Although opinion is divided on whether the coronavirus crisis will hasten a move towards more automation, interested employers have a number of issues and challenges to address concerning artificial intelligence (AI) if they are to avoid possibly damaging their company's reputation. On the one hand, says Jen Rodvold, head of digital ethics and tech for good at digital transformation consultancy Sopra Steria, there has already been serious acceleration in the adoption of all kinds of digital technology to enable businesses to operate during lockdown. "As the economic picture sharpens, there'll be a continued focus on cost-cutting measures and AI could well be part of that," she says. Brian Kropp, chief of human resources research at market research company Gartner, on the other hand, believes that while the crisis will not necessarily alter pre-COVID-19 adoption rates, it will change the reasons behind adoption. "Until this year, investments were largely driven by the tight labour market and the number of qualified employees available," he says.

Companies using artificial intelligence (AI) across their business units should consider creating a C-suite position to oversee how AI is used and guard against the risk of making bad decisions based on biased algorithms, experts say. Only a few companies, like Levi Strauss & Co, have established a chief artificial intelligence officer (CAIO) position, and fewer have created a C-level position dedicated solely to AI ethics. Brian Kropp, chief of research in the HR practice at Gartner, said chief technology officers and chief information officers will struggle with handling AI-related decisions and ethical dilemmas. "CTOs and CIOs are going to be thinking about the role through the lens of how they can make the technology work," Kropp said. However, "artificial intelligence is not a question of how you get the technology to work; it's a question of how do you think through the implications of the technology?"

The debate over artificial intelligence's role in HR--from recruiting to workforce planning to performance--has become moot: There's no doubt that AI has arrived and is expanding rapidly in the HR space. But, not so fast, some experts say. While AI represents a fantastic opportunity to drive HR success (and by extension, bottom-line growth), ethical issues tied to AI represent a potential dark side of these technologies. The good news is, chief HR and people officers can successfully navigate this rapidly changing, growing trend by steering clear of those ethical speed bumps in the first place. They must take a smart, steady, planned approach to circumvent negative outcomes.

Only 9% of chief human resources officers (CHROs) said their organization is prepared for the future of work, according to a Gartner press release. SEE: Special report: IT Jobs in 2020: A leader's guide (free PDF) (TechRepublic) Technology contributes significantly to the function of HR professionals, with 82% of HR leaders predicting their roles will be unrecognizable in 10 years, according to Sage's Changing the Face of HR report. HR roles are changing because technology is altering the way they work, particularly with artificial intelligence (AI), according to the release. With the integration of tech, HR professionals must also consider how they will use AI tools, how their employees will use the tools, and how this changes interactions in the workplace, said Brian Kropp, distinguished vice president of research at Gartner. "[The changes in HR] all comes down to a multitude of factors around the changing nature of work itself," added Paul Burrin, vice president of Sage People.

IBM wants to keep its employees from quitting. And it's using artificial intelligence to do it. In a recent CNBC interview, CEO Ginni Rometty said that thanks to AI, the tech and consulting giant can now predict with 95% accuracy which employees are likely to leave in the next six months. The "proactive retention" tool -- which IBM uses internally but is also selling to clients -- analyzes thousands of pieces of data and then nudges managers toward which employees may be on their way out, telling them to "do something now so it never enters their mind," Rometty said. IBM's efforts to use AI to learn which employees might quit is one of the more high-profile recent examples of the way data science, "deep learning" and "predictive analytics" are increasingly infiltrating the traditionally low-tech human-resources department, arming personnel chiefs with more rigorous tools and hard data around the tricky art of managing people.

This was one of the main messages of the keynote address delivered by Gartner group vice president Dr Brian Kropp (pictured) at the global research and advisory firm's ReimagineHR conference at Westminster's Park Plaza hotel yesterday. With nine in 10 organisations investing in AI or having plans to do so, Kropp called on delegates to not just focus on the challenge posed by AI creating or eliminating jobs but to look at how AI can create access to jobs. Kropp gave the example of a café in Japan, which has created jobs for people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a disease that causes the death of neurons controlling voluntary muscles. ALS sufferers can control a robot from their bed, who then commutes to work on their behalf and serves customers. "Think about that for a second," Kropp told delegates.

As technology, including robots, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other forces change the nature of work, employees will need new skills to adapt to shifting roles. Research firm Gartner predicts that employees who regularly update their skill sets and invest in new training will be more valued than those with experience or tenure. But it's not going to be easy. The World Economic Forum's "Future of Jobs 2018" report estimates that, by 2022, more than half (54%) of employees will require significant skills updating or retraining. More than one-third (35%) will need about six months to get up to speed, while nearly one in five will require a year or more of additional training.

Is workplace surveillance about improving productivity or simply a way to control staff and weed out poor performers? Courtney Hagen Ford, 34, left her job working as a bank teller because she found the surveillance she was under was "dehumanising". Her employer logged her keystrokes and used software to monitor how many of the customers she helped went on to take out loans and fee-paying accounts. "The sales pressure was relentless," she recalls. She decided selling fast food would be better, but ironically, left the bank to do a doctorate in surveillance technology.

Artificial intelligence has been hailed as a great equalizer in employee hiring -- technology that has the potential to hide demographics, match candidates based on skills rather than resumes, and get around the biases of hiring managers who gravitate toward people who look or act like them. Companies that offer such tools have been touting those benefits, and more employers are turning to algorithms to help diversify their workforce. But a report this week by Reuters about an experimental project at Amazon to use algorithms and artificial intelligence to recruit workers was a reminder that while such high-tech isn't always a cure-all. The Reuters report said that the tool -- an experiment that was scrapped by the start of last year -- was trained to evaluate applicants by observing patterns in resumes submitted over 10 years, most of which came from men. The system effectively "taught itself that male candidates were preferable," according to Reuters, including penalizing resumes that included the word "women's" or graduates from two all-women's colleges.

Michael Kropp typically spends his days behind the wheel of a big, freight-hauling truck, navigating the high-speed curves, offramps, and stop-and-go traffic typical of European highways. On a recent trip to Rotterdam, he was able to relax and take in the sights. Kropp was one of about 30 drivers participating in a test of a new automated driving technology called platooning, which links trucks via Wi-Fi, GPS, sensors, and cameras so they can travel semiautonomously behind one another. The leading rig dictates speed and direction, while the rest automatically steer, accelerate, and brake in a closely spaced convoy. "It was a little eerie to hand over part of my role as driver," says Kropp, a 55-year-old test driver for Daimler who piloted the second vehicle in the caravan.