Ranjan Wadhwa, HR Head at Fidelity Investments moderated the session which had eminent industry experts - Prativa Mohapatra (IBM), Rajesh Dhuddu (Quatrro), Dev Khare (Lightspeed India Partners Advisors) and Ishan Gupta (Udacity) discussing about what role  will cognification play in human capital with the evolution of ‘horsepower to mind power’.

What comes to your mind when you hear the term Artificial Intelligence?

The fear of the unknown arriving to destroy mankind has perhaps engulfed majority of human population. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a vastly used term but actually understood by few. In fact, the journey of AI has started long back. It isn’t as new as we talk about it. The shape of AI over time has kept on changing. To put it simply, cognification can be viewed similarly to electrification that had taken place during the industrial revolution. We are currently in the dawn of another industrial revolution. As it advances in due course of time, we all will take everything we’ve previously electrified and then cognify it. And after 40-50 years, some of us will recall “How did we ever live without AI?”

Moving ahead with this context in mind, there are some correlations drawn on what all things can be cognified in respect to the human capital management for future of work. Let’s have quick bytes:

Transactional processes

There are some areas which can be cognified easily and you will be pleasantly surprised to know how IBM Watson had evolved to process 200 million documents per second. As per Prativa Mohapatra, Vice President - Cognitive Solutions at IBM, there are huge volumes of data available for training manuals. This is where congnification can work fantastically. Prativa further goes on to state that there’s a great need to cognify mundane processes citing the example of visa processing done for employees in every organization. This can be a great step towards proving the benefit of AI to the masses at the workplace.

Talent acquisition strategy 

Ranjan Wadhwa states that cognification has helped them to make better predictions on HR strategies and systems. The entire campus strategy was changed based on research by data sciences. The process of TA can be made simple and effective if we use it in the blended form of technology and human experience.

Performance management

There are a good number of industry leaders who would want to see cognification in the area of performance management. This is likely to bring in a lot of transparency and meritocracy in the system which we all have been craving for a good number of years. In fact, Rajesh Dhuddu - Senior Vice President Quatrro quotes, “The pinnacle of AI can be accomplished if it produces a balanced bell curve”.

Learning and development

Learning platforms will be an area where cognition will work amazingly well, states Dev Khare, the Managing Director at Lightspeed India Partners Advisors. Employees don’t want to choose but want the organization to know by themselves on what they need. A cognified learning system will be a part of the future of work.

Every consumer interface company wants to have a chat integrated mechanism that feels like a chatbot.

“There’s more marketing happening around it rather than actual neural networking being applied to it," says Ishan Gupta - MD of Udacity, India.

The global demand pattern of AI training is changing. The biggest demand in IT is for machine learning trainers. Every start up is an AI startup nowadays. AI indeed will play a big role in future. However, the catch is to re-architect the balance. AI will certainly not replace those jobs where people have learned to use AI as a tool. So, it’s time for a wakeup call to get prepared for the disruption instead of stereotyping AI as a tool of destruction.