Viewpoint: Artificial Intelligence Comes to HR as a Conversation

Industry research shows that more than $14 billion was invested in artificial intelligence (AI) over the last five years, and almost every existing HR software company now has an AI strategy.

AI is a broad term, covering techniques like machine learning, predictive analytics, natural language processing, and visual image and spatial recognition. All of these techniques have been made possible during the last decade by work in high-performance computing, sensors and “big data.”

In the realm of HR, we have been talking about people analytics for almost a decade, and I think the application of AI will finally help HR make strides in this type of analytics.

While fewer than 10 percent of the companies we talk with have advanced analytics capabilities in HR, once AI is embedded into our HR systems, the platforms will help us predict who to hire, what next job to take, what training to use and even when to expect fraud.

But as I study the market and talk with dozens of vendors, I believe there is a bigger, more surprising thing about to happen.

I believe HR systems are going to become conversational.

The most common way we interact with each other is through a conversation. One person makes a comment or asks a question, and the other person answers or responds. This back and forth conversation is natural and efficient. If the mode of communication is a text, AI can recognize our voice when we speak (think Siri) or our typed message. Is it any surprise that messaging is by far the most common way we now use computers and that every major vendor is building a new messaging app?

While I was skeptical about this approach at first, I have seen the way conversational HR systems can work, and they are amazingly useful and transformational to our businesses. In 2012, we were sending an estimated 6 billion text messages per day, according to Forrester Research. Now I have to believe this number is many times higher, and this doesn’t even include messages sent on WhatsApp, Facebook, Snapchat and all the other messaging systems around us.

In the realm of HR, the potential is huge.

Consider a typical HR transaction: an employee who’d like to schedule vacation time.

Employee: I’d like to take Friday as vacation.