Does AI Stifle Innovation in HR strategy?

Community AMA with Keith Bigelow
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From my understanding, AI will be a reflection of its training data. If we are training AI against the obvious existing HR metrics/targets today (for example, those that are ostensibly working for large successful companies), and augment other companies with this AI and consequently these existing strategies, do we close the door on new market entrants innovating and bring novel strategies to the table?

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Thanks for the question!

Couple of different thoughts on this one…

  1. How AI is trained in general: You’re correct that predictions from AI, from the lowly linear regression you did in high school math with just a couple of points to the fancy GenAI / LLM, are only as good as the data they’re trained on. So, if you run a global company, and the algorithm you’re using is only trained on USA data, you’re likely to make incorrect predictions when inferencing with those RoW employees. Thankfully, Visier with it’s 50,000 customers, has broad adoption in most countries.
  2. How Visier Trains: Visier Vee isn’t trained with customer data, but it does have at it’s disposal historical query data (what are the top most frequently requested metrics, not the value of them, just the metrics themselves), and those potentially become suggestions to the user (“you might want to consider…”). Because our customers are global, our recommendations are global.
  3. Stifling Innovation: I don’t think we’ll see a stifling of innovation, but more likely a ton of new innovation, as a result of GenAI. Specifically, we humans don’t innovate when we’re overwhelmed with tasks and stressed out. We innovate best when we have time to think and reflect. And AI promises to do the mundane / repetitive tasks that are easy to automate. So, as new Copilots/Assistants and soon enough digital employees enter the workforce, we’ll hopefully have the time to innovate more, and think up new metrics on biological + digital employees working together.

I’m quite certain we’ll see some great innovation with AI, and I expect new entrants will apply it in novel means that creates new customer value.