Episode 6: The Truth About Measuring AI at Work

Theresa Fesinstine and Anthony Onesto discuss the critical difference between tracking AI usage as a metric and using it to unlock new, billion-dollar human-led opportunities. 

From Anthony's major career move into an AI-focused role at Living HR to Theresa's new community for upskilling HR leaders, we tackle the "competence vs. confidence" gap. We're breaking down why gamified AI leaderboards at companies like Amazon are destined to fail by looking at the "Cobra Effect," and contrasting it with how IKEA redeployed its customer service staff into a wildly successful interior design service, creating a new billion-dollar business line.

In this episode, we discuss:
Career & Community Updates: Anthony Onesto joins Living HR and Theresa Fesinstine launches an HR community.
Gaming the System: Why Amazon's AI token leaderboards were a predictable failure.
The IKEA Model: How using AI to analyze customer data created a new billion-dollar business.
The Future of HR's Role: Moving from asking permission to giving instruction on tech needs.

Timestamps (Chapters)
00:00 – Welcome & Winning Bon Jovi Tickets
02:28 – Theresa Launches Her New HR Community
04:51 – Big News: Anthony Joins Living HR
11:15 – Amazon Workers Gaming the AI Leaderboard
13:15 – The "Cobra Effect": When Good Metrics Go Bad
18:45 – How IKEA Found a Billion-Dollar Opportunity with AI
28:06 – Humanoid Robots and the Future of Physical Jobs
30:47 – Will Any Job Be Untouchable by AI?
39:20 – The Final Question: Can Companies Be "Anti-Tech"?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Well, welcome to the we're halfway through May already, meaning we're almost halfway through the year, and we are here for another episode of The Breaking Views. Hello, Anthony.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

How are you? What's going on? Halfway there, Bon Jovi.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

I know, right? Oh my gosh. Welcome to my childhood. I love me some Bon Jovi. He was actually on the radio the other day talking about how some of his fans have been with him for 40 years. And I thought, how's that possible? I'm not even 40 years old.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Yeah, that's not like I'm still 16. I remember. So I was at a Suite 16 in New Jersey, and the DJ was giving away, I believe it was four front row or two front row tickets to a Bon Jovi concert, and you had to win a dance contest. And so I was actually a pretty good dancer, still am. Um, I don't know where the rhythm came from, but it came from somewhere. And uh I we it was me and my friend Seth against these two other girls, and we won the DJ. And in fairness to the girls, they were probably better dancers, but we knew the crowd, they were all our friends, right? And it was it was crowd voting. So, anyway, long story short, they gave us the tickets, and of course, what did we do?

SPEAKER_02 1:20

We invited the girls.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

We knew the girls, right? They didn't invite us, they just took the tickets and went on their own. Totally cool. That's their choice. Maybe they had boyfriends or whatever it is. So, fun story. Whenever I see Seth, shout out to Seth Horowitz from Manalepin, New Jersey. We did win, but we gave the tickets away, and no regrets, no regrets.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

I'm sure they have that's amazing. Yeah, well, I have to say this because I just because of the dancing. My dad was a very good dancer, and he he and my aunt Kathy used to win dance contests, and that's one of the most special memories I have with my dad is oh that's awesome just watching him and having fun dancing with him. So I'm sure with your girls like you, uh, that's a core memory that you probably don't think is so critical for that.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

I hope so, because I do embarrass them well.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

Oh, my dad is the best at embarrassing, but also like my dad could work his way around a dance floor, like nobody. He also sidebar used to be a square dance caller. No kidding. Um, yeah, so also had a pretty good voice and wow very fast. So he had a lot of lots of things going, Mike Inc.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

I love that. I love that story.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

So let's kick off with some updates. I think we both have some things happening that we want to let our our growing crew know about.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

100% growth in the community. Yeah, why don't you go first and I'll uh I'll follow you.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

Sure. So some of the things happening, um, I am really excited that I'm kicking off my 2026 cohort program. And in conjunction with that, I've actually I I hesitated for a long time, but am jumping into the kind of building out a community space. So I have built it through Lovable and created it um in conjunction with the assessment tool that I've done. Um I'm so excited. We have like 750 people that have come HR leaders that have completed the assessment at this point. And so the data maybe I can share some of that. We can talk about some of that in one of our future episodes.

SPEAKER_01 3:19

But the that's a great idea.

SPEAKER_00 3:20

Yeah, the storyline that I've been talking to teams about, I was just in Utah this week talking with uh the group from Shift Four. Um, I'm heading over to talk with some um public school groups in the next few weeks, and the conversation I'm having is all about competence versus confidence. And how our our level of confidence as a as an industry based on this very large sample so far is very high. But our competence has a little bit of like that's needed. So I love it. It's assessment.peoplepower.ai backslash community. Uh I'll share that in the show notes, but oh, that's easy to remember. Yeah, right. It's just assessment.peoplepower.ai backslash community. Um I can it trips off the tongue, but I think the thing about it, and if you want to learn more, really just go to peoplepower.ai, it'll get you there. Um, but the idea of it is to have some very curated HR focused uh news activities, events that are private just to the community. There's a free a free like base page that is gonna have news of the day that's really of interest, um, and some free like value ads. And then there's a paid subscription part of the community where you get access to all this other stuff. So I'm not looking to blow it out of the water and be the largest community ever. What I'm looking to do is create a space that's safe for HR leaders to continue their growth and development. And so I'm super excited about that. And I'll probably intersperse a screen grab if I can get really super production oriented.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

Uh-oh, uh-oh. Drum roll, please. Watch the magic.

SPEAKER_00 4:59

All right, let's hear your big news, my friend.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Yeah, well, I I love first and foremost, congratulations. I'm excited about what you're doing with this community. Absolutely right. Let's, you know, I've said this and I I profess it, and I'll continue to profess that HR leaders need to be the lead transformation agent in this AI space. It is AI and humans or humans and machines. You can add coffee if you like coffee, whatever it is. So let's get those folks like confident and competent and all the above, uh, because this thing is not going anywhere, and we need to take hold of it and do it in the right way. So great stuff. And I love that you're building community. I love that you're offering content, uh, all the above. So very, very cool. And I always, you know, I'm a lot in these email and HR networks and circles and emails. And anyone, when anyone asks about AI and HR, like your name pops up every time. So awesome. You have the brand awareness, you have the the credibility. So excited for you. Um, and I'm excited to partner with you because drum roll, I am actually leaving my friends, my colleagues um at 15.5. Uh, this today is actually my last day. Today is May 15th. Um, and I start a new gig on Monday. I start working with Kerry, the CEO, the amazing CEO of LivingHR. Uh, and I am uh my title is Principal AI and People Systems. And we are building an AI transformation function for LivingHR, who's been in the HR consulting business for almost two decades now, really helping in building mid to upper mid-market enterprise companies with their HR capabilities. Really interesting model, this sort of almost like a SaaS model retainer monthly basis um kind of model. And we're figuring out, okay, here's a perfect market opportunity. You've seen it, you're doing a lot of work in the LD and the training and and the enablement space and even in the execution space. And we're gonna have some overlap, and I'm excited about that. So uh, so yeah, um, I just want to thank everyone at 15.5. I know this will probably come out after, and I've already started at Living HR, but really want to say thanks to everyone at 15.5, Jim Morrisau, who was the original CEO, who saw the vision of hiring an HR person in an HR tech company, and it explodes, right? Like what you know, like what advisor?

SPEAKER_00 7:34

That's insane. Right.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

Yeah, it's full-time pain. Um, yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 7:40

That vision came into a reality fun.

SPEAKER_01 7:42

Oh no, it was there. I'm running towards something. I know it sounds cliche. I'm not running from, but I'm running towards something. So, but uh, and Jeff, Jeff Smith, Dr. Jeff Smith, who's the COO, was the CPTO at one point, and and Guy and all these folks, and then David Hassel, who was the founder who who came back in. So, anyway, this is like uh this is uh like uh I'm waiting for the Oscar music to to start. And I'd like to thank my mom and my kindergarten teacher who said you're fairly useless. And so damn you, kindergarten. No. Um, but anyway, I'm hearing the music, so I'll stop. But excited to announce that. I start that on Monday the 18th, and we'll be building that out in partnership with the amazing team at Living HR. So yeah, we we have a lot of uh stuff going on, which is which is awesome. Uh oh, yes, there it is. And uh and uh like to the producers of uh yes, the uh the folks at Paramount and Netflix, thank you. And uh oh uh this oh no, this way, sorry. It's my favorite Jim Carrey when he was in in the mask, like he did the whole like thank you, you love me. And he like went this way, and the person said this way, and you know, like it's every time like they go always go to the wrong exit on stage, and I thought that was a brilliant call-out.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

I I'm actually more excited for Living HR because I I really uh appreciate some of the resources that they've put out, and and you know, I'm always in my work looking to find companies that are uh as empowered and and in sort of embracing of this mission around HR leaders and AI learning and building the fluency so that uh, as I said this week in Utah, so that we can walk in the room with our tech teams, not asking permission, but providing instruction on what we need and requesting the assistance to get there, less permission can we have or can we use or can we deploy? And I think it puts HR in a position of power to be able to speak to technology that in a lot of cases their tech teams aren't even as familiar with because we've got to kind of I've talked about this a lot, contextualize that similar to HR during COVID, there's an expectation that people just know. And tech teams are being inundated with 10 times the questions, just like we were during COVID. So um, this empowerment that Living HR is doing, they are so freaking lucky um to have you joining their team. And I know you feel the same. So um it's gonna be a match made in heaven. It's great.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

Yeah, yeah, I'm excited. Great crew. Carrie's brilliant CEO, brilliant business person. Like, just can't wait. And she just hired uh this woman, Kim Pope, who's another like just amazing business folks, and there's a ton of white space. You know, this is a top priority of CEOs in terms of AI transformation. As you said, you know, there's confidence, but competency gaps. Um, so there's a ton of opportunity here. And it's not like, you know, we we're we're going into the CEO office and we're, you know, we're we're talking about something they're unfamiliar with. This is a number one, I think it was Sherm or chief executive board, put out a survey of uh of CEOs, what are their top priorities? And it was AI transformation one, revenue number two. I've never seen revenue is always number one, AI transformation is two. So I think this is a perfect opportunity. And it and it also, like there was a recent announcement by OpenAI and Claude, they're starting to think about their own services, units, and things like that. So we just bring the HR lens to this, which I think is going to be very different. So excited, really excited to start.

SPEAKER_00 11:26

Love it. Well, that you know, the the conversation around HR and AI, I think is really interesting. There's a story out this week that I know we were talking about, wanting to mention this um conversation about the integration of AI, the expectations of that integration, and how companies, Amazon in particular, and this uh one story I have on my community, that's through HCA magazine, Amazon workers gaming the AI leaderboard. Um and I find it fascinating. First of all, we'll put a link in the in the show notes on where you can find that article. Um but I think the the if I summarize it, it's companies building sort of these mega trackers for how teams are leveraging and using AI. And because of that, when it becomes a gamified process, people are gonna game that game. And what I actually found really interesting in the article is how HR was sort of, and I don't know what your take on it, Anthony, was, but my take on it was like, why are we placing like there's this dichotomy of what HR does and does not do? HR fires, HR does all these different things. And I think while HR can lead an initiative, you know, the employees are the ones who are making the choice to game a system that really is about how our the positioning on how that company, Amazon in particular in this case, made it a challenge to get high token use. And in fact, quotes along the lines of you know, employees equaling their annual salary and token utilization, I'm not sure what expectation they had, but I doubt that idea came from an HR team member.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

Yeah, who who knows, right? I don't know the details of of internal Amazon. It's just I laughed when you when you originally you know started talking about this particular article because yeah, I mean, I I could have predicted that. I could have predicted that if you're going to, and it's so funny in my book, um The New Employee Contract, there's a whole chapter on what I call Cobra effective metrics, right? This idea of are we tracking the right things? And the and the metaphor around cobra is I believe it was India, uh British-owned colony in India was having a cobra, uh literally snake challenge. They had too many cobra snakes that were all over the city, and it was a challenge. So what they did is they put a reward if you if you started to collect cobras and submit them. Uh, and ultimately the goal was a reduction of cobras, right? Like they didn't want all these cobra snakes like kind of hanging out. Imagine living in a world that you go outside and there's just like cobra snakes. I mean, that's Florida, essentially, but I guess essentially just Florida.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

In my mind, one is too many. There's one is too many.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

Yeah, I hate oh, I am deadly afraid of snakes. I have a Michael Stray and uh snake uh inversion. They are I know anyway. Uh, but it's just like imagine just living in that world. Um, so anyway, it would the whole point was to reduce the amount of cobra snakes on the street and they put a reward out. So, what do you imagine people did? They farmed cobra snakes because they would get rewards for training them in. And then once they said, Wow, this is not working because there's more cobras, you know. Like, how is how are you bringing in a hundred cobra cobras? There aren't a hundred cobras out there, and so they stopped it. And so all these people that just bred cobras just let them lose because there was no reward, and then they had more cobras, you know. So that's the whole point here. Like, you're you're you're we're gonna measure your AI usage for performance purposes, and we're gonna have a leaderboard. I think there's a leaderboard in this in this whole thing. And what do you think people are gonna do? I there's another story I went, you know, like there is when the police New York NYPD came out with um, they call it, I think, a stats thing. They do it every quarter every year, and they look at the crime stats across different boroughs and precincts. And I, you know, I know for a fact that people used to fudge those numbers. They would literally, like if someone passed away in a district and they found that person and it was kind of close to another district. You can't see this, I'm doing this on video, but I don't want to be explicit. But they would kind of move, and that that murder, that death would be accounted for in another district. So when you put out these metrics, yeah, true story. Um, it's crazy. So, like you put out these metrics, ultimately, you know, what is the goal? What are you trying to accomplish? And the idea of AI usage, and again, I want to give everyone grace here. We're at the beginning stages of this, and this is why I'm moving into a role. This is why you do what you do. It's like, hey, let's take a step back. It's not AI usage you're looking for, you're looking for more revenue or better code quality or rapid release of code or whatever it is your normal business metrics are. That's what you are trying to get better at or more efficient at, not usage of AI. So I I'm not surprised at all.

SPEAKER_00 16:30

Yeah. Yeah. I think the um there's there's that factor of it. That's the gamification, and let's put things on a board and measure volume, right? It's not effectiveness, it's not ROI, it's just volume. And then there's the sort of conversation around who's driving the initiatives. And I know for us, finding the balance of where we're incorporating and thinking through the people impact, the human impact of these of this technology that if you really sit and think about it, um, sometimes I can get caught in my own mental wormholes of like, oh my gosh, isn't life amazing? And what are the chances that I'm on this earth at this very time when all of them met my husband and we have, you know, all the stars aligned, and that kind of thing. And we happen to be in this space and time when we are seeing such like the pace of change is is faster than we could ever imagine, I think.

SPEAKER_02 17:33

Right.

SPEAKER_00 17:33

I was telling the group yesterday, I was like, because there I always get the questions during workshops, like, what's your favorite tool? Or if you could only pick one tool, and I'm like, you have to go back to it's not about the tool, it's about what are you, what outcome are you looking for? And I could probably get there in a few different ways. It may not look the same, the output may not be exactly the same, but I can get there through a variety. And segmenting down to one, in my opinion, puts you in a real risky spot of something goes bad shit crazy with that one, and now you've got to rebuild everything, right? Right. So we have these conversations, and I think there's that piece of it that HR owns this sort of how do we responsibly build, but also you know, to your point that uh there are ways that you can, and I'm gonna merge two stories here. Um number one, the gamification of the process through Amazon and others, that Meta's doing the same, was doing the same thing. They had a leaderboard, they had to take it down because people were like going bad shit crazy, um, manufacturing small tasks that like would never need AI usage, but just to get their numbers up. And then I mean you shared with me, I hadn't seen it in it until today, but this IKEA story around like how IKEA has launched AI in an incredibly intentional way, and how they've created, in fact, a new business and a new skill set amongst their employees that may have alternatively been um made redundant as a result of AI, and they've created a whole new business structure or business line that never would have existed before to the tune of like something above a billion dollar opportunity. It's really amazing.

SPEAKER_01 19:18

It's it's fascinating to me because again, we're at the beginning stages of these things, and I would imagine, I don't remember specifically when the internet came out or even social, but there's always gonna you people are gonna stumble. Yeah, people are gonna stumble uh initially on these things and they're gonna measure the wrong things. And you know, there's there's a couple elements, right? So, so I talk about the Cobra effect, but also like there's Goodhart's law, which is basically when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. So like I I and you know, you've worked in HR, you've probably run compensation and commission plans. Like there game, gaming is a thing. Like humans will game the system, and you're never gonna build something that is solid in the sense that no one, you're you no one's gonna be able to not game it at all. In fact, if you even say that, they're gonna try to game it. Um, but you try to at least think about it, you know, and then there's Campbell's law, which is like that, you know, when something becomes more quantitatively social as an indicator, it's uh and it's used for like this social decision making, like those leaderboards, it it would become more distorted, right? And actually corrupted process as opposed to make it better. So all of these things that that uh, you know, whether it's meta or it's Amazon, it's it's not thought through in the right way. And it's also like I would imagine, you know, HR people know that things get gamed all the time. So that would be a question. If HR was in the room, I don't know if they were or not. We I would have asked that. You would have asked that question. Like, hey, it like what are we trying to gather here? Now, with the IKEA story was interesting because what they did is they went in and said, All right, we're gonna, you know, we're gonna automate some of the customer support opportunities with AI, which is not uncommon. And uh uh intercom just released some stuff last night, which is interesting, called the operator, but um interesting stuff happening with that, you know, support and and AI very clearly, you know, outside of any mistakes Klarna made, um, is an opportunity for AI to be helpful to the consumer, get them answers quickly. We see the same thing in HR, but what they saw was um whenever you know they used AI to analyze all their customer calls and all the reach outs, and they saw this thing that popped up because of AI. So there's two, there's like there's a fourth AI fourth wall break here. AI and the way they did the analysis surfaced that a lot of customers were asking about interior design. And so what they said is like, hey, can we automate the valuable important customer request questions, but AI can do and can we shift the perspective of all our support people to be you know train them on an interior design and help them support and now that's a service they charge like you said it's over a billion dollar revenue draw for IKEA like so so these are the great stories like we you know you and I talked about this last time how we are constantly fed the negatives right the Klaanas the Amazons the metas right with their the IKEA stories what a wonderful story of they didn't reduce their staff at all they redeployed their staff and created a whole new billion dollar like you're we're not talking about like you know five bucks on a weekend at a lemonade stand like this is like a billion dollar company is like most most of us kind of would strive for that kind of revenue and they did it as a side project so just amazing like I love those stories and I I I I continue to highlight stories like that um with something like IKEA where they're like hey we used AI for this purpose but we didn't fire people we actually redeployed them and created new business and it goes to just one more thing. It goes to this I I I forget I I forget who said it but I I definitely copied it it was like if you're using AI to lay off people you've run out of ideas you you have no more creative ideas and and it's a it just it's a simple way of of really integrating AI. It's a thing it's gonna AI is going to reduce some headcount but it's also like how do we think about it of course on the alpha side well the it's an interesting take around like you've run out of ideas.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

I would counter counterweight that to say that I wonder how many started with ideas in the first place. I don't think they ran out. I think they never started with that I think there you can tell a lot there's so much you know from an HR lens I feel like we view things from so many different angles. I take this example and say on one lens I'm looking at it in terms of human impact and how I'm going to be able to not only retain but hire great talent in the future I think about that we think about that as an HR leader. Like not just what happens in the business impacts my ability or my team's ability to do their job to generate and retain talent. That is a huge thing when your first point of order is hey this new thing can let us ship people out the door and we'll replace it with AI and if it doesn't work we'll just hire new people like we don't really give a shit. Then there's this other lesson that is really at the at the base of this IKEA story which is the and they say it right here I'm reading it it says the lesson is not deploy AI get 1.4 billion dollars that's the value of this new like found product line for IKEA the lesson is like figure out what it frees your people to do. Figure out what is you know the question they said is like what can this do for us? What can AI make possible? And I don't think a lot of people we talk when I you know from a learning and development perspective we talk about like begin with the objective begin with the problem like what are the big rocks in your way I talk through that language but it's less even with my context about removing the bad like but more so I think what IKEA did is like let's look for look for the good look for the possibility look for the fact that there's data points. There's a great example um I was working with one of my clients here a commercial real estate client and we uh were building out some some agents around customer and leasing acquisition because what we realized is that most people when they're looking for this is for residential most people when they're looking for residential space are looking after 5 p.m or on the weekends and their staff was working nine to five and so there were all these calls that would come in and things that would happen. Well we opened the lines up for um for kind of a 24 hour concierge around you know gathering information this was earlier days in AI it wasn't super automated but it was you know taking the calls and triaging the conversation so that it felt like people were speaking more to that human right and after about two weeks you had to turn it off like it was like there were so many calls coming in it was like the vault they needed to re I re-establish or reevaluate the approach that was being taken because now the the volume was greater. And so like I think there are these like what's the problem we're trying to solve our customer is coming to us exactly here how can we change that dynamic um we have customers taking in data but we've never had the time to really aggregate that data in a way that tells us the story. And I think that going back to my last five years in-house when I was taking you know classes in data analysis and learning Tableau and trying to really understand at General Assembly trying to understand the data part of HR and I went to a workshop once with this gentleman. He I ended up hiring him later on he's a brilliant brilliant creative strategist. His name's Brian Mattimore and he ran um uh I can't remember the name of the company but he ran he and a co-founder ran this company that worked with like they were the team that would go in that Oreo would bring in when they were trying to concept new flavors and he just walked you through these really complex conversations and it was the first time I ever thought about leveraging communication through email correlating with HR systems, correlating with engagement data and how that tells a story in data. And I think that is one of the pieces that for a lot of HR leaders we spent our careers working in these different pockets and not necessarily always looking at we house the most valuable data in any company. And if we can just get the time to do some conceptual unlock in our heads around what's possible and have a tool that can help us do that in record time so that it doesn't feel like you're lifting the weight of the world when you got a thousand other fucking things to do. Like we are in this moment of real transformation and I'm so excited about that.

SPEAKER_01 28:17

And it's starting to now bleed so we we you know at least over the last couple of months or initially when openai released Chat GPT we we saw the information worker you know that space somehow in in the longer term and the short term the disruption and the the creative destruction and all that good stuff. Right now I I was I was watching a video I think it was yesterday or the day before about this humanoid robot in China right so you I don't know if you've seen the videos like whether it's racing or dancing or just all these sort of things and we always felt like that you know sort of the analog space or or or this physical world um was kind of safe from these things. I've even said it like you know nursing and other things and now you see these robotics and you're like you know like there was a meme um uh someone put on X I think it was where it was like you know the someone sweating I forget what that mean is but it's the person sweating and it was like all manufacturing workers and it you know was talking about the the robotic thing. So I mean these things are coming and that's why I continue to believe that HR is the right space to think about okay what is this humans and this this uh this world look like and continue yeah on that point quick question so I have a statistic in my uh an Oliver Foreman statistic in my deck Oliver Wyman Foreman forum it and it basically says that 90% of jobs are going to be impacted by 2032.

SPEAKER_00 29:50

First of all that's a 2024 stat. I think the timeframe of 2032 is probably ratcheted back a few years if not more but the question was what are those 10% of jobs that aren't going to be impacted and as you were talking about robotics and seeing so I've seen some of the same memes of just like 10 robots you know chasing after one another or speed racing and you're like yeah some of them are really funny like the ones that fall down but there are some that are really skilled running faster than I'm sure I ever could.

SPEAKER_01 30:24

And so and I've also seen I happen to have history in real estate and building and um design build and at one point I may have said well I don't imagine where like the construction worker is really replaced or impacted but then you see like you know robots spackling and putting up drywall and build outs and so just out of curiosity if you were asked that question what are the roles that you think really will be untouchable when it comes to technology yeah I mean I don't think any so it it the quote is interesting because 90% will be impacted the impact word is the one that I double I'd like to double click on right so I would argue my our roles have been you know we're talking on Zoom Zoom takes notes right there's AI like that's been impacted or even like there was no Zoom we used to do polycom which was like a really expensive video system to talk to people all over the world. So I think impacted is I I I would say even more so every job is going to be impacted by technology by robotics by AI every job 100% of them are they going to go away no if I'm thinking about you know HR people no we'll be here forever ha ha you can't get rid of us especially that person that wrote that article years ago why we hate HR I don't know where you are maybe got fired from Inc. magazine by an HR person. Man imagine imagine imagine being that HR person that read that article maybe and by the way I didn't disagree with it um by any means I think it's you know it's a wake up call for our profession but imagine like that person getting like being in that HR meeting and firing answer there's no answer I would have had that framed behind me. Also in a freelance uh yeah probably definitely in that you know that space better than I do but I I don't know like that's a great question um I don't think any role will be not be impacted the question is to what degree and and that's again why I think HR folks are the best equipped to think about that. We've been thinking about the evolution and and roles specific and thinking about the human elements of a role where technology is you know again years ago I talk about this a lot this evolution of technology it's like you know resumes were faxed at one point now I did a session with this group called Bottomless closet here in New York they're a charity that provides uh professional clothing to underserved women um looking for work and I taught them uh essentially an hour of how to use AI in their job searches and so you know and I was talking about the like there was a world where things were faxed and humans would look at them. Now you send in a resume a machine's looking at it first nine times out of 10 it's going to be a machine so you have to prepare that resume for the machine not for the person which means that your bento does you know bento box design or your little happy face and like that is irrelevant. It's all about making sure that you're putting down your skills and in the format and then eventually you will get to the human part of this and that's when you're gonna have to be good at storytelling.

SPEAKER_00 33:37

So I don't curiosity with that Anthony like think about how is there a world where we're able to become more creative in the way that like think about if if you're pulling aggregate tokenized data from a a text document, that's what the systems were reading. It was all structured data format and input sections and this is what is filling in the blank from my parsing tool. But I think about this in terms of employee engagement survey results and it's it just triggered me here when you were talking about resumes with the so employee engagement data typically is pulled from you know whatever native language the organization is in they require people to fill in a form and submit their a lot of Likert scale and there's one common question. But our capability of navigating everything from talk to text to image synthesis and sentiment within images and um facial expressions and and there's just such a more robust way to gather that same or better data, right? I'd argue that if I can complete an engagement survey in my native language, you're gonna get more authentic response from me because I don't have to go through the translation. I'd argue that if you're neurodiverse and you have a way that's going to help you facilitate your deep meaningful thoughts that aren't you typing out on a computer there's going to be more meaningful deep data there. And I'd say the same thing for resumes. Maybe there's a world where instead of simplify we have to get simpler because of the parsing tool we can actually get more creative because the functionality of the AI and the technology can navigate through that more meaningfully. And so you know I I came up in a day where you know the cre especially I was in more of a creative space. I was an advertising major back when I was in college and so I mean people were coming up with the most creative ways to get their resume right pizza boxes and um Dunkin donuts but but even like I had a guy I knew a guy who put together like it was almost like a sushi kit and each part of the sushi kit was like some illustration of something he did I mean he was there were such creative ways and the way you did it was you took that thing and you dropped it off at the company right now we're you know looking for jobs they could be thousands and thousands of miles away and so that so I just wonder what do you think about that possibility if you could imagine a future where we could get more creative versus less yeah I know I and that that's what I'm suggesting.

SPEAKER_01 36:20

Like even I think you could use the AI this is what I said to the the community of of women at bottomless closet was let's use AI to fundamentally change your your resume and be more creative. The output is going to be different right like it's not going to be designed for a human to look at it but you want to be able to take that job description take your resume and ask AI like can you formulate my experiences you can even do so many things. And again the limitation here is that you know limited technology exposure given that underserved community they also don't have the paid version of these things so you have to be very basic in terms of your capabilities but even then to get past ultimately you want to get whatever whatever it is to differentiate yourself. Like that's still a thing and you're right like I think on the on the flip side AI like there's a lot of stuff you can infer I I did something recently um as I'm as I was transitioning my role I went I have Claude uh because I have a a Claude instance through 155 and it's connected to all my different systems and I asked it I said can you put together a skills graph for me of all the things I've learned over the last year be based on and then inferred a bunch of different things and it was 90% accurate. Like when I looked at it I'm like oh yeah and by the way oh I forgot I did that thing. And so I got that experience and this idea of copywriting for go to market wouldn't have been on my radar but it's now a skill set that I have that I was like oh yeah actually I would do a lot of copywriting on on a lot of the marketing messages that we were having here because I was doing it from the operator perspective perspective. So I I think that could be reversed on the other side like you know when you see a resume or you get inputs from public data can you infer some things and I I was talking to I forget his name there was an individual on the West Coast and he has a technology that would sit on your Mac or your laptop and just watch you do some stuff and it would infer some things. I'm like ooh that's a little too far I don't want anything watching me but um but again I think there's definitely you know the question is like what is that version of the Bento box or the Dunkin' donuts in this AI space, especially in a in a virtual world where you know you don't have offices or some people have offices. So yeah I think that there's definitely opportunity to be more creative. And these tools allow you to be creative right they they have all these functionalities that you would have had to either be a designer no Photoshop or all these other technologies where now you can your own creativity can kind of be augmented to a degree okay I have a final question.

SPEAKER_00 39:08

This may be something we do every episode it may be something I forget about next time we have an episode so we'll throw it out there as a first annual wrap it up question. Do you imagine and then I'll answer it do you imagine that because there's a lot of conversation about people you know especially in Gen Alpha you know we want to go back to analog we want in person we want connection we want to get off the screens we spent four years of school you know literally trying to figure out virtual and it was a nightmare and we have this like deviation from technology so do you how do you envision that conversation or if that trend comes to fruition how do you envision that could it be like where there are companies that really do go we're anti-tech we're doing every we are people first and people only or what do you think yeah it's a it's a good question.

SPEAKER_01 40:13

I I never my answer is always gonna sit in the middle of anything right so I think you're gonna have if if I I try to think historically and and even further just kind of imagine a world that I I wasn't a part of electricity or TV when it first came out right I imagine there were a bunch of folks that were like we're you know like people are sitting in their houses watching too much TV go outside and play and there was a a pushback against it but then you know if you look around I would imagine that if I went into my neighbors' houses today nine out of 10 or 100% have a TV somewhere in their home right so I think multiples now right yeah right and multiple TVs I know I do I have those I mean that's the interesting thing like the future could be no TVs because it's all on laptops and and phones and that's where most of my kids do their viewing. Like I have TVs in their rooms and I don't think they even use that they use their their laptops or their iPads. So I I I think AI is too ubiquitous like the internet like electricity like plumbing to be something where you're it's not going to be part of your life I think it's gonna be even more so integrated uh and I don't think anyone any movement is gonna push that back I mean I would only say that maybe some we we saw the failure with government around social media i i've said this before I'm part of Moma uh uh or yeah uh mom's against media addiction not not the actual museum um I'm a member I'm against the museum against you stop showing art no no mothers against media media addiction and it's um you know it so I think there's gonna be a space where companies if they see a profit advantage they're gonna go either way if and we're seeing it today right like oh all AI we're gonna fire people stock gets bumped right there's gonna be a world where there'll be you know you're gonna want to be like hey we're people first and people are gonna buy into that and then there's gonna be folks in the middle. So I I don't again I don't I don't think it's something that people can truly ignore. I think you'll be you'll have people that just cut the cord but you see those people that cut the cord today it's all the cords right they don't necessarily have electricity or other things like I see AI I think it's just gonna be so ubiquitous like electricity and plumbing that it's just it's gonna be there. It's just gonna be there in your life.

SPEAKER_00 42:46

I think it also kind of it may speak to a generational gap. I I would say that there are a lot more people my my parents being two of them that you know they're in their early 80s but personally I've had a cell phone for since probably 1997 so let's just say a lot of years when I was negative three years old wink wink um my they never got on they never got on a cell phone bandwagon they they just never have they um and I I've seen what does that mean like they don't have cell phones they don't have cell phones oh wow how do they live and then the irony is I'm like and then I get pissed off if they don't pick up the phone when I call them I'm like where are you? You don't go right like why why would you not have and and so I think that they're obviously in the minority but I think there's always this group that's going to I talked with the um two different C uh CHROs in the past six months who were both certainly pre retirement age Late 50s. Um and both had decided to leave their organizations because they're like, I'm just not, I just don't want to have to redo everything. Like, I'm not, I don't want to do it. And I think there is there are definitely some people out there. I had a gentleman, very sweet gentleman, who was in my workshop this week. And at the end, I paused for a second and I was like, How are you doing? I said you were pretty quiet today. And and he said, Yeah, it's just uh almost too much. He said it's overall. And I I think that there are those companies that we are gonna find a blend of the you know what, I just I'm too people centric, my business is focused on people and I'm gonna draw a line in the sand. And now maybe that means they're not purchasing an outsource AI tool or seven, but they're only willing to use embedded that isn't pulling the responsibility off a human. And I don't know that that's a good thing, but I'm I just think that there is but they're still using though, right?

SPEAKER_01 45:05

It's their choice of different, and that's my point is the ubiquity of it. Like I think it's just gonna be part of and again, no, you're gonna have folks that just want to completely unplug and and they're gonna do that.

SPEAKER_00 45:18

You say it's ubiquitous, but it's you what I'm talking about is not the ingrained, embedded, you know, uh automation that happens to be a part of the HRS system I'm using. I think there are companies that are, I mean, still saying like one of the companies that I would that I'm talking to right now is like, okay, well, we have we have copilot, but we don't pay for the anything other than the chat functionality. And you have to, I have to ask myself, like and I I had a funny conversation with a with a client because they had their tech team on with me. And I said, Well, if I was in your in charge of your HR, I would say, here are the three tools I need. And before I could say, and here's the value prop of doing that, he literally said, and I'd tell you no. And I said, Oh, I said, Well, we're gonna, I said, I might lose this opportunity, but we're about to have a spicy conversation.

SPEAKER_01 46:15

Yeah, let's talk it up. Let's do it. Yeah, it's so interesting.

SPEAKER_00 46:19

I just think this, like, that's what I'm loving about these conversations so much, Anthony, is not just the like our perspective from an HR point of view on AI, but other topics that are happening that are in the world of business that you know we need to be talking about and contemplating so that perhaps prompt others that might not think about it are also thinking about it.

SPEAKER_01 46:42

Yeah, absolutely. And I and I think of the ubiquity, you know, to me it's a future ubiquity where, like, you know, your street lamps or your street lights are AI driven, and you know, instead of there's this one, by the way, local light, which is just like this one street and it's an intersecting street, and there's literally no reason for this light. There might have been some sort of like local represent representatives, like family on this street, and so they petitioned and they got a light there. It's useless, this light, and I hit it every freaking time, and there's no one there. There's no one there. I'm like, I'm stopping, and I'm there's no cars, and it's every time I just stop there, and I'm like, if and then in my own brain, I'm like, oh, I wish there was AI that would show, like, I'm sitting here, no one's sitting there. Like, don't turn red, like, because it's progress. So that's when I talk about ubiquity. Like, that's the ubiquity we're gonna see. It's gonna be just in it's gonna be there, and like electricity and plumbing, you're not gonna, you're not gonna notice it until it doesn't work, and then you're gonna freak out. So future cut future's coming.

SPEAKER_00 47:55

We see that today, right? Yeah, if you've ever if you've ever gone to use one of your tools, and I'll this will kind of be our wrap-up, but anytime you've gone to use a tool and it's not working, if you immediately go to the Reddit, that's a space where you will hear some fervor. Like, what the hell is going on with God? It's not working.

SPEAKER_01 48:16

Oh Reddit.

SPEAKER_00 48:17

That's why we can't adopt just one thing.

SPEAKER_01 48:19

We're gonna have to I have a love-hate relationship with Reddit. I really do.

SPEAKER_00 48:25

I do too. I can get like it is uh, it sometimes becomes my my better just mind-numbing scroll entity. Anyway, always good to chat with you, Anthony. I'm excited. We still have the next time we got to get back to to our un HR HR conference. Is that what we're gonna have?

SPEAKER_01 48:43

Yes, I think we're gonna we're we're definitely talking about that. But I do want to give just I know we're not doing shoutouts, but I do want to give Bob Leto a shout out. He posted on LinkedIn uh that he listened to his first episode of the breaking views, and he gave us kudos, and he's a subscriber. So Bob just giving you a shout out. No, you're a listener. So we're not gonna be able to do this when it's like gajillions of listeners, Bob. So love ya. Uh, we'll do it now when there's like, you know, five. Um, no, I'm just kidding. Uh, but good thanks, Bob, for the for the support.

SPEAKER_00 49:16

We're putting out a lot more we're going to put out, so we've got a lot to talk about for sure. And we'll keep doing it.

SPEAKER_01 49:23

Let's do it.