Artificial intelligence and chatbots – curse or blessing? An article from Marcel Brader, Managing Partner
Chatbots and artificial intelligence AI are also on everyone’s lips in HR. Is it revolutionizing HR? Does AI simplify HR processes? Does it replace HR employees depending on the area of application?
Let’s take the recruiting process as an example. Chatbots can screen CVs, conduct automated dialogs with applicants and give personalized feedback to applicants. This sounds positively like professionalization and increased efficiency. But does it replace the human being? Will a very interesting candidate, an exciting personality with an unconventional career path, fall through the cracks? And how do applicants react to “impersonal communication” in the application process?
Of course, there is nothing wrong with productivity improvements in HR as well, but should AI take over more and more work steps, should automation advance more and more, so that Human Resources becomes less and less “human”?
I don’t think this will happen. Empathy, personal experience and appropriate judgment will always remain the be-all and end-all, the foundation of human resources.
On a higher level, the impact of chatbots on language and communication is also immense. Chatbots can creatively generate entire texts, blogs and dialogues.
People may call me “old-school,” but I’m rather critical of this. With chatbots and AI in general, it’s a very fine line between support and added value on the one hand, and stunting and greatly simplifying communication on the other. It is already apparent today that interpersonal dialog is declining, and chatbots are reducing it further.
There is a danger that we will rely on predetermined answers and no longer express our own thoughts and ideas. Supervised thinking is on the rise and our own creative, initiative and investigative actions are being lost. Individuality as well as judgment is withering away like a plant without water and intellectual uniformity is advancing.
Despite all these negative developments, I am nevertheless convinced that in human resources the main areas of personnel planning, management, development and communication and 1:1 support topics remain absolutely central. These factors cannot be replaced by any AI developments and cannot be delegated to any chatbot.
We interim managers from HR Unlimited will also continue to play an important role when it comes to filling gaps, stepping in quickly and with focus, and supporting and relieving your company and your HR department in all operational and strategic HR areas.
No artificial intelligence or chatbot will take over these tasks. We do! Give us a call!
PS: This text was written without any help from a chatbot.
Marcel Brader, Managing Partner
HR Unlimited AG, www.hr-unlimited.ch, is an owner-managed company specializing in interim management, based in Glattpark Opfikon, Switzerland, and has been offering corresponding assignments at home and abroad for more than 21 years. HR Unlimited AG is Andreas Biel, Tanja Biel, Balz Schlittler, Marcel Brader, Christian Hobi, Martin Hegglin, Christoph Müller, Dr. Thomas Pimpl, Daniel R. Brunner, Andreas Gnepf, Monika Wälty and a large, qualified pool of Interim Managers we know personally.