Canadian HR Reporter - Sample Issue

STRATEGIC CAPABILITY NETWORK'S PANEL of thought leaders brings decades of experience from the senior ranks of Canada's business community. eir commentary puts HR management issues into context and looks at the practical implications of proposals and policies. CANADIAN HR REPORTER November 27, 2017 EXECUTIVE SERIES 11 www.scnetwork.ca Join our professional community of Canadian HR & Organizational Leaders: • Connecting @ monthly events • Collaborating with peers • Challenging conventional thinking The Power of Human Capital CULTIVATING LEADERSHIP FOR 35 YEARS Great Leaders GROW www.scnetwork.ca PANELLISTS: • Jan G. van der Hoop, president of Fit First Technologies in Toronto • Paul Pittman, founder and president of the Human Well in Toronto • Tracey White, owner and managing director at Strategy in Action in Toronto • Edmond Mellina, co-founding president of Orchango Jan van der Hoop Tracey White Paul Pittman Edmond Mellina Get ready: e robots are coming Four SCNetwork members discuss Cindy Gordon's presentation on AI Edmond Mellina: I first came across the amazing power of artifi - cial intelligence (AI) in the late '80s, when I learned to code in Prolog. It's the AI programming language that now powers IBM Watson's ability to process natural language. ose were the very early years of AI. I was on the last stretch of my engineering degree in Marseille, France. Alain Colmerauer, the in- ventor of Prolog, was a professor at a nearby university. e two lo- cal institutions had a partnership. So, we had the opportunity to play with the fascinating language he had developed. I remember being in total awe of the power that a few lines of code could unleash. Today, we are clearly on the cusp of an AI revolution. e conver- gence of big data, machine learn- ing and massive computing power is making AI more and more ubiq- uitous. Our speakers provided nu- merous examples — from HBO's Silicon Valley's silly "No Hotdogs" app to IBM's Watson Talent. But for me, the most thought- provoking aspects of the discus- sion were the couple of either-or scenarios Cindy Gordon painted for us. In each story, we could see a future where advancements in AI could lead to either "a perfect world or a perfect storm." As I discovered through my fi rst lines of code in Prolog, AI is indeed hugely powerful. It can ei- ther augment human intelligence or create nightmare scenarios. At this stage, humans are still con- trolling the AI revolution. I hope we still have a decade or so to make the right choices. Paul Pittman: AI used to be science fi ction and recent years have witnessed its evolution to science fact, and now it hovers at the edge of realizable. However, notwithstanding the exciting fu- ture laid out before us by Gordon, I fear there is a signifi cant diff er- ence between what is possible and what will become practical in the near term. We are often reminded that smartphones have been around for less than 10 years as evidence that technological advancement occurs quickly. But we forget that dumb phones were around for 10 years before that and stu- pid phones 100 years before that. With all of their micro technology and "smartness," they are still only doing things we could have done ourselves, given time, some ad- ditional equipment and a library. Boomers are fascinated by technology; millennials use it as a tool but are equally less willing to allow it to make choices for them. Until we are comfortable with ma- chines making choices for us and decisions about those choices, AI will never reach its full potential. Technology that we rely on today essentially accelerates te- dious repetitive tasks or performs digitally activities that we carried out manually or would have had to had we had the inclination; for example, the daily summary of bodily vital signs maintained by my Fitbit. It's mostly unnecessary data that uses valuable resources to collect it. I can't think of many applica- tions that we allow technology to propose other than mechanical "suggestions" for us. For example, I need to get to Waterloo by 4 p.m. and the fastest route would be X. If I so choose, I can elect to over- ride this and travel via route Y or even walk instead of travelling by taxi. Human nature is fi ckle. Bi- nary decision-making, no matter how fl exible, minimizes human- ness and, in turn, minimizes the risk of taking the entrepreneurial out of business. Jan van der Hoop: I've been married 30 years and it's hard to admit that Amazon knows more about my wife's preferences (at least as it relates to online shop- ping — for now) than I do. Is it a "sad" truth though? Or does it make her life better by saving her time or suggesting complementary items she hadn't considered? I guess it's all in the eye of the beholder. And, as Paul suggests, as elab- orate as those algorithms are, like mapping software, it's all an extension of the old "If X, then Y." If you're here and you want to get there, and we know traf- fi c's backed up along this route, then suggest this one. Or, if she's bought this and searched using this, this and this term, then sug- gest that. Elaborate, powerful and clever? Yes. Life-improving but hardly life-changing. And, as we learned, this is AI in its infancy. For me, Gordon highlighted four huge and largely unspoken implications to organizations: Ethics: Boundaries need to be baked into the design from the very beginning, not after the fact: the lines that will not be crossed, and the "lesser evil" compromises that are programmed in to the soft- ware. My guess is that in many in- stances, this is given short shrift in the rush to get a product to market. Judicious management and good stewardship: Using AI in an uninformed way and without a clear plan is tantamount to put- ting a loaded revolver in the hands of a two-year-old. Organizations must be prepared, informed and intentional in the use of AI. Data integrity and security are critical: e reality is that most or- ganizations do not have very clean databases. e risk is obvious. Focus outside, not inside: We tend to be so obsessed about the internal workings of our orga- nizations, but the world is mov- ing around us. Opportunities for growth occur outside the organiza- tion. Good AI should help identify those opportunities that we quite simply don't have the eyes to see. e big question underpinning the entire debate is how will we take the best of both our essential humanity and the power of AI, and blend them for the greater good? As perverse as it sounds, our humanity may serve to insulate us from many of the risks of bad technology. We are, after all, fun- damentally irrational creatures and I think it'll be a long time before artifi cial intelligence can predict our irrationality. But we place ourselves at serious risk when our intellectual laziness allows us to delegate our responsi- bility for perception and decision- making. One example relates to how successfully agents of a for- eign state, seeking to disrupt and divide, infl uenced the outcome of a recent election. ey did so simply by spreading misinformation that created an emotional reaction that infl amed pre-existing biases and triggers in a segment of voters. And that was just a bunch of Russian hackers running a misin- formation machine. Child's play. ey bought ads on Facebook, for crying out loud. Imagine a world where AI has the power to shape our most fundamental perceptions and beliefs, where we respond refl exively to what we see and hear, but the things we see and hear are a false construct. I'm not sure we are far away from that world. e debate over AI should be a wake-up call. Governments and organizations must be active and on guard. I believe the skeptical and tough-minded will survive. Tracey White: I agree, Jan. We are already living in a world in which algorithms are making de- cisions that impact our lives in real ways. As Gordon warned, we need to take note now because competi- tive pressure will drive automation. We won't have the luxury of time to adjust and consider the ethical impacts of new technologies. Futurist Stefan Hyttfors has said that as fast as we think tech- nological change is now, it will never again be this slow. What does all this mean for HR? As a keeper of signifi cant or- ganizational data, HR is a nexus. Early technology automated the paper-based activities of existing corporate functions, but it rein- forced organizational silos. e current generation of tech- nology is breaking down silos, al- lowing bodies of data to be inte- grated so business decisions can be made from intersecting infor- mation fl ows. e next generation of technol- ogy, as we saw from the Apple and IBM speakers, will allow for com- puter-driven decision-making. Artifi cial intelligence and ma- chine learning will eliminate a lot of administrative activity and, in so doing, they will generate enor- mous cost savings. e potential for corporate bottom lines will be irresistible. is will mean sig- nifi cant structural change within organizations, including for HR. HR has struggled for over a de- cade to operationalize the David e current generation of technology is breaking down silos, allowing bodies of data to be integrated so decisions can be made from intersecting information fl ows. HR > pg. 12

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