AI Can Help You—And Your Boss—Maximize Your Potential. Will You Trust It?

Would you trust an Artificial Intelligence (AI) to tell you how to become more effective and successful at your job? How would you feel if you knew your HR department uses AI to determine whether you are leadership material? Or that an AI just suggested to your boss that she should treat you better or else you might soon quit and join a competitor—well before the thought of jumping ship entered your mind?

Meet Yva, introduced by her creator David Yang in this fascinating podcast discussion.

David Yang is an impressive serial entrepreneur: he has launched twelve companies, beginning when he was in fourth grade. David started training as a physicist, to follow in his parents’ footsteps. He won math and physics Olympiads; then his first entrepreneurial detour “distracted” him from his studies for a while and sparked his passion for computer science and AI—it’s really worth hearing the story from David’s own voice, especially his concern of possibly disappointing his parents even as he was launching a hugely successful entrepreneurial and scientific career.

Yva, David’s latest creation, is an AI-powered people analytics platform—a remarkable example of the powerful role that AI is starting to play in the workplace, with the ethical implications that quickly come to the fore.

Yva’s neural network can mine and analyze workers’ activities across a range of work applications: email, Slack, G-Suite, GitHub. With these data, the AI can pick up a treasure trove of nuanced insights about employee behaviors: how quickly an employee responds to certain types of emails; or the tree structure of her communications: how many to subordinates, how many to peers or superiors, how many outside the company; and much more.

These insights can provide value to an organization in two main ways:

First, in identifying which employees have high potential to be great performers or strong leaders. The company tells Yva which individuals it currently considers as best performers; Yva’s neural network identifies which behaviors are characteristic of these top performers, and then finds other employees who exhibit some if not all of the same traits. It can tell you who has the potential to become a top salesperson, or an extremely effective leader; and it can tell you which characteristics they already possess and which ones they need to develop.

Second, Yva helps minimize “regrettable attrition” by identifying employees who are a high resignation risk. A decision to resign never comes out of the blue. First the employee will feel increasingly frustrated or burnt out; then she will become more open to consider other opportunities; then she will actively seek another job.