HR Has a Crucial Role in Shaping the AI Revolution at Work

Artificial intelligence is primed to massively disrupt the way we work, but it also presents great opportunity for growth. HR will play a key role in this pivotal moment, driving AI adaptation across organizations, empowering workers, and accelerating productivity.

SHRM President and Chief Executive Officer Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., SHRM-SCP, kicked off day two of SHRM’s The AI+HI Project 2025 in San Francisco by interviewing Erik Brynjolfsson, professor and director of the Digital Economy Lab, Institute for Human-Centered AI at Stanford University.

Brynjolfsson presented on a new study on the effectiveness of generative AI (GenAI) in the workplace. He and his team introduced a large language model and GenAI-based conversational assistant to a call center of a financial services company. 

“We found that access to AI assistance increases the productivity of agents by 15% on average, as measured by the number of customer issues they are able to resolve per hour,” Brynjolfsson said. “The gains accrued disproportionately to less experienced and lower-skill workers, indicating that the AI model disseminates the best practices of more able workers and helps newer workers get the biggest lift in productivity. The change happened quickly.” 

In addition, the AI assistant improved customer sentiment and increased employee retention. 

“Our findings show that access to generative AI suggestions can increase the productivity of individual workers and improve their experience of work,” Brynjolfsson said.

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One important question is whether organizations will respond to increased productivity by hiring more people or by using AI to replace people.

Addressing the fear of widespread labor displacement, Brynjolfsson said that technology has always destroyed and created jobs simultaneously. “It’s a churn,” he explained. 

But HR can help with how well workers readapt. “There will be a big disruption,” he said. “Lots of new jobs as well, and a lot will depend on how flexible we are as a society and as organizations and as individuals to readapt. The same old ways of doing things at a minimum will change, and some work tasks will disappear.”

Brynjolfsson added that technology is advancing much faster than ever before, affecting much broader sets of skills and tasks, and employers are not necessarily keeping up. 

“In that gap is where the challenges lie,” he said. “The answer is not trying to slow down the technology but to speed up our ability to adapt to it.”  

Brynjolfsson related a common misconception that bothers him: “Just because you are more productive does not mean you need less headcount,” he said.  

Another trend playing out right now is that about 10% of organizations are using AI intelligently and are pulling away from the rest. “The gap is growing larger, calling for a management mindset revolution,” he said.

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Have a Plan

So what can HR departments do? Brynjolfsson recommended they begin by analyzing the job tasks at their organizations. “Identify where an AI tool can help with specific tasks,” he said. “Create a road map laying out the opportunities. Identify the payoff. Focus on those tasks where there is a predictable payoff.”  

He added that just requiring AI use without a plan is a waste of time. 

The emergence of AI and the potential to work less and produce more should be seen as good news, Brynjolfsson said: “Shame on us if we turn it into a bad thing. AI won’t do this to us; it’s what we are going to do with these tools. We can use them to create massive inequality, or we can use them to create widely shared prosperity.”