Here is an interesting twist in the world of training and developing employees: Artificial Intelligence (AI) may be better at reading emotional intelligence than HR professionals.
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An exceptional human skill is reading people’s emotions, but robots may be better at it than trained HR professionals. A robot with the proper algorithm may be better served training employees, supervisors, and managers on the soft skills of emotional intelligence than an HR professional.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. By using AI and machine-learning algorithms a greater amount of HR data can be analyzed and evaluated at a level of efficiency and accuracy that no human can achieve. Could you image a HR professional evaluating an employee’s emotion with 87 per cent accuracy? Well, AI can reach that level of emotional accuracy. Researchers at MIT have created a wireless system called EQ-Radio, which uses wireless signals to scan an individual and identify if an individual is excited, happy, angry, or sad.
Click here to watch how MIT has developed an emotion detection machine.
Imagine what impact this type of technology may have on training and developing employees? Instead of using the end-of-training session reaction evaluations (commonly known as happy sheets), you can measure if your training had an emotional affect. In addition, there are many other HR applications of using emotions to understand employees at work.
AI and machine learning algorithms may just start to become mainstream in some workplaces. HR must be aware of the impacts of AI on the employees that work in organizations, how to use these new technologies, and how to manage the changes that these technologies will have.
Discussion Questions
Think about AI, machine learning, and EQ-Radio. How could these technologies disrupt training and development in the workplace?
Identify some of the potential ethical concerns that HR departments will need to address when companies start using emotional detection scanners in the workplace? What could HR do to reduce ethical and personal privacy concerns?