Roundup: Top-Down AI Mandates Backfire
Plus: Vibecoding leans into the enterprise, and why AI and schnauzers should talk.
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News & Notes
HR departments are adopting AI, but things go better when that adoption happens organically. While 82% of HR professionals use the technology at work, 41% say executive mandates have created more work for them and pulled them away from other priorities. At companies where AI use is not required, that number falls to 13%
In fact, only 6% of HR professionals say they are motivated to use AI because of leadership demands, according to research by General Assembly. However, they do see AI’s potential to enhance productivity, improve the quality of their work and reduce their workloads.
Just 30% of HR departments have received in-depth, job-specific training in AI. That leaves many in the field to learn AI on their own, which produces mixed results in terms of confidence and effectiveness. Outside of job-specific training, 18% learned AI’s concepts but not real applications, 12% received generic training that wasn’t useful in HR and 26% received no training at all.
Most in-demand by HR professionals: learning how to use AI for workforce planning (47%), designing training materials (46%) and writing employee communications (42%).
Vibecoding Leans into the Enterprise
Most of the talk around vibecoding has focused on the ability it might give laypeople to build their own software applications. But more AI-based tools are being used in software development now, bringing the idea into the corporate world.
This, says The Wall Street Journal, marks a change in app development. AI assistants and editors are now able to create something of a framework for an application based on plain-language instructions provided by a human developer. Currently, AI is creating more than 20% of the code generated by brand-name tech companies like Google and Microsoft.
For software developers, vibe-coding solutions become essentially members of the development team, tech executives say. At Vanguard, tech teams partner with product and design staff as they work on projects, eliminating required handoffs and speeding the design of new webpages by 40%. Prototyping, which once took two weeks, now needs 20 minutes.
Still vibecoding doesn’t take English and turn it into solutions. “The role of the engineer is still very, very critical to make sure that the boundaries and conditions are set up front for what the vibe coding is going to produce,” said Lauren Wilkinson, Vanguard’s divisional CIO for financial adviser services. “It doesn’t excuse the engineer from needing to understand what’s going on behind the scenes.”
A few caveats: Vibe coding doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Executives say the approach must work inside a company’s existing code and be able to connect to its core development systems.
In addition, some executives fear what might happen if non-developers like marketing-staff members or salespeople are left to their own devices (no pun). “I’ve got CIOs who are afraid of an app being constructed by an HR person that’s bypassing the security reviews and is going to end up with a privacy issue,” said one.
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London School of Economics Wants AI to Tell You What the Dog Really Thinks
My schnauzer Winston rarely comes when I call him, and Maisy the cat acts as if she doesn’t hear me at all. Fortunately, the London School of Economics is ready to help. In September, the school will open the Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience, which the Guardian calls “the first scientific institution dedicated to empirically investigate the consciousness of animals.” Among its initial projects: exploring how AI can help people and their pets talk.
“We like our pets to display human characteristics and with the advent of AI, the ways in which your pet will be able to speak to you is going to be taken to a whole new level,” said institution Director Jonathan Birch.
This isn’t something an AI can simply chase after. “AI often generates made-up responses that please the user rather than being anchored in objective reality,” said Birch. “This could be a disaster if applied to pets’ welfare.”
Among other things, the LSE’s research will examine how AI could mangle human-animal communications, and what should be done to prevent that from happening. Birch says frameworks governing responsible, ethical use of AI in relation to animals is “urgently” needed. “At the moment, there’s a total lack of regulation in this sphere.”
Other News
Deel added a number of AI-based features to its summer release, which the company said was “focused on simplifying day-to-day operations for global teams.” New features anticipate customer needs, reduce back-and-forth and help organizations plan how and where to scale. At the same time, it continues to reduce operational friction through self-serve payroll features, built-in financial tools and clearer workflows. Among other things, the update introduced on-demand pay features, hiring-market intelligence and the ability to model organizational growth and hiring based on budget, region, or business objectives.
ActivTrak launched a specialized consulting service designed to help enterprises build more accurate and reliable AI models using the company’s workforce intelligence. The service will work on data audit and AI readiness assessments, governance strategies, use cases and architecture planning.
Podcast: Payscale's Sara Hillenmeyer on Data Science and AI, Here and Now
I talk with Sara Hillenmeyer, the senior director of data science at Payscale. It seems like we’re all talking AI all the time, but Sara’s one of the people who turns the technology into actual, useful applications. In a lot of ways, that makes her unique. So, we’re going to talk about AI in the context of what’s real. How could AI realistically impact jobs? How can developers keep up with the changes that are coming fast and furious? And what’s more stressful – keeping up with the market, or the technology? Listen here.
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