ChatGPT: the AI that transforms people management

This week we interviewed Bernat López: co-founder, CPO and CTO at niikiis, to talk about the irruption of artificial intelligence, ChatGPT and how it is revolutionizing the technology sector and even the way we learn, communicate and work.

Today, Artificial Intelligences (AI) are making a difference in practically all spheres of human activity related to technology. From the simplest browser searches to the creation of innovative projects.

One of the prominent examples in this area is ChatGPT, an AI specifically trained to have conversations with people. This revolutionary technology has opened up a world of possibilities by allowing users to interact through conventionally asked questions. ChatGPT is able to understand and respond to these queries, offering a wide range of functions and commands to make the most of its potential.

Despite significant advances in the field of Artificial Intelligence, there are many questions about its impact on productivity and its degree of reliability. Let's see what Bernat López thinks about how AI can influence our efficiency and whether we can have full confidence in it.

Hello Bernat, thank you for this interview. To begin with, we would like you to tell us who you are and what you are passionate about.

I was born in a small village surrounded by nature in the natural park of Montnegre-Corredor, near Barcelona. I am proud to be the father of two children and to have by my side my partner, who are my fundamental pillars in life.

I studied computer engineering at the UPC, and since then for more than 20 years I have dedicated my professional career to build technological solutions for clients from different sectors.

My passions are related to innovation: learning new paradigms or technologies and applying them in practical solutions; user experience: improving the usability of technological solutions by people and helping organizations to increase their productivity.

Let's talk about artificial intelligence and Chat GPT, which is very fashionable. Is it true that it makes us more productive?

Artificial intelligence will undoubtedly bring about a major revolution in how we conceive the world and our society in the coming years. In recent months, we are witnessing a media boom around LLMs (Large Language Models), systems built from processing a huge amount of information and organizing it into a vector database. These LLMs represent our second large-scale contact with AI technologies, the first being the one we are already very familiar with, the algorithms that recommend content on social networks.

Tools such as ChatGPT help us to be more productive in several aspects, allowing us to give quick answers, create summaries, classify information, among other functionalities. These potential applications, if used properly, can substantially improve our productivity.

A clear proof of this is that companies such as Microsoft have been quick to incorporate LLM-based solutions, such as Copilot, to their suite of products with the aim of helping us in our daily tasks, manage emails, agenda, documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

The integration of LLM systems into our work activities is a clear example of the advancement of artificial intelligence and how it can facilitate our tasks, streamline processes and improve work efficiency. As we adapt to these new tools and leverage their potential, we are witnessing the transformative impact of artificial intelligence in the business environment and beyond.

In January 2023, ChatGPT reached 100 million active users, just two months after its launch. This has probably made it one of the fastest growing apps in history.

How can we benefit from artificial intelligences such as Chat GPT for people management?

LLM technologies can undoubtedly be of great help in improving the interface of our information systems and can be very useful in managing people in a variety of ways. These technologies can support us in onboarding talent, provide quick answers to frequently asked questions from employees, streamline content creation (such as organizational surveys), offer guidance on internal policies and procedures, and provide relevant information on benefits and career development. In addition, they can help us summarize resumes or obtain key insights that facilitate our daily management tasks.

In 2023 in niikiis we will continue to evolve our virtual assistant, based on a hybrid model that combines traditional technology and LLM, to take advantage of all these benefits and obviously without neglecting the value provided by the human experience. Let's not forget that technology is a powerful tool, but so is human interaction and informed decision making for effective and successful people management.

And speaking of credibility, do you think we can trust what the AI tells us or recommends?

In the case of LLM solutions such as ChatGPT it is important that despite the eloquence with which these solutions respond to us, that we do not forget to recognize their inherent limitations and biases due to their algorithms and the way they have been trained. Thus, it will always be prudent for us to review and question their recommendations before making any important decisions considering other sources of information and taking into account the specific context.

For example, in our platform we regularly use machine learning (ML) or natural language processing (NLP) algorithms, which are other branches of AI, and which allow us to generate audios in several languages from texts or to verify the identity of workers through facial recognition.

The integration of LLM systems into our work activities is a clear example of the advancement of artificial intelligence and how it can facilitate our tasks, streamline processes and improve work efficiency. As we adapt to these new tools and leverage their potential, we are witnessing the transformative impact of artificial intelligence in the business environment and beyond.

What kind of people management activities do you think can be simplified or replaced in the long term with AI?

The application of AI algorithms should help us to improve our productivity and efficiency at a corporate level. In addition to the uses mentioned above, I believe that one of the main areas where AI can bring substantial benefits is in improving our ability to identify which people are the right ones to perform certain tasks or which ones are the best fit with our corporate culture, it can help us to improve the support and career planning of our employees or the work planning of our teams according to the real demand. 

I believe that in the long term AI will be able to play a very important role as a tool to support the management of people in organizations and, more broadly, also in all those disciplines related to the social sciences since it allows building knowledge based on learning that can include an efficient extraction of qualitative data.

How do you think people can adapt without fear to the implementation of AI in companies?

In general, change processes generate uncertainty, especially when it is known that AI will destroy jobs (as well as create new ones) and that we will increasingly have to get used to sharing our day-to-day work with different AI systems. I believe that the key to adapting to AI without fear is to understand that it is not a technology that we must confront, but rather, just as others have been before, it is a technology that should help us to improve our work. The best way to take that step is from our own curiosity and learning about these new solutions.

Finally, how can privacy and security of employee data be ensured when using AI in people management?

In organizations, the protection of the privacy and security of employee data is extremely important. In Europe in particular, we have a very clear regulatory framework and it is essential in all cases that both data protection rules and regulations are complied with.

The best way to guarantee the correct use of data by artificial intelligence is, on the one hand, to ensure that these systems only have restricted access to strictly necessary information and, on the other hand, by anonymizing the data of workers to help us protect their identity.

Personally, I believe that the emergence of new digital identity technologies will help us to better manage our personal data and give us explicit consent on which contexts it can be used and in which not, including our professional environment.