The job market is changing in unpredictable ways. Human Resources, a profession often considered optional and filled with bureaucracy, has been a target for AI disruption. Yet when you look at the numbers, HR job postings are growing faster than overall US employment. (details here.) What’s happening and why this strange trend? As I discuss in this podcast, we’re now seeing the Superworker effect at scale: HR teams are shifting from administrative to strategic work, now driving direct financial value. And as HR teams learn to use AI, they’re now playing a huge role in organizational change, job redesign, and AI enablement. I share all the data and give you the perspective. For more plan to read our new book Superpowered, coming out this Fall. Additional Information Despite Massive AI Investment, Jobs In HR Are Booming Why AI Harm To Jobs and Humanity are Vastly Over-Hyped Get Galileo, The AI...

Listen Now

I’ve been an HR analyst and consultant for 30 years and there’s always a story that HR is “useless” or “a waste of time” or “going away.” And this will always continue, because most managers really do believe they are already experts at this domain. And at this month’s SHRM conference, according to Bloomberg, the CEO stated that “the field of HR faces extinction,” pushing HR professionals to adapt. Well as our HR 2030 AI research shows, HR is definitely changing … but actually becoming even more important. And as our new book Superpowered points out, (coming in October), HR jobs are also growing in demand. (New podcast episode explains this in detail.) Here’s the real data. If you go through Lightcast job posting data and look at all HR-related jobs, including recruiters, training teams, HR tech, and other HR professionals, the postings data looks like this. What you see...

Read More

As AI experts leave Google and new startups emerge, engineers are consumed with Superintelligence: building models that can reason, learn, and capture “all the world’s knowledge.” While model evolution is important, I believe we’re going in a different direction: toward vertical, domain and company specific AI that exponentially builds proprietary (not general) knowledge. In this podcast, I explain why the next wave of enterprise value will come from these specialized, domain-specific systems built on proprietary knowledge and experience. And this will take place within your company, as well as from experts like us. Drawing on our new research with Galileo and client work, I’m convinced that AI systems will become powerful advisors in HR, finance, supply chain, engineering, and other business functions… and you will have your own personal and company specific AI, forcing Frontier vendors to move to consumer. Frontier labs are not going away: they serve consumer and...

Listen Now

The word “intelligence” is a loaded word. Here’s what Elon Musk said to the Economist last week: “I think AI may exceed the sum of human intelligence in around five years. There really won’t be anything that AI can’t do better than humans, apart from being human, perhaps.” Well “being human” is what intelligence is all about. So I read up on how Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, James, and many of the eastern philosophers define the term. And what you find is that deep thinkers define intelligence far beyond the ability to recall and use facts, but focus heavily on judgement, problem solving, and dealing with uncertainties in life. So after thinking about this for a few years, I decided to posit my ideas, and also reflect on the intelligence of trees, as described in “The Hidden Life of Trees.” What I came up with is four parts to this puzzling...

Listen Now

The word of the decade is “Agency” – giving each of us the power, tools, and opportunity to do what we want with our life, jobs, and careers. This new buzzword, now one of the top memes in politics, has been coming for many years. In this podcast I discuss the 50+ year of history in the “decoupling” of workers from companies, and how our newfound AI-powered Agency brings benefits and risks. As you’ll hear, young people see Agency and freedom as a foundational part of their long life ahead, while companies struggle with “how much freedom” to offer. And for frontline employers, the ability to attract and retain our highly “agent” workers is now a source of competitive advantage. This podcast begins the discussion, and we’ll be talking much more about this as we launch our new Business of Frontline research and upcoming book Superpowered this Fall. I welcome...

Listen Now

Wages play a huge role in frontline work. The 70%+ of employees who work in these roles often jump from job to job, employer to employer, just to make a few more dollars per hour. Here’s the dynamic: a typical restaurant, retail, service, or transportation job requires no deep pre-requisite skill (Type 1 and Type 2 in our frontline worker model below), so each applicant who applies is likely applying to 40-50 other jobs. If you get back to them fast enough it’s largely about pay. Employers receive hundreds of applicants, then try to screen them, interview, and background check quickly (otherwise store managers are bogged down) and speedily offer them a job. The job candidate accepts a job on Friday and starts on Monday. Suddenly on Monday they don’t show up because on Saturday they found a position that paid $5 an hour more in a peer or competitor....

Read More