Artificial intelligence is reshaping the global workplace, and businesses are integrating AI tools into their workflows at a rapid pace. The technology is already a mainstay in hiring, performance management, and workplace productivity.
But someone needs to oversee AI at work. A hybrid function straddling traditional HR and AI strategy, may we introduce you to the chief human and AI resources officer (CHAIRO), responsible for guiding companies through AI adoption while addressing ethical, human-AI collaboration, and performance and training considerations. It’s a role some AI experts in HR say could possibly emerge in the coming years.
“AI is progressing faster than anybody ever expected, and new concepts, new ideas, are emerging,” said Beena Ammanath, who leads Deloitte’s global AI institute. “It’s growing in leaps and bounds compared to what we’ve seen in the past with other technologies.”
CAIO. We’ve explored the elevation of the chief AI officer, a role many companies have already elected to create to ID a point person on AI.
To Ammanath, the chief AI officer is akin to a chief digital officer, shepherding the AI transformation as many CDOs did with digitization years ago. But beyond that transformation: Who manages the AI as it matures?
“With AI agents coming into the forefront, I think it’s even going to be more relevant than ever before, and it may not be called that mouthful [CHAIRO], but you’re going to need HR to think about AI as a type of workforce,” she said.
The collective consciousness has yet to agree on what to call this category. Employee engagement platform Lattice was widely panned last summer for unveiling a system for onboarding, training, goal setting, and managing performance for “digital workers”—a move CEO Sarah Franklin told HR Brew at the time was a “big misunderstanding,” wherein the public inferred the HR platform was likening the technology to humans.
“That is absolutely…the exact opposite intent of the innovation…This was a simple thing, anticipating a need to—at the beginning of AI entering the workforce—help put in some governance and guidelines,” Franklin said.
But whatever this set of AI-powered productivity tools is called, its work will still require oversight. Its performance will need measuring, underlying models will need training, and eventually to be retrained or retired. Sounds a lot like HR, no?
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Governance. There are governance, ethical, and compliance considerations to deploying the technology as well.
“It’s not just about bias or the newer problems that [have] come up, but it’s also about complying to existing laws, depending on their role,” Ammanath said, suggesting, as an example, that AI agents might need some sort of sexual harassment training.
That’s why ADP’s VP and managing counsel, Helena Almeida, thinks that an HR exec with an understanding of AI should be involved in the oversight of AI deployment.
“Workplace AI initiatives require the perspectives…skills and experience of multiple disciplines in a company, but there are a number that fall squarely within an HR executive's area of expertise,” she said.
For Almeida, there’s a whole host of other employee-related concerns that must go into the decision making.
“It’s really important to look at these initiatives as a combination of the ethical decisions about how you want your workforce treated, making sure that AI use fits within your company’s organizational goals for your workforce. A lot of the technology also will impact employees’ lives, so HR is often in the best place to monitor employees' reaction,” she said.
Almeida told HR Brew that ADP’s chief data officer, Amin Venjara, is even sometimes referred to as the organization’s CHAIRO.
“When people talk about a new technology, people often see IT departments taking the lead,” she said. “When companies are thinking about bringing AI into their workplaces—and we’re talking about tools that interact with employees and interact with companies, candidates, and applicants—we shouldn’t diminish the role of a chief human resource officer or HR executives in making those decisions and actually having oversight.”
AI deployments impact employee engagement and sentiment, training is needed, and the AI tool used must be compliant with relevant laws and regulations. These considerations fall squarely in the wheelhouse of people pros.
“I don’t look at artificial intelligence as replacing human workers,” she said. “It is more about integrating AI support into the human workforce, and the HR department is absolutely best positioned to be thinking about that holistically.”