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More than 78% of companies are using AI at work. Much of its use has centered on hiring and recruiting. But AIs influence is quickly seeping into other parts of doing business. For HR teams that are strapped for resources and with burgeoning demands on their time, AI is significantly reducing the burden of administrative work: More than 90% are already using AI to screen résumés, using the tech to communicate with or evaluate applicants. But now employers are experimenting with plenty of other use cases for AI tools. Fast Company reached out to a number of tech companies to find out how they are deploying AI beyond hiring and recruiting. As one human resources leader put it, many of them have started to view AI as a copilot for HR operations. In this Premium story, readers will learn: How AI is becoming the new HR portal Why AI can enhance the much-dreaded performance review process Practical, on-the-ground, achievable methods to integrate AI into your company’s workflow in a way workers actually want Internal HR chatbots At professional services firm Genpact, an AI assistant known as HRpedia serves as the first port of call for all HR-related questions. Nearly 40,000 employees have used itmore than half of whom have done so more than once. HRpedia offers advice specific to each person, based on their role and where they are located, and helps field inquiries about a range of employee concerns. It makes employees lives easier by running transactions like checking for leave balances, verifying employment details, or raising a help desk ticket seamlessly, as well as providing coaching for real-life situations, says Piyush Mehta, the companys chief human resources officer (CHRO). Genpact has also devised a tool that compiles metrics on attrition, demographics, and compensation, enabling managers to quickly pull relevant data as needed. Other companies have developed similar chatbots that provide quick responses to commonand recurringquestions about paid time off and other benefits. Open enrollment is a large stressor for many employees, says Heidi Barnett, who oversees talent acquisition at Isolved, a workforce software management firm. Our research found that 72% of employees say its overwhelming, and over half would consider leaving after a poor experience. Now that the company has introduced an AI-powered recommendation engine, Isolved employees can get personalized guidance based on their health needs and financial status. At data solutions company Safe Software, workers now have access to a custom benefits GPT, which has been trained on internal documents that outline benefits and company policies. Not only has this tool minimized the time our team used to spend answering questions, but it [has] enabled our staff to develop a greater understanding of our benefits, says CHRO Bonnie Alexander. Data suggests that more people do want to use generative AI, like LLM chatbots, at work. According to McKinsey data from earlier this year, more than 40% of U.S. workers want greater access to generative AI tools. Performance management and employee engagement The performance management process can be a source of frustration for employees and managers alike. While HR leaders insist human judgment is critical to those discussions, they also believe AI can address some of the pitfalls of traditional reviews, which are often time-consuming and subjectiveand may fail to capture the full picture of an employees performance. Isolved, for example, is trying to bolster performance reviews with additional data that the company claims can help mitigate bias. Weve integrated AI into our performance management process, where it supplements traditional feedback with data-driven insights, Barnett says. That could mean incorporating the results of employee engagement surveys or metrics that capture how individual teams are making progress on company-wide goals. When data storage company Pure Storage conducts performance reviews, employees and managers can use the companys internal AI tools to get a detailed view of all their work, rather than simply focusing on their most recent achievements. That takes the form of a written summary of their work over the course of the calendar year, along with supporting documentation collected by the AI-powered platform Glean. Pure Storage is also investing in an AI coaching service to help managers pinpoint goals and areas of improvement for their direct reports. As employees feel increasingly detached from their work, many companies want to show they are invested in their well-being, which includes acting on feedback they receive through surveys and other mediums. A number of companies say AI has helped them effectively synthesize responses to employee engagement surveys. AI is becoming a critical tool to both consolidate thousands of different comments, while highlighting trends in ways that could not be done before, says Sonja Wilkerson, chief people officer at climate tech company Bloom Energy. For AI analytics platform AI Squared, using artificial intelligence in this way has enabled the AI integration company to detect patterns and figure out how to act on employee feedbackfor example, determining whether certain pain points or culture issues are more prevalent within a particular team. Career development and upskilling AI has already upended the education sector, for better and for worse. In the workplace, companies are leveraging it to expand learning and development opportunities for their employees. The learning platform at Genpact, known as Genome, analyzes an employees portfolio of work and recommends skills like Python or supply chain demand planning, and, in turn, uses that information to surface learning and certification programs that might be a fit. Genome suggested, for example, that a young analyst at Genpact take a learning module for Databricks, the popular data analytics platform that allows companies to keep their proprietary data secure while developing customized AI agents. She took it, and within weeks, she was applying it on a client project, Mehta says. Thats the kind of career acceleration AI can and is enabling. Genpact has also launched AI agents that draw on the expertise of its leaders to help employees navigate challenges that might arise in the course of their workenabling them to, say, practice client conversations before an important meeting. At Pure Storage, Glean has enabled the company to build new learning and development offerings for its employees by drawing on institutional knowledge. In less than two months, it used Gleans technology to analyze the marketing of its product launches and create learning modules that cater to employees across the organization, from the sales department to the finance team. The future of AI at work Generative AI has empowered companies to automate routine tasks that require limited human intervention. But looking ahead, many of them are thinking about how they can get more creative with AI, or find new use cases across performance management and employee engagement. Cybersecurity company Arctic Wolf is looking into how AI might be utilized for employee sentiment analysis. Tekion, a cloud-native auto retail platform, intends to use AI to surface new opportunities for its employees and support their career development. And Genpact wants to give managers more data on how their teams are performing, and how that tracks with employee engagement. Mehta contends, AI will become part of everyday workflowsnot something you log into once in a while.
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Over the years, I have conditioned myself to only be able to focus in 25-minute increments, a timer counting down in my peripheral. The five-minute break following? Its like a reward. It is now accepted wisdom that taking regular breaks during the workday makes one more productive. How long those breaks should be, however, depends on which productivity method you are subscribed to. Recently, a University of Cambridge mental health researcher has suggested that longer breaks could, in fact, be more effective at tackling those afternoon slumps. “The most productive people work for about 52 minutes at a time and then take 17-minute breaks,” Olivia Remes shared on Instagram. The “52/17 rule” has been around for a while, promising to increase productivity and work-life balance, but Cambridges social post has renewed discussion about it. “This is much better than working for long stretches, adds Remes, who has a PhD degree in public health and primary care from Cambridge. The brain is a muscle that, like every other, can be overstretched. Incessantly being bombarded with emails and Slack messages, juggling calendars and jumping at the Microsoft Teams ringtone, hopping on and off and back on Zoom, and fielding work texts . . . all can cause information and cognitive overload. As many dont have the option to work less, a number of productivity hacks have emerged insteadfrom the MTR framework and time blocking to my beloved Pomodoro method. But, even armed with all these hacks and tools, or leaning on AI to take off some of the mental load, it can still feel like an uphill battle to focus even for a few hours a day. Thats why its not only important when we take these breaks, but how we take them. Remes says the researchers found that while practicing the 52/17 method, the most productive people, during their breaks, completely disconnected from technology.” No sneaking in a few emails or scrolling on X or TikTok. “Instead, they completely disconnected and gave themselves a chance to relax and to rest,” she adds. So its not just the 17 minutesits how you use them. (Or dont use them.) Of course, unplugging is easier said than done. Particularly in a work environment that may not offer the flexibility to pause outside of designated break times, or might question why you’re doing a crossword puzzle during the middle of the workday. Even if you cant set a timer for the entire 17 minutes, stepping away from your desk each hour to get coffee, do a lap around the office, or simply stare out the window and think about what youll have for dinner might just make a difference.
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Below, coauthors Bruce Schneier and Nathan Sanders share five key insights from their new book, Rewiring Democracy: How AI Will Transform Our Politics, Government, and Citizenship. Bruce is a security technologist, teaching at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Munk School at the University of Toronto. He is also a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Chief of Security Architecture at Inrupt, Inc. Nathan is a data scientist affiliated with Harvards Berkman Klein Center. He is focused on making policymaking more participatory, with his research spanning machine learning, astrophysics, public health, environmental justice, and more. Whats the big idea? AI can be used both for and against the public interest within democracies. It is already being used in the governing of nations around the world, and there is no escaping its continued use in the future by leaders, policy makers, and legal enforcers. How we wire AI into democracy today will determine if it becomes a tool of oppression or empowerment. Listen to the audio version of this Book Biteread by Bruce and Nathanbelow, or in the Next Big Idea App. 1. AIs global democratic impact is already profound Its been just a few years since ChatGPT stormed into view and AIs influence has already permeated every democratic process in governments around the world: In 2022, an artist collective in Denmark founded the worlds first political party committed to an AI-generated policy platform. Also in 2022, South Korean politicians running for the presidency were the first to use AI avatars to communicate with voters en masse. In 2023, a Brazilian municipal legislator passed the first enacted law written by AI. In 2024, a U.S. federal court judge started using AI to interpret the plain meaning of words in U.S. law. Also in 2024, the Biden administration disclosed more than two thousand discrete use cases for AI across the agencies of the U.S. federal government. The examples illustrate the diverse uses of AI across citizenship, politics, legislation, the judiciary, and executive administration. Not all of these uses will create lasting change. Some of these will be one-offs. Some are inherently small in scale. Some were publicity stunts. But each use case speaks to a shifting balance of supply and demand that AI will increasingly mediate. Legislators need assistance drafting bills and have limited staff resources, especially at the local and state level. Historically, they have looked to lobbyists and interest groups for help. Increasingly, its just as easy for them to use an AI tool. 2. The first places AI will be used are where there is the least public oversight Many of the use cases for AI in governance and politics have vocal objectors. Some make us uncomfortable, especially in the hands of authoritarians or ideological extremists. In some cases, politics will be a regulating force to prevent dangerous uses of AI. Massachusetts has banned the use of AI face recognition in law enforcement because of real concerns voiced by the public about their tendency to encode systems of racial bias. Some of the uses we think might be most impactful are unlikely to be adopted fast because of legitimate concern about their potential to make mistakes, introduce bias, or subvert human agency. AIs could be assistive tools for citizens, acting as their voting proxies to help us weigh in on larger numbers of more complex ballot initiatives, but we know that many will object to anything that verges on AIs being given a vote. Its likely that even the thousands of disclosed AI uses in government are only the tip of the iceberg. But AI will continue to be rapidly adopted in some aspects of democracy, regardless of how the public feels. People within democracies, even those in government jobs, often have great independence. They dont have to ask anyone if its ok to use AI, and they will use it if they see that it benefits them. The Brazilian city councilor who used AI to draft a bill did not ask for anyones permission. The U.S. federal judge who used AI to help him interpret law did not have to check with anyone first. And the Trump administration seems to be using AI for everything from drafting tariff policies to writing public health reportswith some obvious drawbacks. Its likely that even the thousands of disclosed AI uses in government are only the tip of the iceberg. These are just the applications that governments have seen fit to share; the ones they think are the best vetted, most likely to persist, or maybe the least controversial to disclose. 3. Elites and authoritarians will use AI to concentrate power Many Westerners point to China as a cautionary tale of how AI could empower autocracy, but the reality is that AI provides structural advantages to entrenched power in democratic governments, too. The nature of automation is that it gives those at the top of a power structure more control over the actions taken at its lower levels. Its famously hard for newly elected leaders to exert their will over the many layers of human bureaucracies. The civil service is large, unwieldy, and messy. But its trivial for an executive to change the parameters and instructions of an AI model being used to automate the systems of government. The dynamic of AI effectuating the concentration of power extends beyond government agencies Over the past five years, Ohio has undertaken a project to do a wholesale revision of its administrative code using AI. The leaders of that project framed it in terms of efficiency and good governance: deleting millions of words of outdated, unnecessary, or redundant language. The same technology could be applied to advance more ideological ends, like purging all statutory language that places burdens on business, neglects to hold businesses accountable, protects some class of people, or fails to protect others. Whether you like or despise automating the enactment of those policies will depend on whether you stand with or are opposed to those in power, and thats the point. AI gives any faction with power the potential to exert more control over the levers of government. 4. Organizers will find ways to use AI to distribute power instead We dont have to resign ourselves to a world where AI makes the rich richer and the elite more powerful. This is a technology that can also be wielded by outsiders to help level the playing field. In politics, AI gives upstart and local candidates access to skills and the ability to do work on a scale thatused to only be available to well-funded campaigns. In the 2024 cycle, Congressional candidates running against incumbents like Glenn Cook in Georgia and Shamaine Daniels in Pennsylvania used AI to help themselves be everywhere all at once. They used AI to make personalized robocalls to voters, write frequent blog posts, and even generate podcasts in the candidates voice. In Japan, a candidate for Governor of Tokyo used an AI avatar to respond to more than eight thousand online questions from voters. We dont have to resign ourselves to a world where AI makes the rich richer and the elite more powerful. Outside of public politics, labor organizers are also leveraging AI to build power. The Workers Lab is a U.S. nonprofit developing assistive technologies for labor unions, like AI-enabled apps that help service workers report workplace safety violations. The 2023 Writers Guild of America strike serves as a blueprint for organizers. They won concessions from Hollywood studios that protect their members against being displaced by AI while also winning them guarantees for being able to use AI as assistive tools to their own benefit. 5. The ultimate democratic impact of AI depends on us If you are excited about AI and see the potential for it to make life, and maybe even democracy, better around the world, recognize that there are a lot of people who dont feel the same way. If you are disturbed about the ways you see AI being used and worried about the future that leads to, recognize that the trajectory were on now is not the only one available. The technology of AI itself does not pose an inherent threat to citizens, workers, and the public interest. Like other democratic technologiesvoting processes, legislative districts, judicial reviewits impacts will depend on how its developed, who controls it, and how its used. Constituents of democracies should do four things: Reform the technology ecosystem to be more trustworthy, so that AI is developed with more transparency, more guardrails around exploitative use of data, and public oversight. Resist inappropriate uses of AI in government and politics, like facial recognition technologies that automate surveillance and encode inequity. Responsibly use AI in government where it can help improve outcomes, like making government more accessible to people through translation and speeding up administrative decision processes. Renovate the systems of government vulnerable to the disruptive potential of AIs superhuman capabilities, like political advertising rules that never anticipated deepfakes. These four Rs are how we can rewire our democracy in a way that applies AI to truly benefit the public interest. Enjoy our full library of Book Bitesread by the authors!in the Next Big Idea App. This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
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