We have likely had numerous discussions about AI replacing or augmenting various roles, without a definitive answer on how it will unfold. However, one domain, which has ‘human’ in its very name, has been among the earliest adopters of AI.
We spoke about it earlier last year when we said ChatGPT takes over HR. Today, AI forms an integral part of human capital management (HCM) and Oracle is leading the way. Interestingly, Oracle’s HCM has even thought of agents and digital avatars to participate in all interactions.
AI Agents, Here Too
At the sidelines of the recent Oracle CloudWorld 2024 in Las Vegas, Nagaraj Nadendla, senior vice president of Oracle Cloud HCM Product Development, spoke to AIM about the scope of AI in high-volume HR tasks such as recruitment and brought up the concept of digital avatars doing it for you.
Citing the challenges of coordinating high-volume interviews in regions like India, APAC, JPAC, and Southern Latin America, where scheduling across multiple candidates can be time-consuming and repetitive, Nadendla proposed the concept of digital twins for automating the process and improving efficiency.
He asked the candidates to imagine having a digital twin as an agent who could coordinate and negotiate with other agents (digital twins). “It's not just about coordination,” Nadendla further added.
Nadendla focuses on AI agents in HR tasks as a feature that already exists. He believes it can handle tasks like sifting through thousands of resumes and identifying the most suitable candidates based solely on skill sets, bypassing potential biases related to gender, ethnicity, or educational background.
"Generative AI or passive AI in general doesn't know gender, ethnicity, [etc.]. It’s all about skills," Nadendla explained, highlighting how AI can mitigate some of the biases that have historically plagued the recruitment process.
While the idea of using AI agents for recruitment and other selection processes is intriguing, it inevitably raises the question of how these models will navigate and prevent hallucinations. Something Oracle is well aware of.
Free of Bias?
“Our team is also very focused on the forest, not the tree. The tree is the bias,” he said, "Every time there’s an introduction of technology, some derivative, not-so-great outcomes are there," he admitted.
However, he remains optimistic that the benefits of these innovations far outweigh the challenges, especially when organisations focus on the broader advantages rather than individual hurdles.
“Humans are the most wise. There's no machine that can beat humans,” said Nadendla. However, he highlighted that “human bias is worse than any other bias.”
Nadendla firmly believes that AI is playing a larger role in hiring, helping reduce bias and speeding up candidate screenings, especially in high-volume industries. He goes on to cite tools such as biopsychology-based assessments and AI-driven skill evaluations where human oversight remains crucial. While AI can handle tasks like sifting through resumes and assessing technical skills without bias, final evaluations and key decisions still require human judgement to ensure fairness.
In India, the HR tech platform GetWork.ai has been leveraging AI for recruitment tasks. The startup's CEO, Rahul Veerwal, earlier told AIM that their platform receives thousands of applications per job posting. To ease the process, it offers a feature that matches a candidate’s resume to the job description by percentile. Once the desired score is reached, an AI voice bot conducts interviews at a rate of 1,000 calls per minute, allowing recruiters to hire candidates within a day.
In a recent podcast, Matt MacInnis, COO of Rippling, a workforce management system, spoke about AI implementation. “AI is going to contribute in some way to evaluating Human Performance and so we knew there was an opportunity here and that's what talent signal is going to deliver,” said MacInnis, speaking about the company’s vision of using AI in their operations.
It is evident that the incorporation of AI into HR processes is now not new. Nadendla believes it is not about replacing human workers but enhancing their productivity and decision-making capabilities. "We are here to help our customers be successful in whatever endeavour they undertake," he concluded.
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