I have been at Lucidworks for about eight years. My background is in software engineering with an emphasis on analytics and distributed computing. I was brought in to Lucidworks by the board to lead the company through a transition from an open source support and services company to delivering proprietary search and AI solutions. We have a team of around 250 employees that are distributed across the country and the world. Back in 2005, pre-Lucidworks, I was a part of the founding team at Splunk.

The volume of this data requires automation to effectively digest and evaluate the information.

Over the past two decades, technology has transformed our world and our workplaces. COVID-19 has only accelerated the implementation of technological change and innovation by employers. One significant development in the workplace is the introduction of artificial intelligence ("AI"), which includes technologies such as automated decision making ("ADM") and machine learning ("ML"). In light of these capabilities, it is wise for employers to stay abreast of the latest developments and opportunities – being an early adopter of new technology can often mean saved costs and a competitive advantage. Nonetheless, it is equally important for employers to be aware of the ethical and legal risks associated with these technologies, as a relatively recent and rapidly evolving phenomenon.

AI has expanded its grip on our lives throughout the past few years. Even as a global pandemic, COVID-19 has forced us to work from our homes, but still, AI-driven innovations continued to pour out from the smartest minds everywhere. AI and ML are continuing to make waves in the HR tech industry. Both the technologies are working together to eliminate bias and making work easier to manage through the automation of simple tasks and more. Here in this blog, I am sharing a few predictions for the specific AI techniques, tooling, apps, and platforms that will come to the forefront in the year to come.

In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, businesses of all shapes and sizes have had to quickly adapt to remote work. Many experts predict that this year's rapid transition to remote work constitutes a point of no return. In many ways, the growth of remote work parallels the growth of artificial intelligence (AI). It wasn't so long ago that AI was confined to the realm of science fiction. Now, like remote work, AI promises to transform nearly every industry and every company.

Organizations today are responding to a new normal, with many knowledge workers now unexpectedly working remotely full time. The nature of this transition has sparked a major question: How do we best measure productivity in knowledge workers, and given those impacts, what is the future of mobile workforces? Winning CHROs and CIOs have already enabled mobile workforces through collaborative technologies. They now must determine how best to measure effectiveness and, ultimately, if these workers will return to the office. By investing in these areas and taking a more data-driven and analytics-based approach to monitoring productivity, innovation and performance, CHROs can position their companies to both recover and thrive as the world returns to work.

Last week, mayors representing over 750 million people, across the world's leading cities, published a statement of principles, warning against a return to "business as usual" as the world recovers from COVID-19. This advice is as relevant for enterprises as it is for society as a whole. COVID-19 has exposed a lack of resilience, severely impacting operational continuity. Indeed, Eurozone business activity fell to an all-time low in April. With the pandemic impacting every part of society, there are human considerations to every decision we make. While clearly the most important factor, public health professionals are already doing a great job of covering this issue.

Self-quarantined employees are forcing organizations to allow access to critical data remotely. Coronavirus is presenting organizations with a unique opportunity to adopt modern security protocols and enable an efficient remote workforce. Fear of Coronavirus infections has resulted in organizations ruling out large meetings. Healthy individuals are in home-quarantine for weeks at a time, even though they are not necessarily thought to carry the virus. This large number of individuals complying with house arrest is putting a strain on many organizations that have not shifted their working styles to accommodate large-scale remote workers.