability? I don't know. We'll let the sociologists, and psychologists, and psychiatrists, and all those people who have PhDs and MDs and other things figure that out. All I know is here at SHRM, we're smart enough to be asking these questions, but we're going to need the entirety of the people that are surrounding and working in this artificial intelligence space to help us ensure that we do the right things with this and that we focus on the good outcomes while managing the potential bad outcomes.
Monique Akanbi:
Wow, Jim, my head is spinning, in a good way, with all of these things to consider. And I know that we only scratch the surface as it relates to artificial intelligence. And there are so many paths that we can go down, whether it's related to talent acquisition, or performance management, or learning and development related to artificial intelligence. But I think that you have provided our listeners with a really solid foundation and thought provoking questions to consider as we learn to embrace, which is one of my words for this year, embrace artificial intelligence. And it's very evident that artificial intelligence isn't a standalone tool. It has to have that human intelligence component in order for us to be able to leverage that. As we wrap up this topic, and I'm sure that there will be further discussions around artificial intelligence and ways that our members or listeners can leverage artificial intelligence in their everyday work, what are your honest thoughts? Just pure honest thoughts around artificial intelligence.
Jim Link:
My pure honest thought is this is the next wave of technological advancement in our society. It's not just in human resources, but it's in our society in general. And just like any other technological advancement before it, it will serve the greater good of our world, of our society, of our communities, and us as human beings. It's up to us how to do that in a way and at a pace that we find comfortable at which we're willing to acquire the skills and knowledge to do that. And we know that the outcomes for that will generate a better world of work for everyone. And that's what we here at SHRM are certainly after, impacting the world of work, workers, and the workplace. That's what I think, Monique.
Monique Akanbi:
Thank you for sharing that, Jim. I know I shared a few minutes ago where my word for the year is embrace. And even in keeping with the title of our podcast, Honest HR, and in asking you the question, "What are your honest thoughts?" This year, my word is embrace. And as you were speaking, that is the word that kept popping in my mind as it relates to artificial intelligence. And I think my honest thoughts around this is for HR professionals and business leaders to truly embrace artificial intelligence.
And going back to a comment you made earlier in terms of focusing not only what's possible, but focusing on what's impossible in ways that we can leverage the new technology and the tools and the resources that are provided for us to be able to do that. Jim, thank you so much for your time and for sharing some really good information, I believe, as it relates to artificial intelligence and what we should consider as it relates to this topic. A big thank you to you for joining me today to discuss the topic of artificial intelligence.
Jim Link:
Thank you, Monique. It's been my pleasure. I hope all of our listeners have a great day and use those resources available at SHRM.org.
Monique Akanbi:
Absolutely. Thank you. If you haven't already, subscribe and follow Honest HR, however you listen to your podcast. Also, reviews have a real impact on a podcast visibility. If you enjoyed today's episode, leave a review and help others find our show. As we mentioned at the beginning of the episode, this podcast is approved to provide 75 SHRM PDCs towards your SHRM CP or SHRM SCP recertification. After you've listened, you're eligible to enter Activity Code 2 4, Y as in Yo Yo, D as in David, C as in Cat, M as in Mary, H as in Happy, again, 2, 4, Y, D, C, M, H. Please note, this code expires March 1st, 2025.
Feel free to reach out to me on social media Monique Akanbi. To learn more about Honest HR, head to SHRM.org/honesthr and you can hear more podcasts from SHRM. Thank you again for joining us on Honest HR. Have a wonderful rest of your day.