?? My Future of Work Key Takeaways from VentureBeat Transform ??

As an HR leader, I loved hearing CTOs, CIOs, VPs of AI, and AI startup CEOs at last week's VentureBeat Transform conference connect their quests to scale implementation of GenAI with their needs to upskill employees. I also loved hosting an AI in EdTech meetup at the conference and participating in a lunchtime roundtable discussion on Bridging the AI Talent Gap: Strategies for Enterprise Growth -- two gatherings that introduced me to a wide array of innovators and provided opportunities to share my insights to help them with their journeys.

?? Here are my key takeaways from the conference on the Future of Work in an AI-first era:

1. Enhance Employees' Trust in AI

May Habib , CEO & co-founder of Writer , said enterprise-grade AI deployment is hard due to low accuracy, low efficiency & low end-user adoption; the most engaged Copilot users leverage it once a week to write an email, which won’t transform your enterprise.?She demoed how Writer’s graph-based RAG shows the thought process with citations in the answers generated, which takes the onus off the end user to figure out how GenAI came up with the answer.

?? Enhance employees trust in AI, whether that's by upskilling them in how the tech works and what it's good for or by choosing more transparent tools that increase their confidence in the outputs. Better yet, do both!

2. Foster Creativity, Efficiency, and Inclusion using AI

Yasmeen Ahmad, managing director of strategy & outbound product management for data, analytics & AI at Google Cloud, said Google is seeing outcomes of GenAI initiatives in three big areas: 1) creativity, 2) efficiency and automation, and 3) inclusion (by changing products and services so people can engage in new ways).

Renen Hallak , CEO and cofounder of VAST Data , cast a vision for making data and AI as easy to use as it is today for kids to use iPhones.

Nhung Ho, VP of AI at Intuit, said the company is trying to use AI to be the great equalizer helping small-business owners -- even businesses of one employee -- know what they don’t know. To do that, the #1 thing Intuit focused on was scale to put GenAI in the hands of every employee because great ideas come from anywhere.

?? By creating products or services that are easier and more intuitive to use because they are powered by AI, we can reduce the learning curve in so many areas -- whether that's for our employees or our customers. We can empower all employees to collaborate and innovate on a wider range of responsibilities using AI systems, which can transform our approach to talent management.

3. Expand AI Talent Pools and Career Journeys

The Women in AI panel -- featuring Jessica Gilmartin , Chief Revenue Officer at Calendly ; Kari Ann Briski , vice president of AI models, software, and services at 英伟达 ; Aparna Sinha , SVP and head of AI Product at Capital One ; Ya Xu , VP of engineering and head of data & AI at LinkedIn ; and Noelle R. , founder and Chief AI Officer at AI Leadership Institute -- emphasized you don’t need a classical data-science background to succeed in AI roles. You can take what you love about AI and bring it into the area in which you work, such as marketing.

Hallak predicted that just like the start of the Internet created the new field of cybersecurity, AI will create new fields that are hard to solve.

Colette Stallbaumer , WorkLab cofounder and Copilot GM at 微软 , sees knowledge work changing from people being merely doers to being supervisors of their own work and of AI-generated output. That’s why it’s important to prioritize employee training. Yet only 39% of the heaviest Copilot users received AI training.

Arjun Dugal , EVP and Divisional CIO of Card Technology at Capital One , highlighted the challenges of scaling GenAI initiatives from pilots -- which are easy to spin up -- to large-scale implementations with 100 million customers in a way that adds value -- which is hard. To win the long game, Dugal advised focusing on making your tech nimble, your data trusted, and your talent upskilled. But where will you get data-science talent at scale? Capital One uses a 2-prong strategy: 1) attracting external expertise (for example, last year the company brought in the head of AI from Alexa) and 2) nurturing internal talent pools.

Debasis Dutta , SVP and head of Codeacademy Enterprise Solutions at Skillsoft , said in order for AI to drive productivity gains across your organization, you need to start with understanding what your workforce needs to know, feel, and do when it comes to AI in order to motivate them to engage in upskilling.

All of this underscores the importance of experimenting with GenAI now. Briski caught everyone's attention with Nvidia CEO and founder Jensen Huang's train analogy: If you are standing on a train platform, you won’t be able to jump onto a train that is speeding by; so you need to get on the train now by starting to use GenAI, even in small use cases.

?? Encourage employees and leaders to think outside of the box in what an "AI career" could be. Train everyone in your organization in the foundations of GenAI so they can figure out how to leverage the technology to transform their daily work. This hinges upon creating a psychologically safe environment that encourages experimentation and rewards lessons learned.

4. Redesign Workflows When Implementing AI

Daniel Yang, MD , VP of AI and Emerging Technologies at Kaiser Permanente , provided compelling examples of GenAI removing complexity from healthcare so clinicians can invest more time in the more meaningful work of talking with their patients -- instead of patients silently staring at their clinicians' backs during human-only analysis of the patients' data. Technology augments humans' judgment, rather than replaces it. When you reimagine how to get work done using AI, you also need to redesign workflows. For example, whom should you notify of the technology's analysis -- doctors or nurses?

?? By leveraging AI to automate routine tasks and streamline complex processes, organizations in any industry can enhance their employee experiences and customer interactions. Be sure you are thinking through how you can redesign part or all of the workflow to be more strategic, rather than simply plugging in AI to speed up one part of the process while leaving the rest of the process untouched.

I'm looking forward to continuing figuring out the future of work, inspired by the ongoing contributions of the speakers mentioned above and of the fellow innovative attendees whom I met at the conference -- including Austin Yu, Paul Baier, John Sviokla, Maryam Rezapoor, Rebecca Hinds, PhD, Rajat Paharia, Joseph Yeh ??????, Jenny Kay Pollock, Robert Hsiung, Sirisha Kaipa, Madhu Vohra, Jedidah K (She/Her), Grant Hartwig, Keith Curry, Nina Chhabra, June Chan Verma, Shengchen Lin, Karen Wu, Suzanne Welker Jurgens, Dima Syrotkin ????, Michelle Yee, Conor Jensen -- and PwC Silicon Valley colleagues Anke Hao and Monica Nayar! Thank you Matt Marshall, Dean Takahashi, Michael Nu?ez , and the rest of the VentureBeat team for creating such a thought-provoking forum for us!

#FutureOfWork #GenerativeAI #CHRO #VBTransform