An L&D and HR conversation with… series will feature video interviews with leaders in Learning & Development and Human Resources, sharing learnings, trends and challenges from some of the region’s leading organisations.

How would you describe yourself in three words?

Daniel: I was just about to ask ChatGPT for what it would say about me, but I think the three words are AI, impact, and innovation.

What are you most excited about in the next 12 months?

Daniel: The next twelve months, I think a lot of the promise that we have had about the capability around particularly generative models being able to do audio, video, will actually come to fruition.

So rather than just being able to ask questions that generate images, I think that that will start to be really perfected over the next twelve months and everybody will then have the capability to create whatever they want, which I think is going to be very exciting.

What are the keyways in which AI will transform L&D and HR working environment?

Daniel: Well, certainly these technologies are going to disrupt how we work in many ways and we need to be able to adapt more quickly to that changing world. What we can do is use these technologies, not just to understand people’s roles or profiles, but we can understand what skills they have, whether they or not they have feedback for you, whether people go to you for advice.

And we can start to kind of essentially understand people in a much more granular way, and then use AI to allocate or recommend people to work in a much more effective way that aligns with their values, and the values of the organisation. So we’re going to get much more granular, and flexible, and fluid, about how we deploy and activate our workforce.

How far reaching is the potential for AI to transform workforce allocation? 

Daniel: Anywhere there is a friction or a potential gain, I think there’s an opportunity to apply these technologies. The people listening to this call will know better than me, the pains and opportunities they have in their industry.So imagine taking that pain and making it go away or thinking about something they want to do well and amplify tenfold. So think about that world in five years time and then what opportunities will live beyond that world?

So assume that over the next five years we’re going to highly optimise, make our organisations much more efficient, effective. What will that mean to the world? Exciting opportunities live beyond that.

How have you applied your academic research and modelling to generate transformation in your business?

Daniel: I think there’s something very important to have a foundational understanding of things. Everybody’s an AI philosopher now on LinkedIn – which is great, it’s fantastic that people are talking about these things.

But my PhD gave me a deep foundational understanding of both neural networks, which was when I was trying to model the brain of Bumblebees and also complexity theory. So how hard or easy it is to solve problems and so having that foundational knowledge has helped me understand how to best place and apply these technologies. I think without that knowledge you tend to apply the wrong technologies to solve problems that you don’t understand. So I think over the past decade we’ve seen a mass misinvestment actually of these technologies.

But as people are getting more savvy and smarter, we’re going to start to see a much more effective use of them.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received in your working life?  

Daniel: The best piece of advice is to get advice. I know, that the old adage, which is, if a genie gives you three wishes, the first wish you should ask for is more wishes.

But I think my advice is to surround yourself with people who have diverse thoughts, perspectives, and expertise to help guide you on your journey. So, my advice is to get as much advice as possible.

What is it that stops humans from unlocking their full creative capacity, and how does the leveraging of technology help aid in this?

Daniel: I think Woody Allen said 80% of success is turning up. What I mean by that is that just giving people the time and their head space and the right to turn their attention to something different, I think is the first step. We give people the 10% time, the 20% time in our organisations, but we really don’t provide a discipline to enable people to do that.

So freeing people up from mundane, repetitive tasks, giving them the licence, the opportunity and the focus on applying their creativity, I think, is the first step.

Will the impact of technology on the labour force be one of optimisation or replacement?

Daniel: It’s difficult to see what the world will look like beyond the next ten years.

I certainly believe that over the next ten years, we’re going to see a Cambrian explosion of innovations, of opportunities born out of these technologies, which will give people new ways of learning and contributing to humanity.

I think beyond ten years, it’s just difficult to say, but actually, I’m a believer that if we got the timing right, we can remove friction. We can use these technologies to remove the friction, which usually means human labour, of the creation and dissemination of goods. And if we can remove so much friction from food, health care, education, shelter, energy, can bring the cost of those goods down to essentially zero. Imagine being born into a world where you don’t have to do paid work.

Now people say to me, Daniel, what would I do if I didn’t have to work? And I know lots of people who don’t have to work. They’re not sitting at home bored and depressed. They use their time and their assets to develop themselves and to try and contribute to humanity.

I believe that we all have an innate desire to want to become better and want to help other people to become better. And I think that’s the world that I want to create.

What are you most looking forward to at the L&D + HR Symposium? 

Daniel: I really enjoy inspiring people and helping people understand what these technologies are. But I am really passionate about how these technologies can not only sell more stuff or to optimise our operations, but how they can unlock the creative capacity of our workforce, but also facing into the challenges associated with that.

So how do you do performance management, for example, when you’re not a role anymore, but you’re a plethora of different skills?

We’re actually facing into quite a lot of organisational challenges that prevent us from operating these fluid, flexible ways, these ways we want to work. And I’m interested in engaging with the audience to try to understand how we can navigate some of those complexities.

L&D + HR Symposium, 1-2 August 2023, will bring together 180 L&D and HR professionals for a day of conference featuring inspiring international keynotes and the best local case studies.