AI in HR: ChatGPT and Beyond

The Next Practices Weekly call series has become a well-attended and wide-ranging discussion for HR leaders each Thursday at 11am ET / 8am PT. On this week's call, i4cp Senior Research Analyst Tom Stone and Judy Albers, Director, Research Enablement, discussed ChatGPT, Artificial Intelligence, and the impact these technologies are having on HR. Here are some highlights from the call:

• AI, advanced automation, and related technologies represent a fourth industrial revolution, following on the third revolution that centered around computers, the internet, and smartphones.
• Generative AI systems can generate new content—text, music, images — by providing the statistically most probable next word, note, etc.
  • ChatGPT generates text. It’s produced by OpenAI, in which Microsoft invested $10B and is integrating ChatGPT with Office, Bing, Azure, etc. (GPT = Generative Pre-trained Transformer)
  • Google just launched its own generative AI engine, called Bard, with plans to integrate AI into Google’s office suite.
  • HR Tech providers are building private, fit-to-purpose large language models to integrate into their products.
• We asked the following participant poll: Are you allowed to use ChatGPT at your organization?
  • 19% Yes
  • 13% Yes, but with some restrictions
  • 13% Yes, but I know my organization is evaluating possible restrictions
  • 10% No
  • 44% Not sure

• We asked the following participant poll: Are you using ChatGPT in your personal life / outside of work?
  • 20% Yes
  • 32% Yes, but only to test it out
  • 48% No
• We asked the following participant poll: Are you paying for any generative AI-powered apps (ChatGPT or others)?
  • 3% Yes, but only ChatGPT
  • 3% Yes, something other than GPT or more than one
  • 94% No
• Many organizations have been using AI in a variety of ways for many years. In 2019 i4cp conducted a study (i4cp members, see the report Automating Work: The Human/AI Intersection) on AI and Automation that had over 1,700 participants in the survey. A key finding was that already in early 2019 high-performance organizations were nearly 2X more likely to be experimenting with a range of uses of AI.
• In terms of early uses of AI in HR, the most common use cases were found in talent acquisition, and included building job requisitions, screening candidates, providing coaching for hiring managers, eliminating unconscious bias, using chatbots to assist candidates, creating personas, and augmenting online interviews.
• Other uses of AI in HR over the past several years have included content recommendations in learning and development, enabling stronger relationship development during onboarding, matching internal candidates to roles/gigs, survey sentiment analysis, and chatbots for HR self-service.
• We asked the following participant poll: Where is your organization using AI tools in HR? Consider all kinds of AI, not only generative AI (select all that apply).
  • 53% Talent Acquisition
  • 39% General HR (self-service, etc.)
  • 29% Learning and Development
  • 23% Analytics
  • 20% Surveys
  • 17% Performance management
  • 14% Onboarding
  • 4% Total rewards
  • 4% Compliance
  • 17% Other
• There are several perils to the use of AI (see an interesting YouTube video on this), with four key ones being:
  • Bias trained into large language models
  • Humans ceding decisions to AI
  • More convincing disinformation and scams
  • Naïvely providing confidential information to public AI models
• Recommended actions for HR professionals to take:
  • Make IT your best friend.
  • Use generative AI in your personal life.
  • Learn promptcraft.
  • Rethink HR roles.
  • Articulate a strategic point of view on AI and the future of work.

Links to i4cp resources shared on the call:

• Upcoming i4cp virtual events
• i4cp’s Executive Search practice
• i4cp's study Culture Fitness: Healthy Habits of High-Performance Organizations
• Recording of the i4cp NPW event that focused on the Culture Fitness study
• I4cp member Flash Call on ChatGPT

Links to external resources shared on the call:

• ChatGPT Chrome Extension & YouTube Summary
• Tome - for writing stories for presentation decks, etc.

In their own words... The following were uses for ChatGPT and other generative AI aplications that participants on the call shared in the chat:

• We used it to develop our brand guidelines for our internal communications
• Draft survey questions
• Just started playing around after viewing the last session on this topic. Used it to create a first draft of a job aid. Saved me so much research time so I could focus on adapting it to our company specifics and tone.
• I've been using it to prepare for meetings (asking what are things I should consider asking / covering) or building data tables, or as a brainstorm partner
• Generating objectives, activities, agendas, strategy plans, images for presentation
• I have heard people using it for Cover Letters, LinkedIn Introductions, Project Plans
• Using it to see how it can generate job descriptions, support on improving email replies for important topics
• I use ChatGPT as an aid for writing when I am stuck. I use it for gift ideas and for suggestions on exercises to use in classes.
• I use it to help with ideas to make communication more clear and concise
• It's becoming my replacement for just googling an open question.
• Travel advisory / travel trips
• We are using it for communications, social posts, blog posts. Just the framework, we definitely have to put our own spin on things, but it does help get words on paper.
• I used it to help me plan a wheelchair-accessible holiday. It was super helpful for finding good suggestions!
• I've used it to create trip itineraries, research on new subjects, I use Compose.ai to help my writing more succinct or have a certain mood, etc.
• I am trying it out for functional skills overview training - introductions to new areas as a starting point for people who need broad understanding
• Using it to do initial responses to RFPs for work which has cut response time by 60+%.
• Using graphical AI to create "art"
• I use the chat option in Bing AI... It's fun to have some nonsensical conversations with it when I'm saturated
• I use it to populate Job Descriptions
• Create individualized learning plans
• For training we are having learning participants use it to develop practice opportunities.
• Notion gives great suggestions about how to shorten your text and also summarizes. I absolutely love how it suggests ways to rewrite my text that I hadn’t thought about before. It also helps tailor the info to the right audience (leadership, whole org, etc.)
• I heard a story on CNBC this morning about a CEO who is using generative AI to write the performance reviews of his 25 directs.