How AI Became my IA (Interesting Anecdote) at this year’s CIPD Conference

CIPD’s Annual Conference and Exhibition (ACE) is two days of conference talks and workshops led by experts in their fields. It’s usually the best HR based CPD I get each year and helps me to understand what’s going on in the world of work. There is so much I learnt and so much to talk about.

As my role is to run MOL’s suite of CIPD qualifications (level 3, 5 and 7), it’s important I’m up to date in this field so I can ensure our learners are getting the most current information in their materials. Going to ACE is a part of my job that I love and the 2024 conference was no exception.

This year we had talks from Professor Michael Woolridge who is the UK’s AI expert, Suzie Dent who talked about the value of words and language, and Dame Maggie Aderin-Pocock who talked about the importance of getting more children (and adults) into STEM subjects.

There were talks on lots of topics such as hybrid working and employee engagement. But the noticeable main focus at the conference was, understandably, the new technology that is in the process of changing all our lives. This is what I wanted to focus on in my blog.

AI explained in simple terms

When the media talks about “AI” it generally means LLMs (Large language models) such as Chat GPT. These have captured the imagination of the public, more so than previous AI technologies such as AI used for games, mathematics, facial recognition and autonomous cars. LLMs are essentially a very advanced predictive tool.

The recent jump in processing power and computer capabilities has meant that “AI” has grown exponentially in capability over just a couple of years. This has meant a lot is already changing and it has or will affect every industry and organisation. We are at the start of a new digital revolution.

I found it interesting that the biggest tech companies didn’t predict the success of Chat GPT. So they are changing direction in their investment and research very quickly in a rush to meet the markets.

Why are we all using AI?

1. We can expect bigger and better AI continually. And this is why we should get on board and get to grips with it now.
2. It’s going to keep growing. The AI we use today will be the worst we ever use. So, the longer you don’t use it, the harder it will be to learn it.
3. LLMs can act as a clever assistant, for example it can give you a first draft of a letter/policy/strategy/article in just seconds, which you can then review.
4. It is incredibly quick compared to a human doing the same research.
5. It has ‘emergent capability’ which means it’s doing things the creators didn’t expect. This is what makes it “intelligent”.
6. It’s very good at summarising and improving documents and so will help people do their jobs quicker.
7. It can be creative, within strict remits. For example, it can come up with advertising slogans or poetry. The quality is mixed – but then so is the output of humans.
8. It is easy to critique so if you don’t like what it’s created for you, just change the prompt.
9. It will create new roles. For example, when Youtube was created in 2005 no one predicted “influencers” would be an incredibly lucrative and popular job today.
10. 1/5 students admit to using it in their assignments. Those of us working in education need to find ways to ensure learners are using AI ethically and it isn’t replacing learning.
11. It can help us gather and analyse so much more data than ever before so we can ensure we can be more informed and ensure we are spending our time on the right things.

Sounds great, but are there any risks?

Like all new technologies, there are risks to us embedding this into our daily work and home lives. Here are the 6 most serious ones to keep in mind:

1. LLMs lie convincingly so a human will always need to check what it’s saying. It is not designed to tell the truth but to tell the most plausible thing. It is essentially a very clever predictive text. In the absence of data, or not being able to find data effectively, it makes things up, or “hallucinates”.
2. A lot of authors are unhappy because it can pull information from whole publications without copyright. It doesn’t cite where it gets information from so there are Intellectual Property issues.
3. It can be used in the wrong way in the wrong hands as people have access to some very bad content. 
4. AI generated data leads to poor data, yet it’s estimated that AI will have created the vast majority of content on the internet in the next year or so. Therefore, human created data is incredibly valuable, and the tech companies want our data so their increasingly powerful LLMs can learn more. Remember this every time you post anything on social media or a website – you are helping AI learn (and tech companies get rich). Also be careful what you put into any LLM as it may breach GDPR or privacy laws.
5. It is much easier to use AI to create work for us than humans because it doesn’t get offended when we don’t like what it gives us. You just change the prompt. There is a concern people will use AI more rather than dealing with the complex relationships of humans. This is a risk because challenges can be healthy and make sure we’ve thought things through.
6. The Environmental impact is a concern. Data farms use up an incredible amount of water and energy and a ChatGPT search uses about 10x the energy of a Google search. AI will come at a price to the environment, as all technology does.

So what do we do next with AI?

One speaker gave a great anecdote for how people react to AI (and any new technology), and what it can mean.

She has three team members who write a lot of letters as part of their role. One team member started to use AI to help her write the letters and spent the time she saved thinking more strategically and doing more interesting things in her role. The second team member started using AI to write the letters and started to leave work early with the time she saved. The third team member carried on writing letters the old way and didn’t save time or get to do more interesting things.

This is a really good example of the choices we face to how we react to this new technology, as well as other new technologies that are naturally going to arise as part of this industrial revolution. We can use it to try to help us in different ways or we can keep doing what we’ve always done, and get the same results.

Let’s be part of the change and get excited about what it can do for us.