Jay Polaki – HR Tech 2024 – What AI Can (and Cannot) Do for HR

Connect with Jay:

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Connect with David:

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• david.turetsky@salary.com

• dwight.brown@salary.com

Podcast Manager, Karissa Harris:

• HRDataLabs@salary.com

 

Production by Affogato Media

Resources:

• HR Geckos
• HR Bytes podcast
• Salary.com Consulting practice
• HR Data Labs Season 8 Episode 18
• HR Data Labs Season 8 Episode 16

• “HR can never be automated 100% . . . the ‘H’ in ‘HR’ [stands for] ‘human,’ but the way AI is evolving, we can’t just sit back and say we’re not going to embed it into our workflow.”

Announcer: 0:01

The world of business is more complex than ever. The world of human resources and compensation is also getting more complex. Welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast, your direct source for the latest trends from experts inside and outside the world of human resources. Listen as we explore the impact that compensation strategy data and people analytics can have on your organization. This podcast is sponsored by Salary.com, your source for data technology and consulting for compensation and beyond. Now here are your hosts, David Turetsky and Dwight Brown!

 

David Turetsky: 0:38

Hello and welcome to the HR Data Labs podcast. I'm your host, David Turetsky, and we are recording live from the HR technology show here at Mandalay Bay in beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada. And we have with us Jay Polaki from HR Geckos. Jay, how are you?

 

Jay Polaki: 0:55

I am awesome. HR awesome, if I may, if I may, say so. Thank you for having me on the show, David. You know, this conference is the Godzilla of all HR tech conferences.

 

David Turetsky: 1:10

That's funny.

 

Jay Polaki: 1:11

It's like one of those conferences that you really got to plan and get all your, you know, ducks in a row.

 

David Turetsky: 1:19

Yeah. What's funny about what how Jay described it is, Jay, what's the HR geckos symbol? What's your tag? What's your what's your mascot?

 

Jay Polaki: 1:30

Our mascot is a gecko, but actually, our mascot has the Godzilla ensign.

 

David Turetsky: 1:35

Exactly! Exactly. That's what I meant. That's why I thought it was a really great comment. So Jay, what's one fun thing that no one knows about you?

 

Jay Polaki: 1:45

I really got to think about this. I have a lot of fun things that no one knows about me. But I think I recently discovered that chess is something I love to play with the robots and my nephews who are beating the robots. So I'm learning from my nephews on how to beat the robots.

 

David Turetsky: 2:08

Wow!

 

Jay Polaki: 2:08

So that's a fun thing that I've been up to these days, just trying to beat the bots.

 

David Turetsky: 2:13

By the way, that's going to be a really important skill when the AI overlords take over, and you can challenge them and beat them in chess.

 

Jay Polaki: 2:22

The Wikis of the world, here I come.

 

David Turetsky: 2:25

There you go. There you go. I don't know if you remember, there was that, that movie on Netflix called the king the Queen's Gambit.

 

Jay Polaki: 2:34

Oh, I loved it. It's a series, phenomenal. Yes, my nephew, as he grew a little older, he's about 12 now, but when he was younger, I asked him to watch it, and he was 10, I think when he watched it first, and now he watched it again. He loves it. I think that's one of the best series I've watched, especially about any game and chess, for example.

 

David Turetsky: 2:55

Yeah, it was made up. But it seemed like it could be such a real story.

 

Jay Polaki: 3:00

And it humanizes the game so much, right?

 

David Turetsky: 3:03

And people are fallible, even though they're brilliant people.

 

Jay Polaki: 3:07

Absolutely.

 

David Turetsky: 3:16

And that's going to be a great context for as we get into our topics for today, one of which is the AI overlords. But before we get there, let's talk about our first question, which is, what's the latest trend in HR technology that we need to be following for 2025?

 

Jay Polaki: 3:33

Latest trend in HR technology? Do you want an intelligent answer, David?

 

David Turetsky: 3:38

I don't know if you can provide anything but, Jay!

 

Jay Polaki: 3:41

Well, it's AI!

 

David Turetsky: 3:45

Really burried the lede in that one, didn't we?

 

Jay Polaki: 3:47

Well, you know, I think of it as augmented intelligence more than artificial intelligence, as I was saying. You know, as I learned to beat these chess bots, I really realized that a human is still in control. And has to be in control for any of this to work, whether it's in HR or life in general. And you know, AI is so embedded now into so many tools that we use in HR. I was at the Josh Bersin keynote this morning earlier, and he had this whole flow chart of things that now AI is embedded into the HR workflow and how it's being used. And you frankly, this is something we can't do away with. It's not something, you know, like a shiny new object that you will play with for a few minutes and then let go. It's here to stay.

 

David Turetsky: 4:38

Yeah. Well, a lot of people think it's a shiny new object, and they kind of treat it like that.

 

Jay Polaki: 4:43

Well, think about this. How long does a human live, and how long do they work in an HR department? Sure, the next generation of HR is already AI native. They are not looking for an AI solution. They are actually looking why there isn't an AI solution when they come to work, right? So there's a huge mindset shift.

 

David Turetsky: 5:09

Sure.

 

Jay Polaki: 5:09

And also a skill set shift in how we are going to be doing HR today and tomorrow and into the future.

 

David Turetsky: 5:15

And I liken it back to in the early 90s, when and especially when I graduated college, there were very few computers in the HR world, and then all of a sudden people said, Oh, we can get a lot more done if we actually had a computer on everybody's desk. And they were all pounding away at keyboards!

 

Jay Polaki: 5:35

Absolutely. I remember the giant computers, and, you know, the processors and the and the printers. I still remember the distinct sound of our dot matrix printers. Yeah, no longer needed!

 

David Turetsky: 5:49

I don't know if you remember, we used to print out snoopies, and it was such a big deal. Used to go to my dad's

 

Jay Polaki: 5:53

Well, now you can have a hologram of Snoopy computer room and they used to print out snoopies. And I was like, Oh, my God, these computers are so amazing, they can print out Snoopy anywhere.

 

David Turetsky: 6:06

Well, and actually take it a step further with the AI. You can actually have an interactive conversation with Snoopy

 

Jay Polaki: 6:12

Exactly, and it can talk in any language!

 

David Turetsky: 6:14

Right! And I think that's one of those things that we're having to use our imagination to say, what should this be? Is a corporal? Does it actually have a body? Is it something I'm talking to, or is it someone I'm talking to? I think you saw, and I've mentioned this a few times during the podcast today, there was that company, which I'm not going to name, that got eviscerated on LinkedIn because they had said that they had hired an AI into their company.

 

Jay Polaki: 6:44

Yeah, I've heard about it. They created quite a furor.

 

David Turetsky: 6:48

They did, but, but I thought it was kind of brilliant!

 

Jay Polaki: 6:50

It was, it was, I agree!

 

David Turetsky: 6:52

Yeah, and I actually have that character, a character inside of my HR data doodles books, which is actually a hired AI. They actually gave it a job description, and they treat it like an employee.

 

Jay Polaki: 7:04

Well, you know, think of all the chat bots that are being used today to hire employees, to onboard employees, to provide customer service. I mean, it's they're all human like.

 

David Turetsky: 7:16

Yes!

 

Jay Polaki: 7:17

Almost human, if you ask me, some of them are so mature and this technology is only going to get better and evolve rather than go away. So we better get used to it.

 

David Turetsky: 7:29

Well, there are actually companies on the floor here at the HR tech show that have created a corporal presence, a not a person, but they've created a, what you could call an avatar

 

Jay Polaki: 7:41

Avatar.

 

David Turetsky: 7:41

that that HR person or the help at your your point, the chat bot is a person, or is a thing that you can talk to.

 

Jay Polaki: 7:51

No absolutely. When we were training our HR Gecko bot at HR Geckos early on, before the AI hype and, you know, took over everyone's imagination. My little nephews were so fascinated by how we were training the bot and and the information we were feeding it, and you know, how it was reacting and responding to that data that we were providing to it. And today, they are able to talk to a bot and get things done. I mean, my nephew is going to Disneyland this year, hopefully for his holidays, and he is so like he is preparing his travel itinerary, and all of that using AI

 

David Turetsky: 8:33

That's wonderful. Well, so you mentioned that HR Geckos has an AI bot. What do you actually use it for? I mean, if you can tell us if it's not confidential.

 

Jay Polaki: 8:41

Oh, yeah! No. The bot is used to help employees with all of the queries, employment related queries that they have. For example, How much salary am I going to make this year? Things of that nature, the bot is able to learn and get trained on the data as it's fed and on a curated FAQ library basis, and, you know, it's algorithmic. It's proprietary to us. We haven't yet collaborated with any of the other outside bots, but it's coming, you know.

 

David Turetsky: 9:11

So you could program it, quote, unquote, you could train it to be able to answer questions like, How many days do I have left on vacation? What's the most optimal use of my vacation days knowing the patterns that I take my vacations on the past couple years? What's going on with my benefits? You know, hey, where do I reach out if I need to file a claim on something?

 

Jay Polaki: 9:35

Yes, absolutely. So all of that is the evolutionary side of the bot. And if you are noticing on the explo expo floor here, there's so many different ways in which you can harness the power of AI when it comes to especially the conversational side of chat bots. And so they're evolving very fast. I saw a demo yesterday at the pitch fest where an interview was conducted. It was a Bot. And it's not just a yes, no answer anymore. It's talking like a human interviewer.

 

David Turetsky: 10:05

Right.

 

Jay Polaki: 10:06

And so it's, it's evolved. voice assisted bots,

 

David Turetsky: 10:10

Really?

 

Jay Polaki: 10:10

You know, it's, they're evolving very fast.

 

David Turetsky: 10:13

And are these, the one you specifically mentioned? Is it in a walled garden, or is it really taking data from outside and bringing it it's got to be curated. I think you said it was curated?

 

Jay Polaki: 10:22

It is curated. So it's a walled garden. Definitely a walled garden at this point. We, like I said, we do not allow any data transfer between whatever we have in our systems to the outside world yet.

 

David Turetsky: 10:34

Okay, well, thank goodness, because one of the things I've been talking to a lot of companies about is the risk of what happens when people ask questions, and it's not in a curated way, and they ask questions, and those questions are captured with IP addresses and companies and all that other information by the maybe even the consumer side. And what happens with all of that?

 

Jay Polaki: 10:56

Yeah. No, this is still very early the tech and I

 

David Turetsky: 11:00

Absolutely. think we should all be very cautious in how we deploy it within our organizations, and how we use it so and how we build it, right?

 

Jay Polaki: 11:13

Definitely have to be very mindful of that.

 

Announcer: 11:17

Like what you hear so far? Make sure you never miss a show by clicking subscribe, this podcast is made possible by Salary.com. Now back to the show.

 

David Turetsky: 11:27

Let me go to an example we were talking a little bit about before, where computers came into the world of not only HR, but the world of business, and really we started seeing jobs get replaced, like secretaries and administrative assistants. So the question is, how does HR change if AI becomes that administrative assistant and has that Corporal nature to it? You know, you can look at it and say, Hey, I need to schedule a meeting. You know, help me do this? How does how does that change?

 

Jay Polaki: 11:54

Great question, by the way. So I'm going to hearken back to the days when I first thought of HR Geckos and started building and architecting HR Geckos. HR Geckos was built by us to help HR professionals and assist them using the tech that we built to better assist employees and better assist their own team as well. To me, HR can never be automated 100%. I've been in HR longer than two decades now, and it should not be. It's it's a human the H in HR is still human, and it has to be human!

 

David Turetsky: 12:37

Right.

 

Jay Polaki: 12:38

But the way that AI is evolving, we can't just sit back and say we are not going to embed it into our workflow. So take our geckobot, for example, you know, we talk to HR teams all the time, and see the use and value that the geckobot brings to the human interaction. It takes out the transactional, you know piece where, hey, I need this form, or I, where do I find the link? Or where do I find the contact information to

 

David Turetsky: 13:08

Which is the stuff that we all answer all the this benefit? time, and it just takes up so much time!

 

Jay Polaki: 13:12

Tell me about it! When I was actually an HR director, before I started my company, the number of queries that came into the HR department, and my desk, specifically, was mind boggling. Same questions, repetitive questions, again and again and again every single day. That's why I built HR geckos. I'm like, I want to be the human, the strategic partner in the business, as well as the human for the employees, so that, you know, they can interact and connect!

 

David Turetsky: 13:45

Exactly.

 

Jay Polaki: 13:46

They'd rather not see us as a, you know, an entity that they hate and they only come to and they need something.

 

David Turetsky: 13:53

A gatekeeper

 

Jay Polaki: 13:54

Compliance police, or whatever other stuff that we acronyms that are ascribed to. HR.

 

David Turetsky: 14:01

Oh, yeah, yeah, which we can't mention because this isn't an explicit show. But I think we've gotten that moniker and we've gotten that reputation for good reason, because we have been the gatekeeper. We've been we create a language all to ourselves, like compensation as comp ratio and market penetration and range spreads, and no one knows what the hell we mean!

 

Jay Polaki: 14:29

I have to tell you a little joke. Early on in my career, when we were talking about salary bands with the hiring manager, and I had just joined the organization, and I was sitting down with my manager and talking to this new hiring manager, literally the person thought we were talking about broadband television, like cable TV?

 

David Turetsky: 14:49

Oh my god, yes

 

Jay Polaki: 14:51

They had no idea what salary bands are! I mean the amount of learning and education that we need when it comes to compensation related stuff in organizations, I think, is still wanting, even to this day, even with the advent of AI.

 

David Turetsky: 15:08

Well, and where AI can help is in the education and the dissemination of information, especially given the fact that with pay transparency on the horizon for many companies because they're operating in states that have transparency, or soon to have transparency. There's going to be a need for a tremendous amount of work and a tremendous amount of change management on exactly that. What is a salary range? Well, let's call it something different. Let's say what's the pay range for a job, because nobody gets it, and being able to translate these what we've developed into simple policy, plan documents and things like that, we can probably have the bots help us do that and then disseminate that information.

 

Jay Polaki: 15:56

Absolutely! So think of the Knowledge Hub that we have at HR Geckos. Plug in all of Salary.com's data and the bot can help an employee with all those basic questions. And even HR teams, you know, there are a lot of HR team members who are new to HR, who do not understand this stuff, and they can, you know, self paced learning within the module and get up to speed.

 

David Turetsky: 16:23

And that's required. I present on this all the time with companies on pay transparency. That's required for that to really work and for people to get what the goal of transparency is supposed to do, which is to help everybody understand how not to get underpaid.

 

Jay Polaki: 16:39

Absolutely, including HR people!

 

David Turetsky: 16:41

Including HR people, even though, I mean, we're shoemakers children here, you know, we do the worst things for ourselves. But yeah, exactly. Hey, are you listening to this and thinking to yourself, Man, I wish I could talk to David about this. Well, you're in luck. We have a special offer for listeners of the HR Data Labs podcast, a free half hour call with me about any of the topics we cover on the podcast or whatever is on your mind. Go to salary.com/HRDLconsulting to schedule your free 30 minute call today. Let's talk about the next question, which is one of my favorites in this show, which is beyond the hype cycle. What are the things that AI is going to be bringing us? Again, forget about the hype. What's the real stuff? What's the real goal that AI can bring us?

 

Jay Polaki: 17:34

Well, definitely process efficiencies, especially in the HR function. I mean, we're already seeing that in our company when we go out and work with our clients, just the way in which we do things in HR, right? All the paper that we have and the digital transformation that needs to happen. I mean, I'm not talking about the private sector. Think of the public sector. I mean, have you ever been to a government office and had to fill out a form?

 

David Turetsky: 18:06

Absolutely!

 

Jay Polaki: 18:06

Yes. So it's still there, and it's still a challenge.

 

David Turetsky: 18:10

And notarization! Don't forget, notarization.

 

Jay Polaki: 18:13

Yes, absolutely that too. So there's so much manual, transactional stuff that happens in our function today that we still have to get over adopting AI is not the panacea, is not the cure.

 

David Turetsky: 18:30

Right

 

Jay Polaki: 18:31

It's something that you really have to, you know, audit, look at your processes. Do I really need AI here? Or can I still continue with the manual side of things? You know, these are questions you need to ask, like early on. Even, you know, think of the change management initiatives we took when we were implementing a new tech tool. It's the same thing with AI. It's, it's not something that is a magic wand that you, you know, swipe over and everything will magically change and become glittery. No, that's not how it works, and we have, we need a lot of fairy god people to make these changes lasting in the organization and impactful. At the end of the day, it's all about the impact that AI is going to have on the end user, which is our human employees.

 

David Turetsky: 19:24

So who owns AI, then? Because you can't have an entire enterprise running around, having different, well maybe you can, have different technologies, different bases, different data structures, all that stuff. You can't have everybody running around, running amok, as it were,

 

Jay Polaki: 19:44

You want the fun answer? Superman. Wonder Woman!

 

David Turetsky: 19:47

Well, there you go, yeah, exactly.

 

Jay Polaki: 19:49

I'm kidding.

 

David Turetsky: 19:50

Those are DC Comics. I'm a Marvel guy, but I gotcha. Yeah, I gotcha.

 

Jay Polaki: 19:54

Well, I think everyone in the organization needs to own a piece of this. This is not something that HR is going to be responsible and accountable for, or IT is going to be responsible and accountable for. Everyone needs to be, you know, totally in with whatever is happening. And and they need to be kind of learning on the go, because this technology is evolving so fast. You know, we are talking about voice assisted chatbots today, tomorrow, there be a hologram that will appear in your house to interview you. I mean, it's not far away. It's happening. You know, I do you remember the movie or the bots name was sunny that much. I remember. I forget. I Robot. Sorry, that was the name. Yeah. And you know how the holograms would appear and talk to you and you in those days, I thought, Oh, this is still sci fi, but I have seen a hologram in action in Dubai. It came and talked to me in the Dubai Mall. It greeted me, it's a customer greeter. It was freaky! And this was not like, you know, one year ago. This was five years ago!

 

David Turetsky: 21:08

Yeah. But, I mean, that's a really great way of doing it. You have a job that has to get done repetitively. You don't want to have a person while you can, Walmart hires people to do that, but it's so much more efficient to have a bot that does it that constantly can understand who you are. They can maybe read some of your your metadata from what it knows about you, or can glean about you.

 

Jay Polaki: 21:34

I don't know if I like that yet, but

 

David Turetsky: 21:37

That's where those movies go!

 

Jay Polaki: 21:38

Yeah, and, and, you know, this bot told me I was very pretty and offered me a drink coupon.

 

David Turetsky: 21:45

Wow! That's forward of the bot.

 

Jay Polaki: 21:48

Absolutely, and this was a long time ago, not, not, not today. I don't know what it would say today.

 

David Turetsky: 21:54

I'm sure it would say the same!

 

Jay Polaki: 21:55

Well, thank you, David.

 

David Turetsky: 21:56

You're welcome. You're welcome.

 

Jay Polaki: 21:57

I am fishing for compliments.

 

David Turetsky: 22:02

You'll get plenty.

 

Jay Polaki: 22:03

Thank you.

 

David Turetsky: 22:05

But, I mean, but, but really. And even in the HR environment, though, that interaction where a person is talking to somebody or something and they're getting back value added responses, provides them with an opportunity. A for HR, not to get involved and to scale and to be focused on other, more value added tasks, but, but let me go back to the beginning. You had said something, I think you had said something about you can't remove the H from HR, right? And so,

 

Jay Polaki: 22:37

Yes

 

David Turetsky: 22:38

how do, how do we keep on top of what has been happening in those interactions? How do we monitor the things that have been happening are accurate or right or fair?

 

Jay Polaki: 22:50

Well, again, this is not a time for us to remove the human and let the you know bots take over. This is a time for the human to stay on top and train the bots on how to have a conversation, for example, in a more human manner that probably it's difficult to train the bot on, unless you know you're constantly with it while it's getting trained.

 

David Turetsky: 23:19

Well providing feedback too. Yeah

 

Jay Polaki: 23:21

There is a constant feedback loop that needs to happen, and the human needs to stay in that loop for a very long time, till the bot matures and is able to, you know, provide that kind of intrinsic human interaction that would happen naturally with the bot. But till that time, the human needs to stay in the loop, and that's going to take a long time. Let me tell you.

 

David Turetsky: 23:45

But is that a QA cycle? Is that a beta cycle? What is that? Because the way in which we deploy things these days are turn it on and set it and forget it. And what you're saying

 

Jay Polaki: 23:56

Like Alexa, that talks to you once in a while in the house, and you're like, why is it on?

 

David Turetsky: 24:00

Why is it on? And can I can I change Hey? Can I change the settings on this so it doesn't interrupt me, so it doesn't walk by and say, hey, when you're in the midst of something, or, you know,

 

Jay Polaki: 24:12

Or order you a new handbag that you didn't want but it overheard you say something!

 

David Turetsky: 24:17

I think you're projecting there, Jay, I think you may have ordered something.

 

Jay Polaki: 24:22

No, this happened to a friend of mine actually during the holidays.

 

David Turetsky: 24:25

Oh, wow!

 

Jay Polaki: 24:26

They were freaked out!

 

David Turetsky: 24:27

Yeah, because I've said something, we have Alexa in our kitchen, and I've said something like, you know, I should go put that in my in my Amazon shopping cart. And it did!

 

Jay Polaki: 24:38

Yeah!

 

David Turetsky: 24:39

And I was like, Oh crap, it really heard me.

 

Jay Polaki: 24:42

Yes, yes. So it's freaky, but at the same time, this is the way things are going to be. We have to evolve or die.

 

David Turetsky: 24:51

Right. But I think the evolution here, so let me play it back a little bit. That feedback loop you're talking about is really what we used to call and we do today still, the QA cycle. And we're developing, we have to develop very specific feedback for the bot of what it can and cannot do, what it can say and cannot say.

 

Jay Polaki: 25:11

Absolutely

 

David Turetsky: 25:11

Beyond policy, like really culturally.

 

Jay Polaki: 25:13

Yeah, yeah, no. Think of the K9 unit in a police department.

 

David Turetsky: 25:18

Sure

 

Jay Polaki: 25:19

That puppy lives with the officer the entire time and dies with that officer. Unfortunately for it. But it has a human present

 

David Turetsky: 25:29

Unfortunately, yes. But the dog is sentient, the dog, the dog with it its entire life cycle. That's how the bots are going to have to be trained. fights its behavior, fights its ancestral behaviors. Wow

 

Jay Polaki: 25:45

Exactly. And that's the challenge here for us. You And that's where everything's going with that know, how are we going to impact the behavior of a chat bot? And is there a behavior of a chat bot? Is there? Are there emotions in a chat bot? Hey, I just heard that it's coming Open AI just talked about, like one of their engineers tweeted that that's their main focus. All the stuff they've put out is no platform. It is absolutely scary! longer what they're focused on. They're focused on general intelligence.

 

David Turetsky: 26:17

What do you mean you're gonna turn me off, Dave, I don't want you to turn me off.

 

Jay Polaki: 26:22

Or I don't think you want to turn me off, and even if you did, I can turn myself back on.

 

David Turetsky: 26:27

Well, yeah, that's the where's the plug. Let me get the plug out of the wall. Oh, no, what? I rerouted my my electronic sensors so that. Well, that's but that gets to that dystopian view, the the science fiction of this, which is these things can self heal.

 

Jay Polaki: 26:44

Absolutely and to you and me, it's dystopian. If you ask my 10 year old and 12 year old nephews, it is not dystopian to them. It is their reality. That is the reality they live in. I mean, how far fetched is that notion? Right? That emotion that, hey, this is reality. I get scared when I hear that from them. But that generation, that's their world. They're in Roblox, Minecraft, building stuff. To them, that's the reality.

 

David Turetsky: 27:16

My 12 year old is a Roblox nutcase. He just constantly and he shows to me, Go, Dad, look at this is an A 10 war hog. How did you learn about an A 10 war hog, which is a fighter plane, but in the he builds them, and then he actually flies them inside of Roblox.

 

Jay Polaki: 27:33

Yeah, you know, there are things that they're learning that we would never have learned at that age, but I think that's the evolutionary cycle of humans as well, but it's happening a little too fast, if you ask me.

 

David Turetsky: 27:46

Well, we push the I mean, we push it on them, to some extent, because we want them to get some skills about the future.

 

Jay Polaki: 27:52

Absolutely, yeah, because it's, it's the skill set of the future, right? I mean, they, they gotta be totally aware of all of this, and I see a difference. You know, we have a little experiment a lab in our own household. My brother's son is not as digital native as my sister's son is, and they're about three and a half years apart in age. So between my two nephews, I see a huge difference in how my older nephew, who's a digital native, AI first, AI native, versus my younger nephew, who is still learning to use his iPad and he doesn't play a lot of Roblox or Minecraft. And there's a huge skill gap there and a huge learning gap as well.

 

David Turetsky: 28:41

Do you think those generations, because they're growing up wrapped around all this technology? Do you think that they're going to look at us as being Neanderthals with all of this?

 

Jay Polaki: 28:53

They already do!

 

David Turetsky: 28:56

Well, yeah. I mean, that is true. They really do.

 

Jay Polaki: 28:58

My nephews already say that to me, you know?

 

David Turetsky: 29:01

Well, that's not nice. Don't say that about Jay. She's a very nice person.

 

Jay Polaki: 29:05

Well, listen to David, guys!

 

David Turetsky: 29:06

No, I'm old.

 

Jay Polaki: 29:06

I hope not. I want you to be here for a long time.

 

David Turetsky: 29:06

Yes, yes, you take care of your aunt. But, but seriously, though, this is one of those things where, generationally, yes, the the younger generations are much

 

Jay Polaki: 29:16

Or at least your hologram. more apt and able to withstand this change, to manage through it and potentially thrive in it. And with all the demographic trends that we're going to be going over the next 10 to 15 years, people like me are going to be gone, and

 

David Turetsky: 29:37

Well, thank you. Maybe we could do the hologram thing. But yeah, I'm old. I mean, in 10 years, if I'm still doing exactly this, I have problems. I have big problems. I love my company, I love what I do. But 10 years the long that means I'm 67 at that point.

 

Jay Polaki: 29:54

That's very, very young.

 

David Turetsky: 29:57

No, no, hopefully I'll still play hockey, but I mean but, but really I mean for mortality perspective, that's I should be thinking about retirement at that point, or hopefully had retired by that point.

 

Jay Polaki: 30:09

True.

 

David Turetsky: 30:09

But then again, what we're talking about is generations and their ability to then gravitate toward and adopt and be able to feel more comfortable with this stuff.

 

Jay Polaki: 30:19

Well, with all this technology, retirement is going to be much further down the road, I think with at least my generation. You know, we are all in our 40s, and our children are going to college. Just started going to college, and I don't think I'm going to retire at the traditional retirement age anymore, because there is a long future ahead unless, of course, there's another pandemic and wipes out all of us. I hope not, but, but, you know, with all of this augmented intelligence and all of these tools that we now have at our disposal, I think we can continue to evolve the way we work, our work life is going to evolve, and hopefully it's going to be much better than what it was way back when we started.

 

David Turetsky: 31:10

So Jay, let's put in the calendar now that in five years time, we'll check the progress against this.

 

Jay Polaki: 31:16

Okay!

 

David Turetsky: 31:17

And every year up to that, we're going to do incremental updates to this to see whether or not we actually get there. How about that?

 

Jay Polaki: 31:27

Sounds good to me, David.

 

David Turetsky: 31:28

All right, that's a plan. All right, so we're gonna have to put, I'm gonna have to ask the bot to put that in our calendars.

 

Jay Polaki: 31:33

Do you have a bot listening right now?

 

David Turetsky: 31:35

No, no, no, that's actually, that's a that's something I should do, though!

 

Jay Polaki: 31:39

Maybe! Yeah, an AI assistant that you know, helps you summarize this entire interview.

 

David Turetsky: 31:45

There you go, there you go!

 

Jay Polaki: 31:47

And give you action items so you can follow up on.

 

David Turetsky: 31:50

So that's the point. Zoom actually does that. When Zoom has the AI capability turned on, it will do that.

 

Jay Polaki: 31:56

The AI companion, the summary, yes, I like that. Yeah, You know, it still has, or needs the human to review and correct and edit, because there are things in there that still don't, you know jive well with me. It can't do the job of me taking my own notes.

 

David Turetsky: 32:13

Oh yeah

 

Jay Polaki: 32:14

It's still not there.

 

David Turetsky: 32:14

Oh no. It's definitely at the nascent stage, and it's an assistant as far as note taking goes. And it says that, but it is getting really good.

 

Jay Polaki: 32:23

It is, it is. It's getting better. I wouldn't say good at this point.

 

David Turetsky: 32:27

You've heard it here first, folks, that AI bot isn't doing what it needs to do yet, from Jay Polaki. Thank you for being on the HR Data Labs podcast.

 

Jay Polaki: 32:47

Absolutely!

 

David Turetsky: 32:48

We have to have you again soon.

 

Jay Polaki: 32:49

Yeah, one year down the line

 

David Turetsky: 32:51

One year from now.

 

Jay Polaki: 32:52

Yep, that's a plan.

 

David Turetsky: 32:54

Thank you so much.

 

Jay Polaki: 32:55

Thank you, Dave.

 

David Turetsky: 32:55

Take care.

 

Jay Polaki: 32:56

Take care.

 

David Turetsky: 32:56

Stay safe.

 

Announcer: 32:58

That was the HR Data Labs podcast. If you liked the episode, please subscribe. And if you know anyone that might like to hear it, please send it their way. Thank you for joining us this week, and stay tuned for our next episode. Stay safe.