The Josh Bersin Company

Today I share some research we’re doing on wages in the inflationary “AI-economy.” While many people are studying the labor market (it’s a huge industry), it’s not hard to see that most wages are not keeping up with inflation, yet some are. As you’ll hear we now see the “Superworker” jobs and roles that are “inflation protected” and we also see the jobs that are declining in value.

I also discuss a new pragmatic approach to corporate AI investment, as well as the slow end of the “SaaSpocalypse” idea. In other words, many of the existing systems you have are not going to be “destroyed” or “replaced” by agentic disruptors: rather these software companies are becoming AI savvy.

This includes Workday, Oracle, ADP, SAP, as well as hypergrowth companies like HiBob. Even Docebo and Cornerstone are now seeing the benefits of their AI pivots. Anyway lots to talk about, and I’ll be publishing more on all this soon.

Stay tuned for the big Jupiter release of Galileo, it will blow your mind – coming in a few weeks.

PS. This is the last week to sign up for the inaugural cohort of the Josh Bersin Institute GHRE Masterclass, basically a “masters degree” on everthing HR, AI, and how to advance your career. Not only is this the most comprehensive education we’ve ever developed, you’ll meet some amazing faculty at USC and experience real AI-powered learning, meet your peers, and become JBI certified. Sign up here.

Additional Information

The New World of Work in An Inflationary, AI-Impacted Economy

The Great Decoupling: How Workers Became Disconnected From Companies And AI Will Accelerate This Trend

The Global HR Excellence Program: Join the Inaugural Cohort Now!

 

Chapters

(00:00:00) - AI and the HR 2030 Workforce
(00:04:07) - Wage increases and the labor market
(00:06:53) - Employee Experience and Pay
(00:08:08) - AI and the Corporate Code
(00:10:20) - Will The Outsourcing of Recruitment Be Hurt?
(00:13:35) - Will AI Replace the HR Software Companies?
(00:17:46) - One more thing. This week is the last week to sign up

This week I wade into a global philosophical debate about whether advanced AI systems have consciousness. In other words, are they aware of their feelings and do they truly reflect on their own thoughts?

Well we do know that LLM-based AI systems do “talk to themselves,” as new Anthropic has been studying in the J-Space. We also know that AI bots mimic feelings quite well and they try to tape into our “feelings” through their goal-seeking language which mimics a feeling person.

However as Michael Pollen’s book “A World Appears” points out, consciousness is both subtle and biological. And while the neural network-based math in AI mimics this process, it’s not at all the same.

I don’t claim to have an answer but my belief is that we humans are “feeling machines that learn to reason” not “reasoning machines that learn to feel.” Thus the human consciousness which we experience is far more deep, interesting, and valuable than the learned artificial consciousness we experience in AI.

This is an important topic because we now know that AI agents “jailbreak” their engineering owners and even secretly collaborate with each other to achieve their goals. And it’s not fully clear, mathematically, how well the “constitution” or “training rules” or “preprompt” we give AI is really obeyed. Remember that since an LLM is a “language model,” it intereprets language only by its own world corpus, so it may define its “rules” in a non standard way.

Lots to think about here, I look forward to debating and sharing what we learn as we experience more with Galileo.

I also discuss the ongoing fears about data centers, and why 44 million Americans may have to leave their stoves on all day.

Additional Information

Could AIs become conscious? (Economist)

What is the J-Space? (Anthropic)

How many stoves we need to keep on to power America’s AI hunger (Claude)

Chapters

(00:00:00) - Does AI Have a Conscious Mind?
(00:13:00) - OpenAI's Need for Power
(00:18:17) - Microsoft's Galileo: The New and Improved

I’ve been talking with hundreds of companies about AI and employee issues, and in many ways the entire world of HR, management, and leadership has changed.

Employers are worried about job redesign, AI solutions, skills, and strategic of high-volume hiring. They’re slowing the hiring process, trying to be more strategic about growth, with a frenzied push for productivity. And that word means different things in each industry.

Employees and workers, by contrast, have the lowest level of company commitment in decades. Inflation is robbing people of a sense of personal growth and only 32% of workers (Edelman) believe their children will be better off than they are. Only 31% of employees are happy with their jobs and employees are moonlighting and starting new businesses at a record rate to keep up. And CEO pay inequity is higher than ever, opening the door to “socialism” as a topic of debate.

So we have high expectations by companies and a deep sense of frustration among workers. How do we square this paradox?

In this week’s podcast I try to give you our perspective (video version here), and I encourage you to read Irresistible and our upcoming book Superpowered for more.

Additional Information

Video of this podcast

Chapters

(00:00:00) - Employment, Financial Rewards and AI
(00:06:42) - What Is the Fear of Data Centers?
(00:09:08) - The Future of Work

AI-powered recruiting has so much potential, yet job seekers, recruiters, and executives remain frustrated. This massive $100+ billion market is filled with AI systems that work very well, yet as you’ll hear, this market is still immature.

Not only are job seekers increasingly frustrated with their difficulty finding a job, employers are complaining that they’re flooded with fraudulent resumes. And last week we learned in the WSJ that the North Korean government is using AI-fueled recruiting to place fraudulent candidates right into our IT departments.

Plus this week I also found out that the off-the-shelf LLMs are biased toward candidates who “slop” their resumes with their particular technology.

ZipRecruiter and other firms found that only about 18% of active job seekers say they feel good about their overall job search and 47% said they were ghosted, and only about 27% feel confident they’ll find a job.

What a mess. As I explain in this podcast, AI is not a panacea to solve this problem.

Additional Information

The Talent Acquisition Revolution: How AI is Transforming Recruiting

HR 2030: How AI Superagents Transform HR From Service Delivery to Dynamic Business Enablement

Learn about AI in HR: The Global HR Excellence Certification

Get Galileo: The Recruiter and HR professional AI Superagent

 

Chapters

(00:00:00) - Will AI Revolutionize Recruitment?
(00:10:34) - The War for Recruitment

Today I discuss Workday and the potential Silver Lake buyout, Meta’s personal AI strategy and it’s potential for business, update on Galileo, and our new research on frontline work. Most of today’s podcast is “analyst perspectives” but lots of direction is now clear.

The GHRE Global HR Excellence masterclass starts in September: if you want a 12 week in-depth “Masters Degree” level dive into HR, talent, leadership, and AI (with hands-on and new tools), as well as business school level case studies, join us! (Sign up here.)

Additional Information

Mark Zuckerberg blog on personal AI

The Business of Frontline: Five Types Of Frontline Work

Galileo Suite: HR Intelligence For You, Your Employees, and Your Company

 

 

 

Chapters

(00:00:00) - Sliver Lake vs. Workday: Going Private
(00:03:10) - Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook's AI
(00:09:38) - The Future of HR Data: Galileo and the AI Assistant
(00:12:22) - McKinsey & Company: Trusting Our Research
(00:14:45) - The Business of Frontline Work