{"id":119208,"date":"2025-07-07T06:00:54","date_gmt":"2025-07-07T11:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thechicagoschool.edu\/insight\/?p=119208"},"modified":"2025-07-07T13:02:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-07T18:02:12","slug":"artificial-intelligance-promise-people-centric","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thechicagoschool.edu\/insight\/from-the-magazine\/artificial-intelligance-promise-people-centric\/","title":{"rendered":"Talent Transformation: Unleashing the People-Centric Promise of AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

Artificial intelligence (AI) may be just the latest in a long history of transformational business tools and technologies, but this time feels different. Though the concept of AI has existed for decades, it was long thought of as an inevitable advancement to which evolving technologies would lead us sometime in the future.<\/p>\n

Now the future is here.<\/p>\n

In the last couple of years, development of and widespread interest in generative AI has exploded in ways that have revolutionized how the people live their professional and personal lives. Perhaps not since widespread adoption of the internet some 30 years ago has technological change felt as instantaneous and profound not just for one sector, such as technology or professional services, but for everyone, everywhere.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI is going to affect every single industry,\u201d says Sean Nufer, Psy.D., senior director of teaching and learning at The Community Solution Education System and a graduate of the business psychology program at The Chicago School, where he\u2019s now a senior adjunct professor. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter if you\u2019re a hairdresser, a marketer, an educator or even a plumber. Somehow, generative technology will impact your profession.\u201d<\/p>\n

That includes psychologists in general and business and industrial and organizational (I\/O) psychologists in particular according to Dr. Nufer, who has been studying generative AI and training educators how to use it since the debut of ChatGPT in November 2022. In that time, he\u2019s come to an important conclusion about AI\u2019s impact on workers and businesses: Generative AI won\u2019t dehumanize work, he suggests. Instead, by empowering business and I\/O psychologists to be more efficient and effective, it might actually make workplaces more human instead of less.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

What Is Generative AI?<\/h2>\n

Based on large language models\u2014machine learning algorithms that computer scientists have taught to identify, comprehend, and create content by ingesting gargantuan amounts of training data\u2014generative AI can write essays, songs, and software code; develop new recipes and personalized exercise plans; convert currency and translate foreign languages; solve complex math and science problems; and even plan a travel itinerary for your next European vacation.<\/p>\n

Generative AI isn\u2019t just fun and games, though. In the business domains where business and I\/O psychologists work, generative AI can drive real, positive business outcomes according to Dr. Nufer.<\/p>\n

A promising use case for business and I\/O psychologists, in particular, is data collection and analysis. \u201cIf you were to run an employee engagement survey, for example, and get a dataset back \u2026 generative technology might be able to help you identify certain patterns and insights, or at least guide you in a certain direction so that you can make more observations and report on them,\u201d Dr. Nufer explains. \u201cIt\u2019s not going to be the end of your analysis, but it could be an additional step in the analytic process to help you identify something you didn\u2019t see, reinforce something that you did see or inspire you to look in a different direction than what you had considered previously.\u201d<\/p>\n

That sort of analysis could be especially useful in change-management contexts: During times of organizational change, business and I\/O psychologists equipped with generative AI could analyze historical and contemporary data to identify patterns and trends, which could help them foresee and predict potential obstacles and resistance and develop proactive plans for addressing them.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Leveraging Talent Instead of Tedium<\/h2>\n

The benefit of these and other use cases isn\u2019t that generative AI will replace business and I\/O psychologists\u2014because it won\u2019t, Dr. Nufer says. Rather, it\u2019s that generative AI will augment and empower them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think AI is going to take our jobs away from us, but it\u2019s definitely going to change our jobs,\u201d Dr. Nufer explains. \u201cIf we\u2019re really strategic, we can make better use of our personnel by using people for the skill sets that people are good at and using computers for the things that computers are good at.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the simplest terms, it\u2019s about making people more efficient so they can do fewer mundane and repetitive tasks and more of the things that they\u2019re best at doing.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cSome things that used to take a lot of time might not take as much time anymore,\u201d Dr. Nufer says. \u201cThat means we can allocate our time to other things. It means our workforce can be more cerebral and will have opportunities to engage in activities that it previously couldn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the case of business and I\/O psychologists, being more efficient means spending less time on administration and more time on relationships. Leaders who spend hours drafting written performance appraisals today can use generative AI to streamline that process, which will give them more bandwidth to interface with employees directly to discuss their behaviors, challenges, achievements, and objectives. As a result, performance management becomes more personal, more meaningful, more constructive\u2014and therefore more effective.<\/p>\n

The relationships that business and I\/O psychologists have with workers are their superpower, according to Dr. Nufer, who says people who understand people can bring critical context to generative AI outputs.<\/p>\n

\u201cUltimately, our students are going to be subject matter experts and authorities, and tools like ChatGPT will be their co-pilots,\u201d he predicts. \u201cAI might get something 98% correct, but that 2% error is where subject matter expertise is necessary and vital.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Being Aware of Biases<\/h2>\n

Business and I\/O psychologists must be as cognizant of AI\u2019s risks as they are of its opportunities, according to Dr. Nufer, who says bias is one of the technology\u2019s biggest warts. In the early days of generative AI, for example, he asked various generative AI platforms, including OpenAI\u2019s DALL-E, Midjourney, and Leonardo.ai, to generate headshots depicting \u201cprofessional people.\u201d The resulting images included a diversity of professions including restaurant servers, business people, and health care workers, among others. All of them, however, were \u201cwhite, middle-age, probably middle-class people,\u201d recalls Dr. Nufer, who says the machine learning algorithms that power AI are only as perfect as the human beings who create them.<\/p>\n

Before they rely on AI tools, users should make a habit of understanding their limitations and should strive to understand how their algorithms were trained and to what extent they were tested and validated.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of these systems are brand new,\u201d Dr. Nufer says. \u201cThey\u2019re like babies who haven\u2019t matured yet, and we all need to understand that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

New Ways of Working Demand New Ways of Learning<\/h2>\n

While it\u2019s true that generative AI is still in its infancy, The Chicago School is preparing business psychology and I\/O psychology graduates to succeed in a world where it\u2019s as common in the workplace as email, Slack, and Zoom.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI might not take our jobs, but if we aren\u2019t willing to adapt and learn, other people who know how to leverage AI properly will,\u201d says Dr. Nufer, who has modified lesson plans and assignments in his classroom in response to generative AI. For example, he previously might have asked students to write a paper on a given topic. Now that they can ask ChatGPT to write such a paper for them, however, he instead has students deliberately generate the first draft of a paper using generative AI, then edit, revise, and iterate to create a final product. Finally, he tasks students to write a paper reflecting on what AI produced and their experience improving it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore, it was about handing me a paper, and I would grade that paper. Now, what I\u2019m looking at is your process of interacting with AI,\u201d Dr. Nufer explains. \u201cI think it\u2019s more valuable for students this way because, after they graduate, it\u2019s not the paper that\u2019s going to benefit them in their jobs; it\u2019s the process they learned while writing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

When one sets aside the fervor that\u2019s surrounding it, that\u2019s what the real value of generative AI is for everyone in the workplace, including business and I\/O psychologists.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the day, AI and generative technologies are just another resource you can use to do your job,\u201d Dr. Nufer says. \u201cIn 2023, it seemed like the room was on fire because of generative AI, but that fire is already starting to die down, and when it does, we\u2019ll find ourselves in a new reality. We might do some things differently, but the quality of our work is going to be better because of it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/section>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Artificial intelligence (AI) may be just the latest in a long history of transformational business tools and technologies, but this time feels different. Though the concept of AI has existed for decades, it was long thought of as an inevitable advancement to which evolving technologies would lead us sometime in the future. Now the future is here. In the last couple of years, development of and widespread interest in generative AI has exploded in ways that have revolutionized how the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":119213,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1033],"class_list":["post-119208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-from-the-magazine"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nTalent Transformation: Unleashing the People-Centric Promise of AI - Insight Digital Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Artificial intelligence can help business and I\/O psychologists solve real enterprise challenges\u2014with more humanity, not less.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thechicagoschool.edu\/insight\/from-the-magazine\/artificial-intelligance-promise-people-centric\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Talent Transformation: Unleashing the People-Centric Promise of AI - 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