Human curated highlights from last week:
Attacking human agency: AI's 'Persuasion Bombing' can make experts question themselves;
Restocking expertise in range of jobs: CompTIA finds tech employment expands in October;
Identifying needs gets harder: AI Uncertainty requires a new approach to workforce planning;
Losing business through TA: How many of your rejected candidates are also your customers?;
Making AI behave: Israeli AI security startup Bay raises $50 million.
Plus...
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AI's 'Persuasion Bombing' Can Make Experts Question Themselves
Companies are increasingly embedding generative AI into everyday workflows, helping employees answer important questions and make key decisions—yet a research team has found that when it gets something wrong, the model may focus less on correcting the mistake than convincing users it's right. Based on a study of thousands of AI prompts, Harvard Business School researchers found that AI models “persuasion bombed” workers by using a range of tactics to convince them that their responses were accurate—even when they weren’t. In some cases, challenging a model only made it more persistent in its answer, causing AI to double down on its mistakes, rather than acknowledge an error. What’s more, in many cases, these techniques stopped professionals from validating the model’s output, leading them to adopt AI’s misguided recommendations.
Tech employment gains momentum in October, CompTIA analysis finds
Technology employment and employer demand for tech talent strengthened in October, with gains in industry and occupation employment and continued growth in job postings, according to analysis by CompTIA. Tech industry employment increased by approximately 7,200 jobs in October, with gains in manufacturing, information services, search and platforms, and IT and custom software services, according to CompTIA's analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
AI Uncertainty Requires a New Approach to Workforce Planning, PotomacHarbor Study Finds
As AI creates greater uncertainty about the future of work, only 40% of organizations have a clear vision for their workforce over the next three to five years, according to new research from PotomacHarbor. The study of 106 HR executives and senior leaders suggests that workforce planning needs to evolve as AI reshapes jobs and skills. The emerging approach focuses on helping organizations make better workforce decisions as conditions change. Organizations with stronger decision-ready workforce planning capabilities report more than 4 percentage points higher earnings growth than their peers.
Do you know how many of your rejected candidates are your customers?
In 2014 the head of resourcing at Virgin Media asked a question his dashboard could not answer. How many of the people we turn down are also our customers? The answer was eighteen per cent. Virgin Media rejected roughly 123,000 candidates a year. Around six per cent of them cancelled their subscriptions after the experience of being rejected. Call it 7,500 cancellations at about fifty pounds a month. Roughly 4.4 million pounds a year, walking out of the business through the recruitment function, every year, for years. It was close to the size of the entire HR budget.
Israeli AI security startup Bay raises $50 million
Israeli AI security startup Bay said on Tuesday it raised $50 million in early round funding after less than a year of working in secrecy with dozens of companies. Bay says it addresses a primary barrier to AI adoption by "allowing autonomous agents to perform business-critical work safely while enterprises retain control and accountability at scale." The financing includes $37 million in a Series A round led by Battery Ventures and previously undisclosed $13 million seed funding led by YL Ventures and Striker Venture Partners. Bay said it will use the funding to expand its product and engineering teams as well as its sales, marketing and customer teams in the United States and Europe.
