Transcript
Mark:
Welcome to PeopleTech, the podcast of the HCM Technology Report. I’m Mark Feffer, my guest today is Duri Chitayat the CTO of Safeguard Global. You’d probably expect the CTO would be thinking a lot about AI today and Duri is, a lot. So we’re going to talk about how companies keep up with the speed of change, hiring for AI which isn’t easy and designing HR strategies to use AI. All of it on this edition of PeopleTech. Hey, Duri good to see you. So we’re early on in the era of let’s call it generalized AI use, where AI seems to be moving into all of these different areas of business technology and specifically HR technology. What’s your view of the state of AI in HR right now?
Duri:
Well, the reality is it’s been in our lives for a long time but it’s been less obvious to everybody. So it’s been what’s powering our email filters, it’s been helping us with our keyword searches, it’s been helping us find jobs. It’s been helping us find candidates, it’s been helping filter. I mean, for a long time I’ve been saying to folks don’t write your resume for the hiring manager write it for the bot that is filtering. Right? But those things have been kind of behind the scenes. What’s happened now is AI has had a moment where it’s caught the imagination of the entire public, people are now realizing that it’s accessible to build and to use for your own purposes in every function. So you don’t have to be Google to use AI, you can be anybody, any company. The accessibility of AI and particularly generative AI and NLP which is what ChatGPT is based on is taking the whole industry, the whole world really by storm. It’s lit a fire and the amount of innovation that it sparked is meaning that it’s only ramping up, this is just the beginning.
Mark:
You just mentioned that we’ve had AI around for a long time, it’s just been in the background. But now that it’s coming up to the surface, is that in and of itself having any kind of impact on the way executives, businesses and even users feel about it? How they might use it?
Duri:
Yes. Whether you’re an executive or a copywriter or you’re a bus driver, any job you’re doing today is going to be disrupted in the next one, two, three years because of new applications of AI. Just to give you an example of the pace of change, we wrote a product called ChatSG which was Safeguard’s generative AI application and we rewrote it three times before launching it. Since we’ve launched it we’ve now found new technology coming out around the space that would’ve allowed us to do a few of the things that we did easier, faster, cheaper. Right? So the speed of change is radical. It’s affecting software engineers, it’s affecting how we’re writing copy, it’s affecting how we’re creating images and that’s just my profession. Our HR experts are also using AI like ChatSG to perform their jobs differently. Our finance folk are doing the same and on and on and on, so every job is getting disrupted. Now, one of the things that people that have a responsibility of creating the environments that’s the conditions of success for their organizations like executives.
They don’t just need to know that they need to make an investment, they need to know how the technology works so that they can create the right strategy. I think what this is doing is it’s meaning that executives need to become a little bit more conversant about the technology itself. It also means that there’s a barrier to entry for some executives as well that people are learning that they need to get educated because there is a bit of a curve there.
Mark:
Could you tell me a little bit more about ChatSG? I mean, you launched it fairly recently and I wondered could you tell me a little bit more about what it does and what’s the reaction then?
Duri:
So ChatSG is based upon ChatGPTs natural language processing capability. What that means is that it can understand text, it can understand not just the words in the text but the content, what you’re trying to get at. We wired it up with our knowledge base which gives us 15 years of expertise based on the 170 countries that we support and it’s constantly being upgraded and maintained by those HR experts that are based in country around the world. What that means is that it’s not just understanding your questions, it’s pairing it with real world knowledge that you can trust. So it’s not just Google, it’s not just the internet that’s been brought back into the system. It is the advice of HR and payroll experts around the world. The reaction to that has been great, both by our local payroll experts and so our own internal experts are using this and also our clients.
Mark:
I heard that you said once, and other people’s have said that now’s the time to hire workers who are skilled in AI and I’m wondering given the state of AI’s evolution. Do the people with the right skills that are needed today really exist?
Duri:
So the people that we’re going to need in this new world are people that are conversant with the emerging AI stack and the reality is that, that stack has only existed for a very short period of time and it’s continuing to change. So the answer to your question is no, they don’t exist but they’re emerging. The people that you need are people that are curious, they are problem solvers, they are excited about technology and conversant in it. It’s not software engineering, it’s not data science, it’s somewhere in between combined with the business knowledge to be able to apply it, to glue things together. Now, there’s varying levels of experience that you could use in this. For instance, if you’re building true software applications using the AI stack you probably need some people that are very, very technical. People that are former software engineers now becoming AI experts or somewhere in more of the data engineering and data science side moving into that space somewhere on either end. But also I think that emerging field of the AI specialist, the AI stack applies to every other role as well.
If you’re a copywriter today, you think you’re going to be doing your job the same way tomorrow? No way. But if you can combine your knowledge and skills with the new tools and techniques, you can still compete in the emerging marketplace. That’s basically what you need to look for is those people that are willing and able to jump in and tackle it. I believe that it’s going to be the number one role in demand over the next few years and finding that kind of talent is going to be difficult because you’re going to have everybody else looking for it and it’s still emerging.
Mark:
Yeah. I kind of wonder about the business organizations and how they’re approaching AI. Do you think companies should jump into it right now in integrating AI into their workflows or even their products or services? Or are we still at a point where people should keep an eye on things and make more of a strategic decision? I know that a lot of people have been jumping in lately but it doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the smart thing to do in all cases.
Duri:
Whether or not you should think about what you’re building today as kind of a steady and a strong foundation for what you will need three years from now. The answer to that is probably not, the example of ChatSG we’ve rebuilt it three times before even releasing it. It just gives you an idea of how fast the technology is moving and if we were to be investing with the idea that whatever software that we build is bulletproof for the future. It’s probably wrong, it’s a bad investment. However, you should still be investing but just with a different mindset. You should be investing in the ecosystem to change and you should be investing in your people, understanding, getting used to your whole system, kind of getting used to operating in new ways. I recently remarked that strategists were used to asking us in the past, “Do you want to be a company that’s more like the fox or the hedgehog?” The fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing, and I think actually that’s the wrong metaphor.
Maybe it’s a good one for the past but for the future it’s less about what you know and it’s more about what you can learn. An organization that is constantly learning and being able to integrate new tools will be the organization that wins. So in other words don’t be the fox, don’t be the hedgehog, be more human.
Mark:
Yeah. It makes me think about for the companies that aren’t quite ready to really use AI in a specific product way or something like that. Whether there’s value to going through the process of implementing some AI applications just so they know their way around as business evolves and the time comes where they do need it. Do you have thoughts about that?
Duri:
Absolutely. It goes back to my previous point about learning your investments in small experiments to get started with AI and that’s one of the best things about the new technology, is that it’s very easy to get started. It’d be really hard to build your own foundation model but not everybody needs to build their own foundation model, very few do. Instead, what you’re doing is you’re gluing together different products and services with your business knowledge and your business processes and by doing that you get to understand the new capabilities. You integrate it with your thinking and then evolve. Get into a good pattern of trying things, trying things, replacing them and we’ll see that the organization of the future it will be made up of the kinds of people that can do that, that can evolve that way. So yeah, becoming routinized in that way, building an organization, designing an HR strategy that curates for problem solving, for creativity, for innovation, for trial and error, for risk taking.
That’s essential and so using small experiments as ways to start to build that habit is a good idea for any company.
Mark:
A question just occurred to me about ChatSG. Were you thinking about capabilities like the ones it offers before the current AI rush or was it the AI rush that sort of inspired you to do this?
Duri:
So when we spoke last year one of the things I said to you, I think I said two things that were related to this. First I said, “Any company really focusing on HR really needs to be thinking about data.” Because data is your special sauce that you bring to the table. Things that you know about your customers, things that you know about your own employees and how you do your business. That is what you can put into these foundation models and make them fine-tuned for your use case and supercharge AI. So that’s one key thing that we were already thinking about, liberating that data, making it available. We had applied a process called data mesh which is basically finding ways to make data more sensible, more productized and available throughout the ecosystem. Then another thing that we thought that was very fundamental to our AI strategy was investing in innovation and product-led strategies. So these are things that helped us have the people available to be able to capture this opportunity when it came available.
Mark:
Duri, thanks so much. It’s always great to talk with you, I hope you’ll come back again. But it’s really interesting talking to you and I thank you.
Duri:
All right. Thanks a lot Mark, have a good one.
Mark:
My guest today has been Duri Chitayat the CTO of Safeguard Global and this has been PeopleTech, the podcast of the HCM Technology Report. We’re a publication of RecruitingDaily, we’re also a part of Evergreen Podcasts. To see all of their programs visit www.evergreenpodcast.com and to keep up with HR technology visit the HCM Technology Report every day. We’re the most trusted source of news in the HR tech industry, find us at www.hcmtechnologyreport.com. I’m Mark Feffer.
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