4 Reasons HR Should Lean into the AI Revolution

Artificial intelligence is changing how we work — but the deepest transformations are not just technical. They’re cultural, human, and organizational. That’s why I believe HR sits at the very center of the AI revolution.

At The AI+HI Project 2025 in San Francisco, we surfaced four interconnected truths that make the case for why HR should lean into the adoption of AI inside organizations — not just respond to it.

1. Responsible AI Is Migrating to HR

If AI is going to touch internal employees, it’s going to touch HR first.

From hiring and training to performance evaluation and workforce planning, HR systems are the primary interface between AI tools and people. That means HR will increasingly become the steward of internal responsible AI practices — ensuring fairness, transparency, explainability, and agency in how AI is used at work.

While CEOs establish the organizational social contract with employees, HR manages the mechanisms that implement and illustrate this contract throughout the employee life cycle. As AI increasingly permeates the tools used across recruitment, onboarding, L&D, performance evaluation, and talent management, employees will have fundamental questions about its implementation. Is AI being used to evaluate them transparently? Is the process fair? Do they have the right to opt out?

Some companies have already implemented systems where employees can choose to opt out of AI-based evaluation, electing instead to be assessed only by humans. I believe that employees expect and deserve transparency about how technology is being used in their workplace experience. Top talent will ultimately vote with their feet, choosing employers who implement AI ethically and responsibly.

We saw this play out publicly when Shopify’s CEO said employees must prove that AI can’t perform a particular task before headcount decisions are made. While this appears to be a straightforward leadership directive, it’s HR that truly operationalizes it behind the scenes. The CEO may set the mandate requiring teams to maximize AI usage before requesting additional headcount, but it’s HR that must implement all the underlying systems to make this possible.

HR handles the workforce planning to determine if headcount is justified. HR develops and delivers the L&D programs that train employees to use AI effectively. HR designs and manages the performance management tools that assess whether employees have genuinely attempted to leverage AI.

While managers enforce the day-to-day directive, HR builds the entire infrastructure of training, evaluation, and process institutionalization that makes the CEO’s mandate actually functional across the organization. Responsible AI isn’t a future trend — it’s already showing up in performance reviews, promotion criteria, and talent planning. HR has no choice but to own it.

Whether prepared or not, HR departments will find themselves answering critical questions, and I believe that the migration of employee-focused responsible AI expertise to HR isn’t optional — it’s inevitable.

2. AI Can Unlock Causal Credibility for HR

Historically, HR has struggled to “prove” the value of its work because so much of it is tacit, experiential, or anecdotal. But recent advances in causal inference — highlighted by Stanford University’s Erik Brynjolfsson during his fireside chat with SHRM President and Chief Executive Officer Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., SHRM-SCP — have been a game changer.

Two Nobel Prizes in 2023 were awarded for breakthroughs in identifying causality from messy, unstructured data. That means we’re entering an era where we can say: This intervention caused that outcome — not just correlated with it. This capability has the power to transform HR from a storytelling function into a hard data function with demonstrable results.

For HR departments struggling with organizational respect, this represents a path to enhanced credibility. Let’s acknowledge the reality: Many HR teams operate in environments where their strategic value is questioned. AI-powered causality analysis offers HR professionals the opportunity to validate their experiential insights or challenge assumptions that lack empirical support.

If HR adopts AI and causal tools, it can finally quantify what we believe: that culture, leadership, learning, and well-being drive performance, or stop saying it. That’s not just validation — it’s power.

3. The HR Function Itself Is Transforming

The employee doesn’t care whether something is HR, L&D, inclusion and diversity, or organizational development. They care about their experience.

Christopher J. Fernandez of Microsoft Christopher J. Fernandez of MicrosoftChristopher J. Fernandez of Microsoftand others at The AI+HI Project 2025 echoed a growing sentiment: The silos within HR are breaking down. Employees want seamless, integrated support, and that means the HR function of the future is a generalist layer empowered by specialized AI tools.

This shift means HR professionals will rely more on AI to do the specialized “under-the-hood” work — data crunching, learning recommendations, feedback synthesis — while they focus on high-touch, human capabilities such as coaching, change navigation, and trust-building.

The technological framework creates a holistic perspective on employee experience that transcends traditional departmental boundaries. HR teams will likely evolve into tech-enabled generalists, utilizing sophisticated AI tools that handle specialized functions while preserving the essential human connections that define great workplace experiences.

4. The Experts Are Already Inside the Organization — It Might as Well Be You

As Brynjolfsson reminded us, just because AI boosts productivity doesn’t mean we need fewer people. It means we need people who know how to use AI in context — and that context is unique to every organization.

The gap between organizations pulling ahead with AI and those lagging is widening. But the secret to success isn’t hiring more AI experts — it’s upskilling the people already there.

No one understands your culture, workflows, and people better than you. AI is not plug-and-play. It needs adaptation, judgment, and institutional wisdom to create real ROI. If you become the person who can bridge AI and your organization’s reality, you become indispensable.

As organizations move beyond the initial “What is AI?” phase, it’s becoming clear that superficial implementations — what some call “ChatGPT wrappers” — quickly lose value. Successful AI implementation requires deep knowledge of organizational culture, context, and customer relationships. The most valuable expertise combines AI literacy with organizational knowledge — a combination that already exists within companies.

Creating a Strategic Implementation Framework

To successfully navigate this transformation, HR departments should develop a structured implementation approach that balances technological capabilities with human-centered design. A collaborative framework that involves key stakeholders across the organization will help ensure AI integration aligns with both company values and employee needs.

Key elements of this framework should include:

• Establishing clear ethical guidelines for AI use in workforce processes.
• Developing transparent communication channels about AI implementation.
• Creating continuous learning pathways to build AI literacy across teams.
• Implementing feedback mechanisms to measure and improve AI effectiveness.
• Designing adaptive processes that evolve with technological capabilities.

Bottom Line: AI Won’t Transform HR Unless HR Decides to Transform with AI

But if we do — if we embrace our new role as ethical stewards, causal analysts, experience architects, and internal AI translators — we don’t just survive the transformation. We lead it.

The question isn’t whether AI will transform HR, but whether HR professionals will proactively shape that transformation or simply respond to it. Those who embrace these four compelling reasons to lead with AI will find themselves at the forefront of a reimagined, more influential HR function — one that combines technological capability with deeply deep human understanding to create truly transformative workplace experiences.