With the Advent of AI, It’s Time To Rethink Human Resources

This year will be marked by a number of worrying labour actions. As of this writing, movie writers and actresses are on strike, and the United Auto Workers appear to be on pace to shut down domestic automotive production in the United States at a time when the auto industry is in dire straits. Air transport employees are also preparing to go on strike.

The combined impact of these strikes might be catastrophic on a national scale, with AI and large pay discrepancies between CEOs and regular staff recognised as key contributors. One of the safeguards against this type of employee collective action should be human resources (HR). However, it has been more of a compliance organisation for years, working to cover up leadership mistakes rather than caring for people.

AI has the potential to significantly improve work/life balance, fair remuneration, and the transformation of businesses into better places to work. Still, AI is frequently portrayed as a danger to employees rather than a boon.

Let’s speak about how AI has the ability to improve employee-employer relations and assist CEOs in making better decisions. Then we’ll wrap off with my Product of the Week, a new portable gaming device powered by AMD from Lenovo.

Embracing IBM’s AI concept

IBM has been open about utilising AI to improve rather than replace workers, and organisations considering employing AI should keep this in mind.

Consider the actors and writers’ strike. Recently, the film business has seen some high-priced flops. These weren’t the performers’ fault, and while you might blame the authors, it was typically studio choices that modified the screenplays or directors who didn’t appear to comprehend the subject material that were the root of the problem.

Executives make poor judgements for a number of reasons all the time. Often, they prioritise demonstrating their dominance over someone better suited to make the choice as a power move.
Improving the profitability of films and TV series might significantly diminish the urge to replace performers and writers with artificial intelligence.

Movies: Bad vs. Good

Looking at recent flops like “Shazam! Fury of the Gods,” “The Little Mermaid,” “The Flash,” “Black Adam,” and “Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves,” I believe the problem is that studios have forgotten that three things are required for success: good content, a strong but accurate marketing programme, and fan engagement prior to the release of the film.

They should have pitted Shazam against Black Adam with Superman’s assistance because we all know how popular that narrative is. “The Little Mermaid” attempted to demonstrate diversity by making the same flaws as the original “Ghostbusters” remake, while the most recent “Wild Wild West” film shoved diversity into an already non-diverse tale, alienating fans in the process. It didn’t help that neither picture did a good job of embracing the earlier tales.

With “Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves,” which I adored, you no longer have the baseline of D&D aficionados required to propel that film to success. The loss of “The Flash” was especially frustrating because a comparable successful animated film named “Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox” was a hit. If they had done it live, the narrative would have been far better than the convoluted mess they ended up with.

All of this in comparison to “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer.” “Barbie” effectively displayed diversity and women’s rights by crafting a plot that honours the main character’s past while incorporating the message without alienating Barbie fans. “Oppenheimer” should not have been a hit (it’s an old theme), yet it was a fantastic narrative with historical significance that was well-marketed.

Replacing authors and performers with AI may hurt successful films more than it helps poor ones, becaus acting quality is often a factor in success. Using AI on unsuccessful films, on the other hand, would have simply reduced financial losses, not enhanced the chance of success. The risk of employing an automated method like AI is that you end up making many more bad films, losing less money on each one but losing more money overall when marketing costs are factored in.

Automotive

Consider Tesla and electric vehicles. Years ago, I met with one of Ford’s former CEOs and argued that if he didn’t understand what Tesla was doing, Tesla would eat his lunch. Tesla created a no-compromise electric vehicle and a charging environment to ensure that purchasers had a positive electric vehicle experience. Teslas were created from the ground up, rather than as petrol vehicles with electric motors.

When it was a “all of the above” situation, American automakers regarded Tesla’s actions as if they were on an optional list. As a result, despite the fact that some of their designs were more appealing and many had greater build quality, Except for China, where the government is more supportive of the trend, no other automobile company has been as successful as Tesla.

The formula was straightforward and had nothing to do with the personnel, but the automobile firms refused to follow it, and as a result, they failed. The main issue, as in the film business, was neither exorbitant labour expenses or subpar labour. When it came to developing a competitive solution, it was all about making poor choices.

AI Decision Support

So, rather than replacing labour, the best place to start using AI is to enhance the decision-making process so that individuals making judgements make fewer wrong ones. With AI and the metaverse enabling large-scale simulations, you can also model prior good and poor decisions and use AI to assist you pursue the successful route rather of the one of repeating mistakes.

Making films that people want to see or vehicles that people want to purchase shouldn’t be difficult. You can model the buyer, and AI may drastically reduce time-to-market for new ideas by eliminating many boring procedures such as storyboards and clay models to achieve a better depiction of the ultimate product.

If making terrible judgements is the problem, automating manufacturing will just exacerbate it by producing more bad results. You must first improve the decision-making process, and then approach cost savings in a way that eliminates superfluous expenditures rather than deleting what may later turn out to be important resources.

Wrapping Up: The Strikes Are Wrong-Headed

Both the film and automobile industries in the United States are in turmoil. The strikes are likely to bankrupt one or more of these firms without addressing the underlying issue, which isn’t pay but terrible judgements that result in product market failures. AI can and should be used first to solve decision issues, so that when AI is used to augment, rather than replace, the existing workforce, you will obtain more products and a larger percentage of successful results.

Rather of replacing people, companies should first utilise AI to help line workers reduce the less pleasurable portions of their tasks, such as rewrites, reshoots, compliance documentation, and so on. You develop healthier connections and contribute to long-term company survival by demonstrating compassion and understanding for consumers and workers.

I’d also argue that we need to equalise CEO and line pay, but that’s a discussion for another day. For the time being, AI is best utilised to improve employee performance rather than replace it, and especially to assist executives in making better decisions more consistently and effectively avoiding mistakes.

Lenovo Legion Go

As the preferred manufacturer for Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox, AMD dominates the specialised gaming industry. So it seems to reason that when Lenovo decided to build a breakthrough mobile gaming platform, the Legion Go, it chose AMD as the provider.

PC gaming accounts for around a quarter of the gaming industry today, whereas smartphone gaming accounts for more than half of the market, demonstrating that one of PC gaming’s disadvantages is its lack of portability.

Many PC games support gaming controllers, but even if you have a keyboard and mouse, most players I know avoid using them. Because the keyboard, and especially the mouse, limit where you may game, on-the-go gaming is practically impossible.

Lenovo Legion Go is a gaming-focused Windows 11 portable computer with modular handheld controllers and ten mappable buttons, so you don’t miss out on the added capability of a keyboard.
The 8.8-inch screen offers 500 nits of brightness for outdoor viewing, and the battery is projected to last more than five hours and charge to 70% capacity in as little as 30 minutes. The gadget is a touch hefty as it should be to dissipate the amount of heat produced by a gaming rig but for many, this will make the device seem more solid and quality.

Despite the fact that this is a first-generation product, Lenovo has been producing gaming laptops for years. Because this gadget is only a new form factor, the dangers are largely related to the launcher (how you load and move between games and programmes). This will be fixed and updated throughout time without the need to replace the device, thus the risk to the first adopter is negligible.

As Christmas approaches, this might be the ideal present for the PC player who wants to be more mobile. Lenovo also unveiled Legion Glasses, a revolutionary head-mounted consumer display. I believe there is a potential to connect both devices to create a portable, big-screen gaming experience that is unrivalled in the industry. We’ll see what happens.

For the time being, my Product of the Week is the Lenovo Legion Go portable gaming gadget, which will be available in October for a starting price of $699.