1 00:00:04,080 --> 00:00:06,800 Good afternoon, everyone. We're going to give people 2 00:00:06,800 --> 00:00:27,040 a minute or two to log on, and then we're going to get started. 3 00:00:51,920 --> 00:00:58,320 Hi everyone. Thank you for joining today's webinar, AI and HR: Top five risks and opportunities. We're 4 00:00:58,320 --> 00:01:01,600 recording today's session and we'll share it with you following the webinar. If you have 5 00:01:01,600 --> 00:01:06,480 any questions, please use the Q&A function on your Zoom panel. Now, I'd like to hand it over to our 6 00:01:06,480 --> 00:01:13,040 moderator for today's session, HR Acuity CEO, Deb Muller. Thanks, Lexi. Hi everyone. I see everybody's 7 00:01:13,040 --> 00:01:16,640 sort of telling us where they're calling in from or dialing in from. I don't know what 8 00:01:16,640 --> 00:01:22,400 we do. We zoom in from, I guess, is the... the language we should be using now. But it's 9 00:01:22,400 --> 00:01:27,440 like everybody's from all over, and I know this is a great topic of interest. A lot of people 10 00:01:27,440 --> 00:01:32,320 are joining, but we're going to get started because we have a lot of content to get through as well. 11 00:01:32,320 --> 00:01:36,720 So, I'm going to do a little bit of an overview, some welcomes and introductions, and then hand 12 00:01:36,720 --> 00:01:41,600 it over to our two facilitators today that we're really excited we have with us. I'll get to that 13 00:01:41,600 --> 00:01:49,760 in a second. So, let's see, why don't you just run to the next slide. Okay, so maybe you 14 00:01:49,760 --> 00:01:54,400 don't know about HR Acuity, but we are a technology company. We are the leading provider of employee 15 00:01:54,400 --> 00:01:59,600 relations and investigations case management, and we like to say that we help organizations manage 16 00:01:59,600 --> 00:02:04,720 things from intake all the way through aftercare with really deep analytics. So instead of just 17 00:02:04,720 --> 00:02:10,400 tracking issues, you can help use data to inform what happens next in your organization. So if you 18 00:02:10,400 --> 00:02:13,920 want to learn more about our platform—we're not going to talk about it today—but if you 19 00:02:13,920 --> 00:02:17,920 want to learn more about what we're doing and the exciting things that we're doing with AI, which is 20 00:02:17,920 --> 00:02:22,800 relevant to this conversation, please reach out to us, and we'd love to take you on a curiosity 21 00:02:22,800 --> 00:02:27,360 tour. And we welcome all of our customers. I see some of them logging in here today as well. 22 00:02:27,360 --> 00:02:35,680 So thanks for joining us. Next slide. Okay, a little bit more about HR Acuity. Yes, we are a technology company, 23 00:02:35,680 --> 00:02:41,440 but we're really proud of the employee relations community that we've built over the past decade-plus 24 00:02:41,440 --> 00:02:46,880 together. The first thing is our benchmark study, and I'm excited to say that we actually 25 00:02:46,880 --> 00:02:53,040 just launched today our ninth annual employee relations benchmark study. Lexi is going to put 26 00:02:53,040 --> 00:02:57,680 all the links in the chat, but if you have not gone to our website and downloaded it, or actually this 27 00:02:57,680 --> 00:03:03,760 year you can read it all right online—go, I mean, don't go now—after the hour is over, you'll go and 28 00:03:03,760 --> 00:03:09,920 look through it, download it. It is chock-full of great information, some new insights, some things 29 00:03:09,920 --> 00:03:14,720 about AI I'm going to go through in just a second. So please do that. And if you're interested in 30 00:03:14,720 --> 00:03:18,720 participating next year, our 10th annual, we want to make it bigger than ever. Although this year 31 00:03:18,720 --> 00:03:23,840 it does cover about 9 million employees. Let us know if your organization has more than a thousand 32 00:03:23,840 --> 00:03:30,400 employees. We also have our empower network. It's our employee relations online community. It is free. 33 00:03:30,400 --> 00:03:35,440 There's an app, you can do it online. If you're in employee relations, if you do anything related to 34 00:03:35,440 --> 00:03:40,400 employee relations, you should join. Have your team join. It's a great community. I believe there are 35 00:03:40,400 --> 00:03:49,040 close to 7,500 members right now, all levels from all over the world on live feeds, talking about 36 00:03:49,040 --> 00:03:53,200 what's going on, what questions they have, collaborating. There are small groups to talk about 37 00:03:53,200 --> 00:03:59,040 specific topics like labor, to talk about global issues. It's really... you have to be there. So make 38 00:03:59,040 --> 00:04:05,120 sure you go there. We also have our ERQ, which is our Employee Relations Quotient. It is our ER 39 00:04:05,120 --> 00:04:09,840 maturity model. Go on our website, take it, see where you can go, get some insights as to how you can 40 00:04:09,840 --> 00:04:15,440 move along the maturity for your organization in ER. And finally, if you are an employee relations 41 00:04:15,440 --> 00:04:20,480 leader at an enterprise organization, we'd love for you to join us at our roundtable. I think it's 42 00:04:20,480 --> 00:04:27,200 our ninth or 10th year doing that as well. It's an annual in-person event of global ER leaders. We get 43 00:04:27,200 --> 00:04:32,640 together, we collaborate, we really start defining the future of employee relations. So if you want to 44 00:04:32,640 --> 00:04:38,080 be part of that, it's a very unique opportunity that is going to be in October. Our website 45 00:04:38,080 --> 00:04:42,960 gives you all the information. It's in Boston this year. We'd love to have you join us. All right, next 46 00:04:42,960 --> 00:04:49,120 slide. Important dates. I talked about the benchmark. It is out now. Other things happening this month: 47 00:04:49,120 --> 00:04:54,640 we have another webinar coming out about the benchmark. So I'm going to go into more detail with 48 00:04:54,640 --> 00:04:58,800 our partner, our research partner, Isos. We're going to talk about the results, so mark your 49 00:04:58,800 --> 00:05:04,880 calendar for that on June 24th. June 25th, we're going to have an Empower discussion. So different 50 00:05:04,880 --> 00:05:12,000 from the webinars, if you're in Empower, we have ER professionals that lead these discussions. 51 00:05:12,000 --> 00:05:16,160 So, you know, now we're going to talk about, we're going to hear about AI and ER, what to look out for, 52 00:05:16,160 --> 00:05:20,480 the risks. This is when we talk about it. What are we doing? How are we experimenting? What's really 53 00:05:20,480 --> 00:05:26,720 happening in our companies and helping each other through this new phase of how we do work? And 54 00:05:26,720 --> 00:05:30,800 then again, I mentioned the roundtable. We hope that you can join us, and 55 00:05:30,800 --> 00:05:39,520 that's October 28th and 29th. Again, we will make sure you have all these links. Next slide. Okay, my 56 00:05:39,520 --> 00:05:44,560 favorite slide. For those of you that have attended a webinar, as a thank you to our presenters, we like 57 00:05:44,560 --> 00:05:49,280 to make a donation for their time and for all of you for joining us. And we ask them to, 58 00:05:49,280 --> 00:05:52,720 you know, choose if there's an organization that's meaningful for them or one that's in line with 59 00:05:52,720 --> 00:05:57,440 our mission and vision. And so, we're so excited today to be making a donation to the Just in 60 00:05:57,440 --> 00:06:04,160 Time for Youth, foster youth nonprofits in San Diego. I mean, I can't think of an organization that 61 00:06:04,160 --> 00:06:08,800 is more important to help children that are in the system. And this looks like they do it when they 62 00:06:08,800 --> 00:06:14,240 get out of the system, transitioning out. And I mean, a wonderful organization, and we're so proud to be 63 00:06:14,240 --> 00:06:19,360 able to make a donation. So thank you for coming and thank you to Eli and Oliver for sharing your 64 00:06:19,360 --> 00:06:25,520 expertise so that we can go ahead and make this donation. Okay, so I'm going to do a little starting, 65 00:06:25,520 --> 00:06:29,280 and this is a little sneak preview of what's in that benchmark study because, of course, we 66 00:06:29,280 --> 00:06:37,200 asked about AI in there. And maybe not a big shocker, it's the buzz, you know, when it comes to 67 00:06:37,200 --> 00:06:43,040 employee relations, it is still early days. Nearly half of organizations that we surveyed in this 68 00:06:43,040 --> 00:06:48,560 say that their use of AI is nonexistent, and only about a third are experimenting or piloting. 69 00:06:48,560 --> 00:06:52,560 And it sort of makes sense, and that's why we're having this conversation today. ER 70 00:06:52,560 --> 00:06:58,240 deals with incredibly sensitive and complex issues, so legal, ethical, and compliance concerns are real, 71 00:06:58,240 --> 00:07:01,760 and I think it's causing organizations to move more cautiously. We're going to talk about that 72 00:07:01,760 --> 00:07:06,720 today because just because we have to be cautious doesn't mean we can't use AI. It doesn't mean there 73 00:07:06,720 --> 00:07:11,760 aren't applications. We're excited about it at HR Acuity. There's real opportunity, but we have to be 74 00:07:11,760 --> 00:07:16,240 intentional and responsible. So, you know, I think this shows you don't feel bad if you're sort of 75 00:07:16,240 --> 00:07:22,720 behind the eight ball. You're going to get there. And we're going to 76 00:07:22,720 --> 00:07:27,440 we're going to help you do that in the way that actually supports what we're doing. 77 00:07:27,440 --> 00:07:31,760 It doesn't eliminate what we're doing, but it really supports and makes us better as 78 00:07:31,760 --> 00:07:36,480 employee relations professionals and investigators. Interestingly, we also asked—if you can just move 79 00:07:36,480 --> 00:07:42,000 to the next slide—we asked last year about interest in AI. So we started talking about it. 80 00:07:42,000 --> 00:07:47,360 You can see here the top interests were things like uncovering trends, analyzing case data, improving 81 00:07:47,360 --> 00:07:53,440 workflows. Over 75% of respondents said they were interested in these areas. So fast 82 00:07:53,440 --> 00:07:59,920 forward to this year, not a lot has changed, right? Only 28% are using AI for writing assistance, with much 83 00:07:59,920 --> 00:08:05,600 smaller numbers for things like policy recommendations, case transcription, and analysis. 84 00:08:05,600 --> 00:08:11,280 So, I think that's part of the conversation today. People want to use it, but we need to make sure if 85 00:08:11,280 --> 00:08:17,440 we unlock the benefits, we're doing so responsibly. There are guardrails. They enhance, not replace, 86 00:08:17,440 --> 00:08:24,240 the human work of ER. And this is just so relevant to today's conversation. So this and 87 00:08:24,240 --> 00:08:30,640 more in the benchmark study. So download that after the session. But for now, I do want to introduce our 88 00:08:30,640 --> 00:08:35,040 presenters and really thank them for being here. So we have two great guest speakers that are going to 89 00:08:35,040 --> 00:08:41,360 share with us their wisdom on this. We have Eli Makus. He is the managing partner of Van Dermyden Makus 90 00:08:41,360 --> 00:08:46,480 Law Corporation. It's a preeminent investigations firm with attorneys across California and Arizona. 91 00:08:46,480 --> 00:08:51,600 They are devoted to promoting fair workplaces and safe campuses through industry-leading neutral 92 00:08:51,600 --> 00:08:57,680 fact-finding services. Drawing upon his extensive employment law background, Eli conducts 93 00:08:57,680 --> 00:09:02,480 complex and sensitive investigations involving a variety of workplace complaints for public 94 00:09:02,480 --> 00:09:07,360 and private employers throughout California. And if you can handle California, you can handle anything 95 00:09:07,360 --> 00:09:12,880 else. It's a country in and of itself. Eli regularly trains on employment law topics, including training 96 00:09:12,880 --> 00:09:17,920 internal and external investigators on how to conduct impartial workplace investigations, and he 97 00:09:17,920 --> 00:09:23,200 is the immediate past president of the Association of Workplace Investigators Board of Directors and 98 00:09:23,200 --> 00:09:30,160 regularly serves on the faculty of AWI's ANAB-accredited training institute. So thank you, Eli, 99 00:09:30,160 --> 00:09:36,640 for joining us. And Oliver McKinstry is the vice president, associate general counsel of labor, 100 00:09:36,640 --> 00:09:42,560 employment, and investigations at DaVita, a Fortune 200 kidney care company. He leads DaVita's labor 101 00:09:42,560 --> 00:09:47,680 and employment law and HR compliance teams. And in his role, Oliver oversees all of DaVita's labor 102 00:09:47,680 --> 00:09:52,400 and employment advice and litigation, including wage and hour and union-related matters. He also 103 00:09:52,400 --> 00:09:56,960 leads a team of lawyers and HR professionals focused on workplace investigations, employee 104 00:09:56,960 --> 00:10:02,080 relations, HR policies, personnel files, and license and certification requirements. 105 00:10:02,080 --> 00:10:08,000 Since joining DaVita in 2016, Oliver has helped streamline the investigation process, implement 106 00:10:08,000 --> 00:10:13,120 a process for addressing threats of workplace violence, standardize investigation reports, and 107 00:10:13,120 --> 00:10:17,680 implement artificial intelligence to help with the intake process and draft corrective actions. 108 00:10:17,680 --> 00:10:21,840 Oliver is currently the vice president of the Association of Workplace Investigators 109 00:10:21,840 --> 00:10:27,520 and will become president in November 2025. Congratulations. So welcome, both of you, and 110 00:10:27,520 --> 00:10:32,800 looking forward to an awesome conversation. We encourage people to ask questions 111 00:10:32,800 --> 00:10:37,120 in the chat—we're going to monitor that—or if you prefer to do it anonymously, there is a Q&A 112 00:10:37,120 --> 00:10:42,160 option as well. And we're going to try to fit in your comments and questions in between where it 113 00:10:42,160 --> 00:10:46,800 makes sense. But I know we have a lot of content to cover. So thanks for joining us, Eli and Oliver. 114 00:10:47,600 --> 00:10:52,000 Great. Thank you so much, Deb. We're so excited to be here. This is a topic that Oliver and I have both 115 00:10:52,000 --> 00:10:57,840 talked a lot about and presented on before, and one we think is just particularly pertinent 116 00:10:57,840 --> 00:11:02,640 and relevant to the experience of being a human resources professional right now. I wanted to 117 00:11:02,640 --> 00:11:08,240 mention one more thing about our firm. So our firm, which is based in California and Arizona, we 118 00:11:08,240 --> 00:11:14,000 focus on conducting workplace investigations when employers hire us to do that, but we also recognize 119 00:11:14,000 --> 00:11:20,480 that most investigations should be conducted by well-trained internal HR professionals. And 120 00:11:20,480 --> 00:11:26,080 so we have a separate training company called VM Mastered, which is dedicated to training, creating 121 00:11:26,080 --> 00:11:31,040 customized training programs for internal HR professionals who are conducting workplace 122 00:11:31,040 --> 00:11:36,800 investigations, and in those conversations, AI continues to be a big topic. And so we're 123 00:11:36,800 --> 00:11:41,840 excited to address it today. With that, I'll turn it over to Oliver, and Oliver is going to kick us off. 124 00:11:42,800 --> 00:11:49,760 Yeah, great. Thanks, Deb, for the intros and thanks, Eli, for passing it over. I'm very happy to be here. 125 00:11:49,760 --> 00:11:55,600 Uh, I am, I call myself a recovering lawyer, although I am a practicing lawyer and helped 126 00:11:55,600 --> 00:12:01,040 DaVita with our legal practice. I think my heart is in HR, and so I identify first as 127 00:12:01,040 --> 00:12:08,080 an HR professional, an investigator, and an employee relations professional. So hopefully some of 128 00:12:08,080 --> 00:12:13,520 what I'm going to talk through, you'll feel a little bit of kinship with me and what 129 00:12:13,520 --> 00:12:19,600 we're going through at this time with AI and what to do in the HR profession. So let's 130 00:12:19,600 --> 00:12:28,560 move to the next slide. Eli and I today wanted to really dive into AI from the perspective of 131 00:12:28,560 --> 00:12:35,840 general HR and look at it with an eye toward where are our greatest opportunities and maybe 132 00:12:35,840 --> 00:12:40,720 where our greatest risks. And so what we're going to talk about is the top five risks and top five 133 00:12:40,720 --> 00:12:48,160 opportunities for AI in HR. I think Deb mentioned a little bit of research on AI in the employee 134 00:12:48,160 --> 00:12:54,640 relations space. Let's take a little bit of a broader look at some research just in the HR 135 00:12:54,640 --> 00:13:02,400 space in general. Um, Eli and I looked into some of this, and it turns out a large majority of people 136 00:13:02,400 --> 00:13:11,040 in the workplace are already using AI. Over half of employees, and probably over half of you 137 00:13:11,040 --> 00:13:18,240 in attendance, are already using AI somehow in your daily work. And I think it's really interesting 138 00:13:18,240 --> 00:13:25,760 to think about the ways different generations use AI in the workplace. The research indicates that 139 00:13:25,760 --> 00:13:33,120 older employees are really using AI and specifically ChatGPT more as a search engine, 140 00:13:33,120 --> 00:13:40,640 something like Google, where they can type in some kind of prompt and get an answer, whereas 141 00:13:40,640 --> 00:13:48,640 twenty-somethings and those kind of just older than twenty-somethings tend to use it more as a life advisor. And 142 00:13:48,640 --> 00:13:55,440 I identify with that age group, and I will admit that I often use AI to help me plan my 143 00:13:55,440 --> 00:14:01,680 travel, where to go, what to see, what to eat. So I think I fall into that category. And 144 00:14:01,680 --> 00:14:07,040 it turns out college students are actually using it basically as an operating system. It's doing 145 00:14:07,040 --> 00:14:13,440 many different functions for them. They really have adopted it very thoroughly. So interesting to 146 00:14:13,440 --> 00:14:20,480 start from the place of many people are already using AI in the workplace. I think it's important 147 00:14:20,480 --> 00:14:26,400 to think about why they're doing that. And the first main reason that comes from the 148 00:14:26,400 --> 00:14:33,440 research, most people are saying, is efficiency, trying to do things in a more streamlined way 149 00:14:33,440 --> 00:14:38,480 and save time by doing that. Certainly one of the reasons I have it make my travel plan, 150 00:14:38,480 --> 00:14:45,600 so that makes sense to me. Uh, another top reason is just simply access to information, trying 151 00:14:45,600 --> 00:14:51,120 to find information that we think is out there, but maybe we don't know where to get it, having 152 00:14:51,120 --> 00:14:57,680 AI go and do that for us. The next one is just innovating, coming up with some kind of 153 00:14:57,680 --> 00:15:04,080 new process or approach to things. That is another function that AI can do for us. And 154 00:15:04,080 --> 00:15:09,760 then the last one is improving our work quality. And people are already doing that, 155 00:15:09,760 --> 00:15:15,920 using AI to try and improve their work quality. So probably not a lot of surprises 156 00:15:15,920 --> 00:15:22,080 here. And I think many of the opportunities we're going to discuss will certainly hit on 157 00:15:22,080 --> 00:15:29,680 these use cases for AI in HR, and then we'll talk about some of the risks with that, too. 158 00:15:31,600 --> 00:15:38,800 So a couple of the maybe challenging components of using AI in the workplace, of course, data 159 00:15:38,800 --> 00:15:46,720 sensitivity is one of them. And the research that we reviewed shows that a lot of people are using 160 00:15:46,720 --> 00:15:53,760 AI in a way that they actually are uploading sensitive company or customer information into 161 00:15:53,760 --> 00:16:01,600 public generative AI tools. And that is a big challenge with these tools, is once you upload your 162 00:16:01,600 --> 00:16:07,040 information, you may lose control over it, and you don't know how it's being used. And unfortunately, 163 00:16:07,040 --> 00:16:11,440 it looks like a lot of the workforce is already out there doing that. I hope that's 164 00:16:11,440 --> 00:16:18,480 not anyone on the call today, but that's going on. So that's something we should be aware of. Also, 165 00:16:18,480 --> 00:16:26,000 um, a large majority of people have relied on AI output without actually critically evaluating the 166 00:16:26,000 --> 00:16:32,960 results. And I think Deb mentioned this previously. It is essential to maintain the human judgment 167 00:16:32,960 --> 00:16:38,640 component even when we're using AI. But as you can see in this data, that is already a challenge that 168 00:16:38,640 --> 00:16:44,560 people are not using their critical thinking when using these tools. And then last here on this slide, 169 00:16:44,560 --> 00:16:51,040 um, people are making mistakes when they rely on AI tools. And I think in the legal profession, 170 00:16:51,040 --> 00:16:57,920 we've seen this in some filings in court where lawyers are using AI to come up with some case 171 00:16:57,920 --> 00:17:04,640 law citations, and the AI is hallucinating cases that actually don't exist. Uh, those have ended 172 00:17:04,640 --> 00:17:10,080 up in briefs that have been filed with the court, and it turns out judges actually read the briefs 173 00:17:10,080 --> 00:17:16,240 that lawyers file, and they have figured out that those citations don't exist. And lawyers 174 00:17:16,240 --> 00:17:21,440 have been sanctioned. And I think it's just a good example of a profession where we think 175 00:17:21,440 --> 00:17:27,360 people are very careful with the things that they file, but when relying on AI, you really have to 176 00:17:27,360 --> 00:17:35,280 double-check the results that it's giving you before using them. Thanks, Oliver. And before 177 00:17:35,280 --> 00:17:40,800 we really jump deep into the opportunities and risks that we see around artificial intelligence, 178 00:17:40,800 --> 00:17:46,000 we think it's worth just level setting on what it is that makes this such a unique and 179 00:17:46,000 --> 00:17:53,280 tantalizing and also challenging technology to adopt, to understand, and why the nature of 180 00:17:53,280 --> 00:17:58,960 the technology itself makes it particularly concerning in an HR context, given the type 181 00:17:58,960 --> 00:18:04,000 of work that we do. So I want you to think about this distinction between deterministic versus 182 00:18:04,000 --> 00:18:09,840 probabilistic technology. And I'll break it down with this example. If you think about using a 183 00:18:09,840 --> 00:18:18,080 calculator, if you enter 6 * 8 into any calculator anywhere at any time, you're always going to get 184 00:18:18,080 --> 00:18:24,640 48 as the answer. You're never going to get an answer that says, "Well, 51% of the time it's 48, 185 00:18:24,640 --> 00:18:32,560 but 32% of the time it may be 23, and you know, one or 2% of the time it could be five." It's always 186 00:18:32,560 --> 00:18:38,000 going to give you the same output. And that's what we're used to when we're talking about existing 187 00:18:38,000 --> 00:18:45,760 technology. When we use a computer, we expect that if we type "deterministic" into Word, we are always 188 00:18:45,760 --> 00:18:52,160 going to get deterministic output from our keyboard. So the technology that we're used to 189 00:18:52,160 --> 00:18:57,200 is based on predetermined conclusions. We know we're always going to get the same answer and 190 00:18:57,200 --> 00:19:02,320 the same output based on the context or the information we provide to it. But artificial 191 00:19:02,320 --> 00:19:07,440 intelligence is actually very different. It's probabilistic technology. The interesting thing 192 00:19:07,440 --> 00:19:13,280 about this is it's actually... this is actually how people think. People are probabilistic technology. 193 00:19:13,280 --> 00:19:19,120 If you give us a bunch of information and you ask us for an answer, we're going to weigh that 194 00:19:19,120 --> 00:19:23,840 information, and based on our experience and our knowledge and everything we've learned over the 195 00:19:23,840 --> 00:19:29,200 course of our lifetime, we're going to give you our best estimate or best guess on what the right 196 00:19:29,200 --> 00:19:35,440 answer is to your question based on our experience and knowledge. But it's just a probabilistic 197 00:19:35,440 --> 00:19:42,080 outcome. It's our best guess based on what we know. And that's how AI tech, artificial, generative 198 00:19:42,080 --> 00:19:47,440 artificial intelligence works as well. The decisions or the outputs that you receive from 199 00:19:47,440 --> 00:19:55,600 an AI tool are based on the tool's best estimate of the answer as it goes out and looks at all of 200 00:19:55,600 --> 00:20:02,480 the data that it's been trained on. So this means that output can be pretty inconsistent under the 201 00:20:02,480 --> 00:20:08,640 same conditions. And my guess is many of you have experienced this where you put a question into an 202 00:20:08,640 --> 00:20:14,400 AI tool at 3:00 and you get one answer, and then at 3:05, you put the same question in and you get 203 00:20:14,400 --> 00:20:19,440 a slightly different answer. And maybe they're both good answers, but they're different. And 204 00:20:19,440 --> 00:20:24,000 I think this is one of the things that's most confounding and both creates opportunities, but 205 00:20:24,000 --> 00:20:30,480 also obviously flags significant risks around using artificial intelligence. So I want you to 206 00:20:30,480 --> 00:20:34,960 think about that distinction between deterministic and probabilistic technology as we talk through 207 00:20:34,960 --> 00:20:39,840 some of these opportunities and risks. I also want to highlight another challenge with AI is 208 00:20:39,840 --> 00:20:46,000 just the variations in how it's used. Oliver already touched on how generational, different 209 00:20:46,000 --> 00:20:51,440 generational differences impact different ways of using or thinking about artificial 210 00:20:51,440 --> 00:20:56,800 intelligence, but there are other factors, too. There are socioeconomic differences. This, you 211 00:20:56,800 --> 00:21:03,680 know, much of the writing on AI talks about the concern around whether different socioeconomic 212 00:21:03,680 --> 00:21:09,440 uh, communities will have the same access to to AI and whether they'll have the same education and 213 00:21:09,440 --> 00:21:14,800 training and understanding of the risks of it. So that's a significant factor we have to consider as 214 00:21:14,800 --> 00:21:20,320 well. Then there's just organizational differences. My guess is that there are some folks on this 215 00:21:20,320 --> 00:21:25,760 uh, webinar who work in an organization where the organization has said, "Absolutely not. Under 216 00:21:25,760 --> 00:21:31,120 no circumstances may you use AI in the execution of your work duties." I know that 217 00:21:31,120 --> 00:21:35,840 there are large law firms who have taken that approach, even though AI has a lot of potential 218 00:21:35,840 --> 00:21:40,080 in the legal field. So there's just going to be different experiences for organizations 219 00:21:40,080 --> 00:21:44,960 and how to navigate AI. And then there's just individual comfort. Some people are going to 220 00:21:44,960 --> 00:21:50,400 be more comfortable using the technology, others less so. And bringing a whole organization up to 221 00:21:50,400 --> 00:21:56,880 a common level of experience and utilizing AI in a function like human resources is going to 222 00:21:56,880 --> 00:22:02,800 be pretty challenging. The reality is, too, there's just not a... there's a lack of clear direction on 223 00:22:02,800 --> 00:22:07,600 best practices for using AI in human resources. And I think that's what's really amazing about 224 00:22:07,600 --> 00:22:13,200 the Empower community and that discussion that's coming up later, I think in in June, 225 00:22:13,200 --> 00:22:18,720 I think it was, is just the opportunity to sit and discuss with your colleagues, "How are you actually 226 00:22:18,720 --> 00:22:23,360 using this in a safe place where you can talk about the challenges and the pitfalls in doing 227 00:22:23,360 --> 00:22:27,520 so?" So continue that dialogue because that's ultimately going to be how we come up with 228 00:22:27,520 --> 00:22:37,600 what the best practices are. So with that, why don't we jump into our top five opportunities? 229 00:22:37,600 --> 00:22:45,840 Yeah, great. Hopefully that is uh thought-provoking already. Uh, starting out with one of the most 230 00:22:45,840 --> 00:22:54,000 significant opportunities for AI in my mind is really using AI as kind of an HR generalist type 231 00:22:54,000 --> 00:23:00,160 function. If you're anything like me, you probably spend a lot of your day or your 232 00:23:00,160 --> 00:23:06,160 time really pointing people in the right direction. That may be just telling someone where to find a 233 00:23:06,160 --> 00:23:12,560 specific policy, maybe it's a travel policy, maybe it's connecting someone to your internal leave 234 00:23:12,560 --> 00:23:18,560 of absence team or the external provider that you have for that. Um, maybe it's just contact 235 00:23:18,560 --> 00:23:24,240 information that you're providing. But I think a lot of HR generalists, a lot of HR people spend 236 00:23:24,240 --> 00:23:31,920 time really just connecting employees with the right resource. But all of that information 237 00:23:31,920 --> 00:23:41,200 usually exists in policy documents or practice one-pagers that AI tools can really easily digest 238 00:23:41,200 --> 00:23:48,720 and learn. And then a valuable way to use AI is to have your employees go to this type of 239 00:23:48,720 --> 00:23:56,080 AI agent and ask those questions to the AI agent, whether that's a bot or some other kind of tool, 240 00:23:56,080 --> 00:24:02,880 and it can just simply guide them to those resources based on the policy documents that 241 00:24:02,880 --> 00:24:09,440 it has access to or the practices that you've trained it on. And in doing so, think of how much 242 00:24:09,440 --> 00:24:16,160 time that might take off of your plate or your HR generalist's plate. So I think of this as a really 243 00:24:16,160 --> 00:24:21,280 great opportunity to create those efficiencies that we talked about that people are looking for 244 00:24:21,280 --> 00:24:28,880 with AI, by really helping that HR generalist function. Often it's the more junior folks in HR 245 00:24:28,880 --> 00:24:34,720 who are doing those things, but can really create efficiencies for them and do some 246 00:24:34,720 --> 00:24:41,200 of those simpler functions that they spend time on. Eli, anything you'd add there? Well, I think, I mean, 247 00:24:41,200 --> 00:24:45,040 as we talk through these opportunities, there's always another side to that, too, which is there 248 00:24:45,040 --> 00:24:50,720 probably are some challenges or risks around delegating this responsibility to an AI assist... 249 00:24:50,720 --> 00:24:57,120 an HR AI assistant as well, right? So I can imagine concerns around accuracy might be something that 250 00:24:57,120 --> 00:25:04,000 one would be concerned about. Is that fair? Oh, for sure. You know, if you're anything like 251 00:25:04,000 --> 00:25:10,000 companies I've worked for, sometimes you have multiple policy documents or you even have 252 00:25:10,000 --> 00:25:16,720 um, some conflicting practices depending on an organization, or maybe it's just you've 253 00:25:16,720 --> 00:25:22,560 had several iterations of the same policy. So it's possible that the AI might not get 254 00:25:22,560 --> 00:25:28,160 the accurate answer. Maybe it goes to the wrong document or can't compile all of the documents 255 00:25:28,160 --> 00:25:33,040 to come up with something. So I think that's a realistic challenge with this approach. You have 256 00:25:33,040 --> 00:25:40,160 to be careful about the inputs, so you get the right output. And I want to address Paula's 257 00:25:40,160 --> 00:25:44,800 question in the chat here, and I want to just sort of acknowledge one of the more 258 00:25:44,800 --> 00:25:49,120 challenging aspects of a webinar like this, and I'm afraid that we're going to do the same thing that 259 00:25:49,120 --> 00:25:53,520 you've probably heard in other webinars. We're going to talk a lot about what AI can do, what 260 00:25:53,520 --> 00:25:58,240 it, what some of the risks are, but we're not going to give you any guidance on what tools you should 261 00:25:58,240 --> 00:26:04,400 actually explore or adopt or identify even what specific tools are worth evaluating. 262 00:26:04,400 --> 00:26:09,120 And that's largely because there are so many different tools and they're at such an early stage 263 00:26:09,120 --> 00:26:12,960 that it's virtually impossible to make that kind of a recommendation. Well, I think what our goal 264 00:26:12,960 --> 00:26:18,720 is that you take away from this discussion what the potential is so that as you are going out in 265 00:26:18,720 --> 00:26:23,920 a more systematic process in your organization and beginning to evaluate tools, you have some 266 00:26:23,920 --> 00:26:31,360 framework for questions and how to evaluate what might be an appropriate tool for your organization. 267 00:26:31,360 --> 00:26:37,760 And so Paula, to your question, you know, how does this work from a—and I'm no technologist—but from 268 00:26:37,760 --> 00:26:45,440 a technical perspective, basically current AI tools are already trained, their large language models 269 00:26:45,440 --> 00:26:50,560 are already trained on large volumes of data. And so a lot of what the new AI tools are doing is 270 00:26:50,560 --> 00:26:56,320 they have an LLM as a foundation for the tool, and then they are developing specific agents which 271 00:26:56,320 --> 00:27:02,800 have a specific purpose. An agent is a technical term that describes a basically a plug-in to the 272 00:27:02,800 --> 00:27:08,320 AI tool that goes out and, for example, in this scenario, it would go out and it would look at what 273 00:27:08,320 --> 00:27:14,800 your policies are, which would be uploaded into the tool, and it would evaluate based on its estim... you 274 00:27:14,800 --> 00:27:18,960 know, based on its best guess review considering all the data it's been trained on, it would 275 00:27:18,960 --> 00:27:25,440 evaluate looking at your policies what the best answer is to the prompt that was given. So, this 276 00:27:25,440 --> 00:27:31,760 is a really good question and one that as you're evaluating products that are promising that 277 00:27:31,760 --> 00:27:36,640 they can do all sorts of amazing things in the HR space, you really want to make sure that the vendor 278 00:27:36,640 --> 00:27:41,200 understands the answer to questions like this and can explain to you how it's going to work and how 279 00:27:41,200 --> 00:27:48,080 you're going to avoid errors, for example, or inaccuracies or hallucinations. So with that, why 280 00:27:48,080 --> 00:27:53,600 don't we move on to another opportunity? And with all of these, there's a double-edged 281 00:27:53,600 --> 00:27:59,520 sword, right? But I think one area that AI certainly has potential for is summarizing and triaging 282 00:27:59,520 --> 00:28:05,360 conversations that occur in the HR space. In our experience, in the tools that we've experimented 283 00:28:05,360 --> 00:28:11,280 with—and I should just acknowledge one thing—in our law firm, we've decided to develop our own 284 00:28:11,280 --> 00:28:16,560 tool. So we're working on a customized tool that is unique to our firm, to workplace investigations, the 285 00:28:16,560 --> 00:28:21,680 way we do them. And so a lot of our experimentation has come through use of that tool. And we found, for 286 00:28:21,680 --> 00:28:29,200 example, that AI-supported transcription is really quite accurate. And so one tool or one function 287 00:28:29,200 --> 00:28:34,560 that AI does pretty well is transcribing or creating a transcript of a conversation. It could 288 00:28:34,560 --> 00:28:41,360 be transcripts of a hotline complaint. It could be transcripts of an intake call that you have 289 00:28:41,360 --> 00:28:47,520 with somebody who's raising an employee relations concern. And once it does that first step of 290 00:28:47,520 --> 00:28:55,120 summariz... of transcribing the call or the interaction, an AI tool can begin summarizing 291 00:28:55,120 --> 00:29:00,880 or triaging the key elements or proposing next steps based on what the issues were that 292 00:29:00,880 --> 00:29:08,240 were raised in that conversation. So this can reduce the note-taking burden. 293 00:29:08,240 --> 00:29:13,520 I know that there are some HR departments where they will have two people in every meeting, which 294 00:29:13,520 --> 00:29:18,160 may still be a good practice, but one, the purpose of one of those individuals is to take notes 295 00:29:18,160 --> 00:29:23,280 or to try to take verbatim notes while the other person is carrying on the conversation. 296 00:29:23,280 --> 00:29:31,760 And this tool would help lift that burden. Any thoughts, Oliver, from your perspective on 297 00:29:31,760 --> 00:29:40,800 this opportunity? Well, I love the sound of it. Um, I have struggled to take notes accurately in 298 00:29:40,800 --> 00:29:48,080 many an interview and, you know, had to go back and interpret them. And so I really do see this as 299 00:29:48,080 --> 00:29:55,360 an opportunity, but one of my big concerns is just the accuracy component of this tool. And I 300 00:29:55,360 --> 00:30:00,640 think that's really important to analyze because I think for those of us who have done investigations 301 00:30:00,640 --> 00:30:08,400 or in employee relations, sometimes it's just not so cut and dry. Someone may say something to you 302 00:30:08,400 --> 00:30:14,640 um, that is coded or may not even be clear in the words that they're using, but you pick up on the 303 00:30:14,640 --> 00:30:20,480 fact that there is a bigger issue and you need to dive into it. And I think some of that doesn't 304 00:30:20,480 --> 00:30:26,480 always come across in a transcript that you get. And so it is important that you are reviewing 305 00:30:26,480 --> 00:30:33,200 transcripts even when you use a tool like this to make sure that the context is included and that 306 00:30:33,200 --> 00:30:38,560 what is coming across in the transcript makes sense and is accurate. And unfortunately, I think 307 00:30:38,560 --> 00:30:43,520 that means it's maybe not always as efficient as we want because if you have to go back and review 308 00:30:43,520 --> 00:30:49,360 it all, you know, that that takes time, too. So I think some concerns with using a tool like 309 00:30:49,360 --> 00:30:54,960 this, but I am hopeful that there is improvement and this just continues to get better and better 310 00:30:54,960 --> 00:31:01,120 because I do think it could be an efficiency save. Yeah, Oliver, I'm just going to add to that as well. 311 00:31:01,120 --> 00:31:06,880 Um, it can work, but I mean, you need to review it like right after you have the conversation, too, 312 00:31:06,880 --> 00:31:12,080 right? You know, I know in interviews, they're sort of in my head, I can hear that person talking and 313 00:31:12,080 --> 00:31:16,480 emphasizing things, but sometimes transcriptions, you'll go back a week later and you'll be 314 00:31:16,480 --> 00:31:21,040 like, "What were they talking about with the the owl and the pink purple suitcase?" You know what 315 00:31:21,040 --> 00:31:26,160 I mean? Like, or someone asked here about sort of accents and whether they picked up something. And 316 00:31:26,160 --> 00:31:30,880 if you were to go back right after and look at it and review it and sort of make changes and 317 00:31:30,880 --> 00:31:35,360 say, "No, no, that's not what they said, or here's the context," it could be helpful. But, you know, we 318 00:31:35,360 --> 00:31:40,960 know ER people are really busy. They're moving from one thing to another and they're humans. And so 319 00:31:40,960 --> 00:31:46,720 will they do that? And that is a concern. Yeah, and Deb, there's a concept called verification drift 320 00:31:46,720 --> 00:31:52,800 that some researchers around AI have talked about, which is a recognition that AI can be effective so 321 00:31:52,800 --> 00:31:56,960 long as you're doing what you just described, which is reviewing it really carefully. But there's this 322 00:31:56,960 --> 00:32:03,200 recognition, sort of a psychological recognition that people tend to begin to rely more and more 323 00:32:03,200 --> 00:32:09,360 on the output of the tool because a lot of it is seems accurate, seems good. Referencing 324 00:32:09,360 --> 00:32:14,960 back to the attorneys—I am an attorney—and and referencing back to the attorneys Oliver 325 00:32:14,960 --> 00:32:21,600 mentioned who have submitted case law that was not actually real, they're not bad lawyers. They relied 326 00:32:21,600 --> 00:32:26,720 too heavily on the tool before submitting their briefs. And that's something as HR professionals 327 00:32:26,720 --> 00:32:32,960 we have to be really careful about. I want to just address quickly June's question here about 328 00:32:32,960 --> 00:32:40,080 discovery of transcription. And that's an issue that I can certainly see coming up, which is if you 329 00:32:40,080 --> 00:32:45,520 use a transcript in your investigation and your subsequently, that matter is subsequently 330 00:32:45,520 --> 00:32:52,400 litigated, and you have to produce that transcript and explain how it was created, we have not seen 331 00:32:52,400 --> 00:32:57,760 that yet at all at such an early stage in the use of this technology, but it is something that we're 332 00:32:57,760 --> 00:33:02,560 talking with our investigations team about is how do we make sure that we have an explanation of how 333 00:33:02,560 --> 00:33:08,480 we use AI technology in our investigations and what are our answers going to be when a 334 00:33:08,480 --> 00:33:15,920 plaintiff's attorney challenges us or disputes what we said or what conclusions we found. 335 00:33:15,920 --> 00:33:21,120 And I think that's something we'll have to address with the transcription piece of it, too. And to 336 00:33:21,120 --> 00:33:27,120 Katrina's comment about AI in other languages, I do believe that AI transcription is pretty effective 337 00:33:27,120 --> 00:33:34,000 in other languages so long as the tool is fine-tuned for that. But background noise or 338 00:33:34,000 --> 00:33:40,320 folks who have an accent that can impact the quality. So it goes back to what Oliver said, which 339 00:33:40,320 --> 00:33:49,440 is you have to be vigilant about double-checking this. Back to you, Oliver. Yeah, thanks. I I'll stay 340 00:33:49,440 --> 00:33:56,720 kind of, um, off the top here on this one. Please, I recommend working with your employment counsel, 341 00:33:56,720 --> 00:34:02,720 your lawyer, your in-house counsel on some of these topics, you know, especially if you're talking 342 00:34:02,720 --> 00:34:09,120 about discovery. They'll likely have opinions about that, so make sure to check with them, too. And 343 00:34:09,120 --> 00:34:15,200 I think benefits is another topic that comes up as an opportunity, but you wouldn't want to explore 344 00:34:15,200 --> 00:34:21,840 without consulting your your internal counsel, too. I have benefits on this list because 345 00:34:21,840 --> 00:34:28,800 with benefits comes a lot of data. This is a very data-rich area. For those of us who provide benefits 346 00:34:28,800 --> 00:34:34,160 to our employees, which I think is probably most people on the call, it comes along with a lot of 347 00:34:34,160 --> 00:34:40,400 data that's both data of who's using the benefits, how often they're using the benefits, you know, 348 00:34:40,400 --> 00:34:47,520 once they register, do they continue using them? But also the vendors that we use collect 349 00:34:47,520 --> 00:34:52,320 a lot of information from our employees in providing those benefits. Think about health 350 00:34:52,320 --> 00:34:58,960 benefits, you know, the conditions that employees have and how often they're seeing 351 00:34:58,960 --> 00:35:04,640 providers because of those. It's a very data-rich environment around benefits. And that means it's 352 00:35:04,640 --> 00:35:10,880 an opportunity where AI can help us with some of the things we need to do. And that could be 353 00:35:10,880 --> 00:35:18,320 uh, maybe personalizing some of the offerings that we have to our employees, um, you know, helping them 354 00:35:18,320 --> 00:35:24,800 navigate what can be very tricky benefits by making suggestions based on demographics. People 355 00:35:24,800 --> 00:35:29,680 who have similar demographics used these benefits in the past, so maybe they would be 356 00:35:29,680 --> 00:35:36,080 interesting or useful to this type of employee. Another way that this could be helpful is 357 00:35:36,080 --> 00:35:42,080 just tracking and determining what benefits are most used. You know, we often do that just 358 00:35:42,080 --> 00:35:48,880 based on registration, but we don't always know after registration how the benefits are being 359 00:35:48,880 --> 00:35:56,800 used, how thoroughly. So analyzing that data, having some AI help can help understand how useful 360 00:35:56,800 --> 00:36:01,360 our benefits are and whether you want to continue them. Then the last would just be costing, you know, 361 00:36:01,360 --> 00:36:06,720 predicting the costs based on the data that you have and helping you better understand your 362 00:36:06,720 --> 00:36:17,840 costs. So some benefits there potentially from AI in the benefits space. Our next opportunity is 363 00:36:17,840 --> 00:36:23,920 certainly close to my experience, which is around employee relations and investigations. And 364 00:36:23,920 --> 00:36:28,000 I think this is a... this is a challenging opportunity because it's so wide-ranging, 365 00:36:28,000 --> 00:36:32,480 like there are so many different things or ways that an AI tool could be incorporated 366 00:36:32,480 --> 00:36:38,080 or relied upon in the employee relations space, and specifically in the context of investigations. 367 00:36:38,640 --> 00:36:44,560 What I hear a lot of people talking about when they think about using AI in investigations, and 368 00:36:44,560 --> 00:36:50,000 this is something that we've talked with Deb about, too, is everybody says, "Oh, well, I want to use it 369 00:36:50,000 --> 00:36:54,880 to summarize my interview notes," or, "I want to use it to summarize evidence." And as we've already 370 00:36:54,880 --> 00:36:59,280 alluded to, there are some real risks around that. And so I want to focus our attention rather on 371 00:36:59,280 --> 00:37:06,320 some other skills that AI can do pretty effectively in the context of investigations. 372 00:37:06,320 --> 00:37:14,000 One of the ways that we found AI, our AI tool to be particularly effective is just vetting or 373 00:37:14,000 --> 00:37:20,800 or querying the evidence we've gathered. So we might want to say, "How many witnesses 374 00:37:20,800 --> 00:37:28,400 uh, talked about this meeting on June 3rd?" And you can, you know, upload, in our case, we upload 375 00:37:28,400 --> 00:37:34,400 transcripts from interviews that we've conducted and emails that we've gathered, and the tool is 376 00:37:34,400 --> 00:37:40,000 pretty effective at going out and searching which employees referenced or talked about that meeting 377 00:37:40,000 --> 00:37:46,960 on June 2nd. Another way that we've experimented with it is saying, "Okay, well, how many witnesses 378 00:37:46,960 --> 00:37:55,760 corroborated that, you know, John made a comment about age in that meeting on June 2nd?" 379 00:37:55,760 --> 00:38:01,360 And the tool is pretty effective at going out and identifying where in the evidence and 380 00:38:01,360 --> 00:38:07,040 which witnesses made these particular comments or can corroborate that they heard John make 381 00:38:07,040 --> 00:38:12,720 that comment, for example. So querying evidence and querying information you've gathered during 382 00:38:12,720 --> 00:38:20,320 an investigation is a skill that an AI tool does pretty effectively, and it doesn't have some of the 383 00:38:20,320 --> 00:38:27,440 risks that delegating the full responsibility for summarizing a witness interview has. The 384 00:38:27,440 --> 00:38:31,600 reason that we're concerned generally about the idea of summarizing a whole witness interview 385 00:38:31,600 --> 00:38:38,560 with AI is that if you go and tell the tool, "Go summarize, you know, summarize Sally's complaint," 386 00:38:38,560 --> 00:38:43,920 if that's all the information you've given it, the tool is going to come back with radically 387 00:38:43,920 --> 00:38:49,440 different responses on three different occasions that you give it that that direction. 388 00:38:49,440 --> 00:38:54,240 So the point is, if you think back to what I said earlier about probabilistic technology, it's making 389 00:38:54,240 --> 00:39:00,720 its best estimate based on the information you've given it as the user or the prompter, and based on 390 00:39:00,720 --> 00:39:06,080 the volumes of data that it's been trained on. So if you want a better summarization or you 391 00:39:06,080 --> 00:39:12,240 want a better output on a summary, for example, of Sarah's complaint, you have to as the user provide 392 00:39:12,240 --> 00:39:20,000 a really detailed, narrow context or prompt about what specific information you want the tool to 393 00:39:20,000 --> 00:39:25,840 summarize. So that's one of the challenges that you have to think about. Another skill 394 00:39:25,840 --> 00:39:30,800 that we found it to be pretty effective about in the context of investigations is drafting, 395 00:39:30,800 --> 00:39:34,800 identifying witnesses who you might want to interview, or identifying documents that you 396 00:39:34,800 --> 00:39:39,920 might want to gather, identifying the potential scope of the investigation. You can upload the 397 00:39:39,920 --> 00:39:44,720 complaint, for example, and it does a pretty good job of identifying the scope if you include your 398 00:39:44,720 --> 00:39:50,880 policy, it can identify what policies it might be... the conduct might violate. Uh, it can also 399 00:39:50,880 --> 00:39:58,160 propose questions that you should be considering during the investigation. So one way to think about 400 00:39:58,160 --> 00:40:04,160 an AI tool in this context is sort of like an eager associate investigator, super smart, really 401 00:40:04,160 --> 00:40:08,800 eager to help and support you, but actually has no understanding of the investigation process 402 00:40:08,800 --> 00:40:13,040 without you providing it lots of information and training. So those are a couple thoughts 403 00:40:13,040 --> 00:40:17,760 where I think there's an opportunity there, but as with everything, there's some risk around it. 404 00:40:17,760 --> 00:40:24,720 Deb, what are your thoughts on that? And you're on mute. Thanks. Yeah, I have lots of thoughts on this, 405 00:40:24,720 --> 00:40:29,680 but I agree with everything you said. I think the problem with a summary—a summary by definition is 406 00:40:29,680 --> 00:40:34,560 sort of taking something and condensing it. And as you said, it's deciding what's important and what's 407 00:40:34,560 --> 00:40:41,440 not. You can assume that AI bot has never worked in a plant, has maybe never done a sales job. So those 408 00:40:41,440 --> 00:40:46,640 little things that actually, you know, being in your organization or just, you know, being an outside 409 00:40:46,640 --> 00:40:52,400 investigator knowing enough to ask those questions may get glossed over or may get eliminated. I'll 410 00:40:52,400 --> 00:40:59,200 never forget, I had, this was not AI, it was years ago, but I had someone take notes for me and they 411 00:40:59,200 --> 00:41:03,280 weren't a very good notetaker, and there was one thing that the person said that afterwards I was 412 00:41:03,280 --> 00:41:06,080 like, "Oh my god, could you believe..." And I went to their notes, they didn't even mark 413 00:41:06,080 --> 00:41:12,800 it down because to them that was not relevant. To me, it was very short of a smoking gun. And so 414 00:41:12,800 --> 00:41:16,720 um, because I was thinking about the connection, everything like that. So I think 415 00:41:16,720 --> 00:41:22,080 I love, and that's some of the things, you know, not to give away things that we're doing in 416 00:41:22,080 --> 00:41:26,880 HR Acuity, because we know there are ways to assist the investigator, make sure you scope it well, you do 417 00:41:26,880 --> 00:41:31,040 a comprehensive investigation, which we know is one of the things that as an investigator 418 00:41:31,040 --> 00:41:37,920 you need to do to make sure it's compliant. Um, and that's exciting. Oliver, I want to ask you a 419 00:41:37,920 --> 00:41:41,680 question in this in the context of employee relations and investigations with AI because 420 00:41:41,680 --> 00:41:47,600 I think one of the one of the sort of the devil's... you know, the devil's in the details 421 00:41:47,600 --> 00:41:53,600 issues here is the risk of delegating authority for an investigation or for an employee relations 422 00:41:53,600 --> 00:42:01,840 decision. Oliver, how would you evaluate that risk? Oh, very... I would say it's high. I would not want 423 00:42:01,840 --> 00:42:08,400 um, to delegate authority. And for some of the reasons that you all mentioned, I think it's really 424 00:42:08,400 --> 00:42:18,080 important to have that human decision-making point all through the investigation. So I think AI can 425 00:42:18,080 --> 00:42:26,080 help the human make decisions. And I think, Eli, you raised a great point about how a human can use AI 426 00:42:26,080 --> 00:42:32,240 to be more prepared to make a better decision by querying the evidence that exists in the tool. But 427 00:42:32,240 --> 00:42:38,560 I really think that it should be the investigator who uses their critical thinking to make judgments 428 00:42:38,560 --> 00:42:43,920 throughout the investigation and certainly to make the ultimate finding. You know, there are so 429 00:42:43,920 --> 00:42:50,000 many things that go into that. I don't think that AI is sophisticated and advanced enough yet to 430 00:42:50,000 --> 00:42:56,800 be delegating that to. And, you know, that's a good thing for our profession. We're still 431 00:42:56,800 --> 00:43:03,520 necessary as humans, HR professionals, investigators to do that. I think one of my other concerns is 432 00:43:03,520 --> 00:43:11,200 some of the things you're saying AI can do, that's how I train people on investigations and 433 00:43:11,200 --> 00:43:16,480 employee relations. You know, Deb mentions having someone take notes and then kind of issue spot. 434 00:43:16,480 --> 00:43:22,560 Well, that's how I learned, and I assume that's how a lot of people learn how to really understand 435 00:43:22,560 --> 00:43:26,960 what's important when you're talking to people and how it plays into the bigger picture in an 436 00:43:26,960 --> 00:43:33,600 investigation. So if you're having AI do that, you know, do we miss a generation of investigators? 437 00:43:33,600 --> 00:43:39,360 You know, I think that's incumbent upon us as leaders to think through if we use AI in this 438 00:43:39,360 --> 00:43:43,760 way, how are we going to train the next generation? I don't have an answer to that, but it's definitely 439 00:43:43,760 --> 00:43:50,160 on my mind. Yeah, that's a great observation. Go ahead, Deb. The other opportunity or the issue is 440 00:43:50,160 --> 00:43:56,320 just bias, right? We know AI is inherently biased. And what have we been trying to do for years 441 00:43:56,320 --> 00:44:00,800 and decades is take bias out of the investigation process. So now you're layering something on that's 442 00:44:00,800 --> 00:44:08,960 known to have that problem. So also a big concern, obviously. For sure, great point. Well, why don't we 443 00:44:08,960 --> 00:44:13,440 talk about our last opportunity, which I, Oliver, I hope there are no risks with this one. I hope 444 00:44:13,440 --> 00:44:19,040 we can just start using it immediately to do this. Yeah, I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad 445 00:44:19,040 --> 00:44:26,880 news. This one is complicated, but, you know, a lot of employers have data when it comes to 446 00:44:26,880 --> 00:44:32,960 performance. And especially in retail, healthcare space, things that are important to us include time 447 00:44:32,960 --> 00:44:40,080 and attendance and productivity. And those are both very data-rich environments. And AI can help 448 00:44:40,080 --> 00:44:44,800 us there, compile, you know, how people are living up to their time and attendance requirements 449 00:44:44,800 --> 00:44:50,480 and how productive they're being, and then put that into a nice little package for a leader on 450 00:44:50,480 --> 00:44:56,960 their each individual employee. And I, you know, I'm sure you've all heard this. It's hard 451 00:44:56,960 --> 00:45:04,800 to write PDRs. It's it's time-consuming. And so this is an area where AI may be able to help. However, 452 00:45:04,800 --> 00:45:12,960 it is a very risky area, and performance is something where context matters, and the human 453 00:45:12,960 --> 00:45:19,440 decision-making discretion is very important. So I've listed this here with the caveat that 454 00:45:19,440 --> 00:45:24,720 you got to be very careful. Yeah, it sounds like a tremendous opportunity, and I know that there are 455 00:45:24,720 --> 00:45:29,760 going to be tools that are that are fine-tuned to to help with this, but it also sounds like, as with 456 00:45:29,760 --> 00:45:34,640 many of the opportunities we're talking about, the importance of human judgment and making 457 00:45:34,640 --> 00:45:41,360 sure that the human is still the decision maker, is still the one driving the analysis, 458 00:45:41,360 --> 00:45:48,560 and is only using the tool to the extent that it can be helpful in gathering or consolidating, 459 00:45:48,560 --> 00:45:53,680 you know, summarizing or collecting information, but ultimately the user has to be the one who's 460 00:45:53,680 --> 00:46:01,680 driving this, right? Yep, totally agree. Well, that probably felt like five opportunities with a 461 00:46:01,680 --> 00:46:06,960 lot of risks. Now we're going to talk about five risks that also have some opportunities. I think 462 00:46:06,960 --> 00:46:10,960 that's the challenge with this topic, but it's also the thing that makes it kind of exciting. 463 00:46:10,960 --> 00:46:18,640 Uh, so why don't we move on to the first risk, which is using AI to make employment decisions? 464 00:46:18,640 --> 00:46:24,640 Now, this obviously is a significant area of risk because as we've talked about, and I see some 465 00:46:24,640 --> 00:46:29,680 of the comments in the chat even expressing some concern around delegating too much responsibility 466 00:46:29,680 --> 00:46:36,480 to AI, and certainly relying on the tool to make an employment decision, which that might look 467 00:46:36,480 --> 00:46:43,680 like saying, "Okay, here's the investigation report. What should the action be?" Well, that would be an 468 00:46:43,680 --> 00:46:48,960 inappropriate delegation of authority. The user, the HR professional, simply has to be the one 469 00:46:48,960 --> 00:46:54,800 who's evaluating past practice, has to be the one who's evaluating the impact and relevance of 470 00:46:54,800 --> 00:46:59,680 the evidence that was gathered, the findings that were made in the investigation or the analysis. So 471 00:46:59,680 --> 00:47:06,320 I certainly think there's tremendous risk in using AI to make employment decisions. On the other hand, 472 00:47:06,320 --> 00:47:13,120 Oliver, there probably are some opportunities here around using AI to inform or help an HR 473 00:47:13,120 --> 00:47:20,000 professional in this way. Is that true? Yeah, I think so. I do think there are organizations 474 00:47:20,000 --> 00:47:26,480 that don't have other systems that that can do some of what you're saying, you know, track 475 00:47:26,480 --> 00:47:32,560 what they've done in the past. And so there may be opportunity for AI to give you data on that 476 00:47:32,560 --> 00:47:40,800 rather than make a decision, really give you that data. Also could help give context around 477 00:47:40,800 --> 00:47:49,520 what past practice has been or what other company documents, policies, practices would 478 00:47:49,520 --> 00:47:55,920 indicate. So I do think there's some opportunity to leverage AI here. Actually making employment 479 00:47:55,920 --> 00:48:06,000 decisions, I think that has to really rest with the professionals and rely on the human judgment. 480 00:48:06,000 --> 00:48:13,760 Uh, related to that is the hiring decision. And I include this here because a lot of the tools 481 00:48:13,760 --> 00:48:19,200 that I'm coming across right now are focused on helping in the talent acquisition space, 482 00:48:19,200 --> 00:48:26,240 making that process more efficient. And you know, some of that's about reviewing résumés, 483 00:48:26,240 --> 00:48:33,920 um, using AI to to review résumés and then spit out the best ones based on the job description. But 484 00:48:33,920 --> 00:48:41,040 I've also seen AI used to conduct interviews. You know, it can display questions that the person 485 00:48:41,040 --> 00:48:48,320 answers on video, and then it can ask follow-up questions to whatever the person responds. And 486 00:48:48,320 --> 00:48:56,480 so that's another function that I'm seeing. And I think all of this is very risky because that 487 00:48:56,480 --> 00:49:02,800 hiring decision and, you know, even whether you advance someone's résumé to the next stage of 488 00:49:02,800 --> 00:49:09,120 the hiring process, there's risk in all of that. That's all part of an employment decision, and 489 00:49:09,120 --> 00:49:16,800 so it needs to be very, very careful. And bias is a huge factor in this process. And, you know, for 490 00:49:16,800 --> 00:49:23,280 those who have looked into kind of résumés, for example, um, it's very common knowledge, I think, 491 00:49:23,280 --> 00:49:29,280 that names on résumés can have a lot of bias. You know, we have seen just changing the name 492 00:49:29,280 --> 00:49:35,600 at the top of the résumé can change the way it's interpreted, and AI will learn based on some 493 00:49:35,600 --> 00:49:42,880 of those practices. So it will not be perfect, and I do have a lot of concern about using these tools 494 00:49:42,880 --> 00:49:49,920 um, in the hiring process. Any opportunities you see there, though, Eli? Well, I think the bias issue 495 00:49:49,920 --> 00:49:54,160 is fascinating, and we're we're going to dive into that a little bit more as risk number three. But 496 00:49:54,160 --> 00:50:02,400 in this context, you know, we also have to remember that there is bias in human nature and that humans, 497 00:50:02,400 --> 00:50:07,680 especially if we have folks who are maybe not well trained or don't have the experience in 498 00:50:07,680 --> 00:50:14,160 making hiring decisions, that they actually could insert more bias into the process and actually 499 00:50:14,160 --> 00:50:19,760 a technology tool may who that's well-formulated and well-designed and is specifically 500 00:50:19,760 --> 00:50:26,640 has agents to help address bias, it actually could result in better consistency and accuracy 501 00:50:26,640 --> 00:50:32,960 and could take out some of that human bias that we so much want to avoid. So I think it's 502 00:50:32,960 --> 00:50:39,840 an interesting dichotomy, is that while I think there's a lot of risk here in helping employers 503 00:50:39,840 --> 00:50:45,920 make responsible decisions around recruiting and hiring, I suspect that there will be AI tools 504 00:50:45,920 --> 00:50:52,800 that are fine-tuned to help eliminate some of that risk that humans actually insert into the system. 505 00:50:53,360 --> 00:51:00,080 Yeah, I think it's an area where we should be looking for studies and data where the 506 00:51:00,080 --> 00:51:06,400 vendors who are offering to do these things have really looked into what happens when 507 00:51:06,400 --> 00:51:12,400 they do things like change names on a résumé or change the appearance of someone that the 508 00:51:12,400 --> 00:51:19,600 AI is interviewing, and they've proven in their their data that there there isn't bias or that 509 00:51:19,600 --> 00:51:25,920 they've really improved that that component. Well, and so with that, why don't we talk a little bit 510 00:51:25,920 --> 00:51:31,680 more about bias? Because it's sort of the, you know, the the 800-pound gorilla in the room is the fact 511 00:51:31,680 --> 00:51:38,560 that every AI system seems to have a significant amount of bias integrated into it or built 512 00:51:38,560 --> 00:51:44,320 into it. And so let's understand why that is first. And the reason that is, the reason that 513 00:51:44,320 --> 00:51:52,800 we are so concerned about bias in AI tools is that as a large language model is trained on all 514 00:51:52,800 --> 00:52:00,160 of the volumes and volumes of data, it is trained on data that is human-created, that has intrinsic 515 00:52:00,160 --> 00:52:10,160 biases and that already has intrinsic bias or unconscious bias built into it. And so 516 00:52:10,160 --> 00:52:15,440 one of the challenges is there's... and if you've, you know, read up on how these tools have been 517 00:52:15,440 --> 00:52:20,960 trained, there's not a lot of focus on how to make sure that these tools are unbiased when they are 518 00:52:20,960 --> 00:52:26,720 being trained on all of these volumes and volumes and volumes and volumes and volumes of data. And so 519 00:52:26,720 --> 00:52:32,800 a lot of the concern is that, and if you think about it like any human being who has their own 520 00:52:32,800 --> 00:52:38,160 lived experience and their own background and their own perspectives, we all come to our jobs 521 00:52:38,160 --> 00:52:45,600 and to this day with our own experiences and our own biases. And that is magnified in an artificial 522 00:52:45,600 --> 00:52:52,080 intelligence tool. And that's why that's so concerning about how the bias may 523 00:52:52,080 --> 00:52:58,640 manifest in the outputs that these tools create. For example, this is several months ago now and, 524 00:52:58,640 --> 00:53:08,080 um, but there was an experiment done where an AI tool was asked to describe individuals, 525 00:53:08,080 --> 00:53:15,280 including gender, race, age of individuals in a boardroom who were board members of a large 526 00:53:15,280 --> 00:53:22,080 corporation. And pretty consistently, the tools came back and described the board members as 527 00:53:22,080 --> 00:53:29,280 middle-aged white men. And that is obviously reflects significant bias. And so that's 528 00:53:29,280 --> 00:53:34,080 the type of bias that we're concerned about in large language models. And so if we're delegating 529 00:53:34,080 --> 00:53:40,960 responsibility on decision-making or hiring or things like that and we haven't ensured that the tool is 530 00:53:40,960 --> 00:53:48,880 uh, designed to eliminate or mitigate that bias, we could be inserting exactly the bias that we've 531 00:53:48,880 --> 00:53:57,360 been working for so many years to try to get out of our decisions as attorneys and HR professionals. 532 00:53:57,360 --> 00:54:03,760 Fully agree. And I hope that everyone has been working to remove those biases. And I think the 533 00:54:03,760 --> 00:54:10,160 only, you know, counterpoint to this is, uh, for those who haven't worked on that, the 534 00:54:10,160 --> 00:54:16,720 the these vendors are working on that. So, you know, um, I think it goes back to what you 535 00:54:16,720 --> 00:54:23,440 said earlier, Eli, uh, it is possible that the AI tools are better than humans. 536 00:54:23,440 --> 00:54:28,080 You know, they don't have conscious bias. They have these built-in biases, but, 537 00:54:28,080 --> 00:54:32,160 um, you know, I think that's something we need to think deeply about. And hopefully everyone 538 00:54:32,160 --> 00:54:42,640 is working on those biases. Um, but I think this is a very important thing to be aware of with AI. 539 00:54:42,640 --> 00:54:51,920 One of my um, fears in reliance on AI is that we really lose our our listening skills and ability 540 00:54:51,920 --> 00:54:58,560 to hear what's really going on, maybe not the words people are using, but um, what's really going on 541 00:54:58,560 --> 00:55:06,160 under the surface. And I think that is one of my biggest assets as an HR professional, is um, those 542 00:55:06,160 --> 00:55:13,520 listening skills. But if we are teaching people to rely on artificial intelligence to listen to 543 00:55:13,520 --> 00:55:22,080 conversations, summarize them, even identify the most important issues, I worry that over time, 544 00:55:22,080 --> 00:55:26,720 um, we'll start tuning out. People will start tuning out and won't really hone those 545 00:55:26,720 --> 00:55:32,160 listening skills as much. Uh, and I think that's one of the most valuable parts of our profession. 546 00:55:32,160 --> 00:55:38,960 And I hope that that doesn't happen. But uh, I think there is some risk there. I think that really plays 547 00:55:38,960 --> 00:55:44,720 into our last risk here, too. Uh, and I think with these two risks, I don't know that there's 548 00:55:44,720 --> 00:55:48,400 a lot of opportunity. I think they're really just cautionary tales that we have to be thinking about 549 00:55:48,400 --> 00:55:54,640 as we're evaluating how to integrate AI into the HR profession. I think one of the areas, and we've 550 00:55:54,640 --> 00:56:00,720 alluded to this a little bit, is just the concern about reducing the reliance in an organization 551 00:56:00,720 --> 00:56:06,320 on the true value that HR professionals bring to the table. Uh, HR professionals are well 552 00:56:06,320 --> 00:56:12,400 trained, they are experienced, and probably the experience that many of you had is more valuable 553 00:56:12,400 --> 00:56:19,520 than any training you can give in, you know, a week or, you know, five days. Um, it's really that in the 554 00:56:19,520 --> 00:56:24,240 trenches experience dealing with individuals in unique, uncertain situations and using 555 00:56:24,240 --> 00:56:30,320 your judgment and critical thinking skills and emotional intelligence to come up with a solid 556 00:56:30,320 --> 00:56:36,560 solution to a given employee relations issue. And I think that's one of the concerns is both 557 00:56:36,560 --> 00:56:42,080 reducing or suggesting to an organization, to leaders in an organization, that the true value of 558 00:56:42,080 --> 00:56:49,520 an HR professional can be replaced in somehow by an AI tool. Another concern is something that 559 00:56:49,520 --> 00:56:55,200 Oliver mentioned earlier, which is how do we ensure that the next generation of HR professionals is 560 00:56:55,200 --> 00:57:00,960 well trained if we're delegating some of these ministerial tasks to an AI tool and not using 561 00:57:00,960 --> 00:57:10,160 those as an entryway to the HR profession? Um, thoughts on those uh concerns, Oliver? Yeah, I have 562 00:57:10,160 --> 00:57:17,360 all of those concerns. And I think that that makes it important for us to really start grappling with 563 00:57:17,360 --> 00:57:24,400 AI and understanding it and leveraging it in ways that make sense and are lower on the risk profile, 564 00:57:24,400 --> 00:57:30,480 um, but that make us more efficient, because I think leaders and organizations will demand 565 00:57:30,480 --> 00:57:35,680 that we understand AI and that we're able to leverage it. And I hope that that really helps 566 00:57:35,680 --> 00:57:42,400 us focus kind of at the top of our license where those HR skills, the listening skills, the judgment 567 00:57:42,400 --> 00:57:48,880 skills, where that's really useful and that people still rely on us for that. I think they will if we 568 00:57:48,880 --> 00:57:57,360 use AI to be more efficient on the other tasks. So wrapping it up, uh, let's talk about what 569 00:57:57,360 --> 00:58:03,680 does this really mean for HR professionals? Yeah. Well, first of all, don't be left behind. There's 570 00:58:03,680 --> 00:58:09,280 a lot going on in this space right now. You're you're here today, so that's a great start. But 571 00:58:09,280 --> 00:58:15,520 um, you know, keep learning as much as you can about this and play with tools on your personal time. You 572 00:58:15,520 --> 00:58:21,760 know, it's fun. And there are ways you can build those skill sets. So don't be left behind and get 573 00:58:21,760 --> 00:58:29,600 in the game here. Make sure you're staying on top of this area that's rapidly developing. 574 00:58:32,000 --> 00:58:36,320 Make sure that you understand the limitations and that when people ask 575 00:58:36,320 --> 00:58:42,160 you to implement a tool, you can talk to them about why that might be a challenging idea or 576 00:58:42,160 --> 00:58:48,240 even a bad idea that can include bias or the reliability of the information or even just 577 00:58:48,240 --> 00:58:55,360 the adequacy of the output. Um, but make sure you're able to talk through those issues, too. 578 00:58:57,120 --> 00:59:02,080 Make sure you're using it as a support tool, but not to replace your independent judgment. I think 579 00:59:02,080 --> 00:59:08,640 we've talked about that a few times today. And then make sure you're analyzing the various 580 00:59:08,640 --> 00:59:15,360 risks. I think I said earlier, work with your legal teams, work with your privacy teams, your IT teams. 581 00:59:15,360 --> 00:59:19,760 A lot of them are focused on this right now. So make sure you're bringing in partners to analyze 582 00:59:19,760 --> 00:59:24,880 all that risk. And then last but certainly not least, hopefully you heard in much of 583 00:59:24,880 --> 00:59:31,040 what we said today, your independent judgment remains very important even if you're using 584 00:59:31,040 --> 00:59:38,800 these tools. So keep that at the forefront, even when implementing AI. Great. Thank 585 00:59:38,800 --> 00:59:42,960 you, Oliver, and thank you for the discussion, all of you. It's great to have comments and 586 00:59:42,960 --> 00:59:47,440 uh, questions from you. And pleased to be here. It sounds like you have some opportunities coming 587 00:59:47,440 --> 00:59:53,760 up to discuss this more with the HR Acuity and Empower team. So I'll turn it back over to Deb. 588 00:59:53,760 --> 00:59:58,640 Yeah, thank you so much. This was great. Obviously timely. I think everybody was sort of leaned into 589 00:59:58,640 --> 1:00:03,520 everything you were saying. Of course, for me, every time you mentioned Oliver, I thought Oliver, our ER 590 1:00:03,520 --> 1:00:08,240 companion who's in our platform, would show up. But Oliver, you're on the same wavelength, so 591 1:00:08,240 --> 1:00:14,160 you know, you're... all Olivers think alike, I guess. So it's great. But thank you. 592 1:00:14,160 --> 1:00:17,920 You know, Eli and Oliver's contact information is here if you want to reach out to them for more 593 1:00:17,920 --> 1:00:21,600 information. You should. But we love having them as part of our community. And thank you 594 1:00:21,600 --> 1:00:26,080 again to everybody for joining us. And stay tuned for more conversations. This is going to... we're going to 595 1:00:26,080 --> 1:00:32,320 keep talking about AI for a long time. Thanks, everyone. Have a great afternoon. Thank you so much.