How AI Is Disrupting The HR Tech Marketplace

by joshbersin · Published April 9, 2023 · Updated April 14, 2023

I just completed more than 20 in-depth interviews with HR Technology vendors to understand their AI strategies. And as I describe in the video below, I believe the results will be dramatic. Not only are vendors reinventing their offerings, new AI-centric systems have a completely different architecture, user interface, and design.

While it’s still early days, I believe AI (and Generative AI in particular) is going to radically change the HR Tech landscape. Not only will systems be intelligent by design, they will have powerful conversational user interfaces, they will embed multiple AI models, and new disruptors will appear.

As I discuss below, I see vendors in three categories: those who are completely AI-centric in their approach (often led by PhD AI engineers and scientists); those who are adding AI “features” to their existing systems; and those who are not sure what to do.

Over time this new technology platform (I see AI as a new tech platform, as significant as Cloud and Mobile), will help us reinvent what HR technology does. And this new era of HR Tech will be more useful, more important, and more “integrated” than ever before.

If you’re skeptical, read the Stanford Human Centered AI Index for 2023, which shows that global AI investment increased by 27% this year to $92 Billion in R&D. And this year the research has shifted from academia to business: this year there were 32 significant new industry machine learning models developed, compared to only 3 in academia. Bloomberg, for example, just launched BloombergGPT, a 50 billion node AI system focused on financial information and analysis.

And there’s more. In addition to the changes we will see in HR Tech platforms there’s another new capability coming: the ability to see how the “pieces” of HR (and management practices) fit together. An AI-centric HCM system should help us practice what we call Systemic HR: understanding the role of skills, culture, diversity, pay, and other factors on improvements in hiring, development, internal mobility, job design, productivity, and growth.

We will continue to explore these transformations with vendors, and I look forward to talking with you to understand your perspectives.

If you want to learn more about AI in HR, please join the Josh Bersin Academy where we offer certificate programs, resources, and the HR Technology Workshop to teach you more.