HR got a bad infection from AI
I thought that with my last story about the Stoned AI Philosopher, I topped the chart of AI stories from a parallel universe. I was wrong.
The AI outbreak has gotten ahold of and badly infected another group of people. The HR people.
The CEO of Lattice announced on LinkedIn that, ‘Today, Lattice made history to become the first company to lead in the responsible employment of AI “digital workers” by creating a digital employee record to govern them with transparency and accountability.’
You know that something is wrong when you read this in the ‘About’ section on the company’s LinkedIn page: ‘[Lattice is] The People Platform to manage people and their performance. Because when people thrive, business thrives.’
Yes, the Platform for the People by the (HR) People. You know how special this is when they use the #becausepeople hashtag.
For Lattice, it is not enough to just build the People Platform to manage people. The company has to differentiate itself in the market of other People Platforms and be the first in something.
And they did it. On July 9th, 2024 — put it in your calendars, because it will be as significant as the first man on the moon — the CEO of Lattice announced in the blog post, 'Today, Lattice Makes History and Leads the Way in Responsible Employment of AI.'
If that title doesn't create one big question mark in your head, I have a few gems from that post for you to illuminate the significance of the statement.
‘We’re seeing AI personas like Devin the engineer, Harvey the lawyer, Einstein the service agent, and Piper the sales agent enter the workforce and become our colleagues.’
We are not seeing AI personas! Otherwise, you should also add Thomas the Tank Engine.
The marketing lunatics at Cognition AI described their software, ‘Devin,’ as ‘a tireless, skilled teammate', but that doesn’t make it human, nor my colleague.
Did the description of 'the world’s first AI software engineer' mislead the Lattice team into thinking it is a real person?
‘When we asked our Resources for Humans community of more than 22,000 HR leaders representing over 3 million employees about their plan for digital workers, over half told us they were already planning to hire them.’
Is this a euphemism for buying software? Are the Lattice people saying that half of the 22,000 HR leaders are so ‘busy’ in their daily activities that they have the time to even think about this?
In that blog, the CEO of Lattice also posed hard-hitting questions.
‘What does it mean to hire a digital worker? How are they onboarded? How are they measured? What does this mean for my job?’
But the highlight was when the CEO asked, 'Will they share our values, or is that anthropomorphism of AI?'
She answered her own question.
'And if you didn’t know what anthropomorphism means, that makes two of us.'
Not sure if the CEO really understood the meaning of the word anthropomorphism, because in the following paragraph you can read, 'We will be the first to give digital workers official employee records in Lattice.'
This was followed with an image of an org chart where Piper AI is a sales development representative that has its own entry, including a female picture.
Of course, one can't just talk about AI without mentioning the technology marvel powering the People Platform. Here it is: 'No retrofits, no refactors, just real AI at the core.'
Then, the whole blog post ends with, 'Together, we can lead our customers, industry, and society into the future.'
Your honour, I rest my case.
After reading this, you might get the feeling that I am not in favour of HR and its function within an organization.
In my opinion, HR should be the most important department in the whole company. Why?
The success of any company depends on having the best team money can buy.
Working with a CEO, managing change, understanding how to build an A+ team that can, year after year, produce nothing but success, and truly helping people to be the best is THE secret sauce that should be the obsession of any HR team.
This will provide you with the real competitive edge.
If you are an HR leader, you can choose which recurrent pattern is for you: developing a new policy to onboard AI or helping the company succeed.
You can't do both.