Will ChatGPT replace HR?

Have you had any of these conversations recently?

"Have you used ChatGPT yet?"

Me: "No, I haven't got round to it yet." Thinking: What is she talking about? I have to google it.

"Have you used ChatGPT yet? You really have to try it out. I did yesterday ..."

Me: "I tried it, but the system was overloaded. I couldn't log in at all." Thinking: I need to finally understand what everyone is talking about.

Assuming that I'm not the only one who has experienced this, I was keen to take a closer look at the issue and analyse it in the HR context in particular. That's why I spoke to Esther Brand, the mum of our chatbot Sophie and therefore our chatbot expert.

First things first: what are we actually talking about?

ChatGPT is a publicly accessible chatbot that is very good at understanding and reproducing human language thanks to its extensive training data. It can answer questions, write poems or scripts, write blog posts, summarise texts and even recognise emotions. To do this, it uses the GPT-3 language processing model, which analyses prompts, divides the text into small parts and determines their part of speech and function, such as whether it is a noun, a verb or a filler word. It also recognises the relationships between the words and attempts to derive the context in order to generate a suitable response. GPT-3 accesses a complex network with around 175 billion parameters and an almost unimaginable number of terms from freely available internet sources such as Wikipedia or social media platforms. The Pro version of ChatGPT already works with GPT-4, which is said to have been trained with a trillion parameters and therefore offers enormous progress compared to GPT-3.

Why is everyone talking about it? Chatbots already existed before!

This is because ChatGPT is a significant step forward in the development of chatbots. Unlike previous chatbots, which were mostly based on rigid rules or simple patterns, ChatGPT is able to have human-like conversations based on its GPT-3 language processing model. It can deduce the meaning and context of sentences and phrases and generate suitable responses without having to be specially programmed. ChatGPT is also freely available. Until now, many people were only familiar with simple chatbots from online customer service.

The whole development must have cost an incredible amount of money. Who is behind it?

The non-profit organisation OpenAI is behind ChatGPT. It was founded in 2015 in Silicon Valley, California. One of its co-founders was Elon Musk, who left the organisation in 2018 for reasons of conflict with Tesla. OpenAI conducts research in the field of artificial intelligence. They are known for their language processing models of the GPT series (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) and the image generation tool DALL-E. At the same time, OpenAI is strongly committed to the research and development of AI ethics and AI safety to ensure that AI systems are used safely and responsibly. OpenAI receives billions in regular financial support from its partner Microsoft. Since 2016, the majority of the experiments have been running on their Azure cloud platform. Microsoft benefits from this partnership and will incorporate ChatGPT into the Bing search engine and other products.

So how can we access ChatGPT itself or the Technology behind it?

There are three possibilities or scenarios:

1. Using ChatGPT via OpenAI's chat platform as it is currently available.
2. Integrate the functionality of ChatGPT into your own HR tools using the OpenAI API.
3. Waiting for large HR Software manufacturers such as UKG or SAP SuccessFactors to integrate ChatGPT's artificial intelligence in the background.

In the first scenario, I ask my question directly to ChatGPT instead of googling it or asking it in forums like HR Cosmos. How useful is that? What do I need to consider?

ChatGPT has a huge amount of knowledge and can give you guidance, tips and advice. However, you should be careful with regard to two topics.

Firstly, what information you feed ChatGPT when asking questions. The chatbot also uses this information to answer questions. At the beginning of the year, Amazon warned its employees not to share confidential information with ChatGPT after cases arose in which its answers came "very close" to unpublished internal information. Feeding ChatGPT with CVs to compare profiles, for example, is therefore not a good idea!

Secondly, you should be careful with regard to legal matters. The answers are only as good as the data behind them and we are not told the source. Here it makes sense to have the chatbot's answer verified by a lawyer.

Let's take a look at a practical example. We ask the same question once to ChatGPT and the free knowledge platform HR Cosmos and compare the answers.

The devil is in the detail. Although ChatGPT's answer appears correct at first glance, not all statements are correct. For example, the threshold of CHF 148,200 of annual income above which the tax is levied is not mentioned. Furthermore, the statement that the tax was introduced in 1999 is incorrect. The first taxation already took place in 1996. The decisive factor is the threshold of CHF 2.5 billion, above which contributions are due for the year or not. This was also not mentioned by ChatGPT.

In the second scenario, you talk about integrating the functionality of ChatGPT with the OpenAI API into your own HR tools. Is that possible?

Yes, ChatGPT offers the option of integrating your own systems via API (programming interface). This is subject to a fee. However, the input via API is not used for training ChatGPT. This can be used to automatically create texts for letters, agreements or job advertisements, for example. The API can also be used for text analysis to extract sentiment, topics or keywords.

It should be noted that the API currently processes and stores all its user data in the USA. This can quickly lead to a conflict with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). If you want to be on the safe side, use products with servers for data processing in Switzerland or the EU.

In the third scenario, you talk about tool providers such as SAP or UKG incorporating ChatGPT Technology into their own tools. Are there any concrete plans yet?

Of course, companies are interested in combining the latest technologies with their own products. ChatGPT represents a milestone in speech processing. However, we don't yet know how existing tool providers will integrate this potential into their solutions.

So, does this mean that ChatGPT will replace HR?

No, that will never happen completely. Many HR tasks require human empathy, experience and judgement. A chatbot cannot and should not replace these human skills. For example, in the development of the digital HR assistant Sophie, we are trying to use new technologies to offer employees proactive, fast and easy-to-understand support. Decisions and control functions remain in the hands of people.

An example of how new technologies could be used in the Onboarding & Offboarding process is as follows:

On joining, the digital HR assistant or chatbot can provide information and documents to welcome and orientate new employees. At the same time, HR employees can focus on personal support and answering individual questions from new employees to ensure successful integration into the company. When employees leave, the digital HR assistant or chatbot can help with the creation of leaving forms or other administrative tasks. It is also already possible to analyse exit surveys. HR employees therefore have more time for in-depth personal discussions and can focus on using the feedback for optimisation.

It therefore makes sense to look at the use of new technologies topic by topic. In the article " Artificial intelligence in HR " in HR Today, we took a closer look at this.

Sources

• Chat GPT: Amazon warns its employees to use new AI tool - Business Insider (01.03.2023)
• Partners with Microsoft (01.03.2023)
• Data usage policies - OpenAI API (15.03.2023)