IBM has launched a unit designed for human resources to better find talent and recruit using artificial intelligence. The company is wrapping its latest HR effort, dubbed IBM Talent & Transformation, which includes select Watson services. According to IBM, its suite of AI tools can help HR become a growth engine to enable digital transformation. AI can be used to revamp workflow, employee engagement, recruitment and retention while providing a more diverse workforce. Also: Red Hat: It's in IBM's best interest to keep us as'Switzerland' Big Blue's Talent & Transformation suite includes a Watson Talent Suite that rolls up behavioral science, AI and psychology and applies it to HR.

IBM has launched a unit designed for human resources to better find talent and recruit using artificial intelligence. The company's HR effort, dubbed IBM Talent & Transformation, includes select Watson AI-based services that can help HR become a growth engine to enable digital transformation. AI can be used to revamp workflow, employee engagement, recruitment and retention while providing a more diverse workforce, the company says. The Watson Talent Suite rolls up behavioral science, AI, and psychology and applies it to HR. Components include Watson Career Coach, a virtual coach that provides advice for career paths, and Watson Candidate Assistant, which looks through the history of job seekers and matches them with openings. These services were developed for IBM's internal HR team and the company claims it drove $107 billion in benefits in 2017 with better employee satisfaction.

When Jason Nichols joined GE Global Research in 2011, soon after completing postdoctoral work in organic chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, he anticipated a long career in chemical research. But after four years creating materials and systems to treat industrial wastewater, Nichols moved to the company's machine-learning lab. This year he began working with augmented reality. Part chemist, part data scientist, Nichols is now exactly the type of hybrid employee crucial to the future of a company working to inject artificial intelligence into its machines and industrial processes. Fifteen years ago, GE's machine operators and technicians monitored its aircraft engines, locomotives, and gas turbines by listening to their clanks and whirs and checking their gauges.