The article’s content results from my curiosity and inquiry into the topics of interest to me, and presumably to many others. It is offered to instigate dialogue and invite joint thinking and collaboration. It is not deemed right or “true” — I am sharing my point of view and recommendations on the way forward based on my experience.
The Nudges ChatGPT Brought
It’s unprecedented how much attention, reaction and emotion this launch triggered. I am one in the camp whose attitude toward these technological breakthroughs has been shaped by the ongoing public debate. It raised my awareness, and I am not keen to take a stand on whether it’s good or bad, whether it was right or not by the developer to make it publicly accessible. I take it as is, and without deeming to be an expert I acknowledge that something like this can happen, this will probably not be the one and only, and this solution or any other will have impacts and rippling effects on multiple areas of work and life. What the publicity and hype instilled in me is awareness, curiosity to learn more and consciousness. I acknowledge these changes happening, I view the spreading of these technologies as indicators that will fuel not only debate but public attention, collaboration and individual coping strategies. Bad things happen when the ones with good intentions, regardless of the specifics of their knowledge, stand passive.
So my take on this recent example of an “uncontrolled” launch: it’s been a pilot — with a presumably purposely chosen global scope. Once it happened, let’s take the best shot at providing feedback — it enables OpenAI to learn faster than in any other way, and integrate those learnings into improved versions while staying consistent with the ethics and values they deem drive their company. Indeed, I found the problems to overcome with generative AI fascinating. OpenAI made the weaknesses clear in their blog: 1) RL (reinforcement learning) training is limited as there’s no source of truth, 2) training the model to be cautious limits its capabilities (causes it to decline questions that it can answer correctly), 3) supervised training misleads the model (ideally the answer should depend on what the model knows, rather than what the human demonstrator knows). Source: VentureBeat.
I acknowledge the scale of this pilot and do not neglect the risks. I view this “event” from the angle that it is for everyone to test, to stretch and challenge, and for the real experts to provide constructive feedback. More importantly, to activate control mechanisms, initiate changes in policies, legislation or education; vote, appeal, and decide on what one may believe will make it right — this one and the next ones that will inevitably follow. At an individual level these tendencies will continue to build consciousness in how much we allow our lives to be taken up or be dependent on these technological solutions; or the recognition of the risks, exposures, limitations, and perhaps threats these may bring on us. I trust many others think the same way and we will step up, collectively as humanity, to be our best as we go through this evolution. For now, I will hang in there, in the positive camp and believe that technological development will be the only path to increase our collective capacity to reverse the damage caused so far, fix the fundamental problems of climate and inequality, and elevate prosperity.
Emerging Complementarity
The driver of success will be people and technology together. Could HR be a conduit in support of this acceleration? Yes. Where to focus? Think through what needs to happen at the “backend”!
There’s been progress made in different domains and those should be the leading measures for the People Function to consider. For example, fulfillment providers keep responding to the continuing commerce evolution; they are leaning into technology to rise to the challenge. Robotics and AI dominate industry discussion and the key business goals of adopting new technology surround increased productivity and operational efficiency. It shouldn’t be any different for the people function. Answering key and powerful questions will support the right decisions: How are the targets being achieved? Where are the pain points?
Indeed, all the functions in any organization should understand the primary drivers behind any technological adoption, stay closely connected and translate insights into implications. For HR to be a conduit and to lead from the front, everything it does should start with the purpose of the organization and a clear understanding of what the people and organizational aspects of the business strategy are. What’s required to enable the business to deliver on the technological enhancements they are investing in? What are the components in the people operations that will contribute to those? What are the IT/OT solutions offered in those areas? How do they impact the people and the way work gets done?
Network architecture and enablement of more traffic have been in the focus of developments. Nowadays the so-called adaptive virtual programmable network can identify a fault and self-heal, without the need for a technician. It can draw resources — compute, storage, bandwidth — from underutilized areas to ramp up other parts of the metaverse seeing increased activity and revert automatically when required. This is another call for clear thinking which should instigate every function in any organization to ask questions: What does this imply for the organization — for your people, structure, and processes?
Truly high-performing technology teams obsess over the developer experience, empower engineers to focus on work that matters, and prioritize diverse perspectives. While great technology organizations invest heavily in building developers’ skills, they know that skill-building is just one piece of the puzzle. Elevating the entire EX, including DX, is imperative to creating a truly well-rounded environment in which people can learn, grow and thrive. The analogy for some critical thinking is at our feet: What are the critical talent pools in your organization? Map them, understand their needs, and create the environment and experiences that serve them best!
