Artificial intelligence has been a sector to watch during the pandemic. The enterprise has been seeking new routes to efficiency, organizations with an abundance of furloughed or fired workers have bandwidth crunches, and some companies may have used the hardships of the past year to clean house with the intent of hiring fresh using new technology-driven strategies.
AI has been touted as a possible solution to all of these problems. It's also a tool that can help unlock the potential of adjacent technologies and, at its most evolved, potentially reshape how business is done.
What follows are predictions informed by a panel of experts who have been watching the space for years. The top line here is that machine learning and AI are finally beginning to penetrate mainstream organizations and will become increasingly commonplace and, in some deployments, crucial in 2021 as the pandemic winds down and businesses reemerge with new outlooks and structures.
Enterprise AI predictions for 2021
Hiring and managing employees
Whether a protracted recession is in the offing or not, there has been a lot of housecleaning during the pandemic[1] and there's bound to be renewed focus on hiring in 2021. I caught up with Kamal Ahluwalia, President of AI talent management firm Eightfold AI[2], for some reflections on the changing dynamic of work and the new pressures and opportunities when it comes to personnel.
"The future of work is diverse and remote work will accelerate the trend," says Ahluwalia. "As many have noted, the workplace will never be the same after COVID-19 and a significant portion of the workforce may continue to work remotely. Beyond work, the impact on hiring itself can't be overstated: talent can be recruited from anywhere and everywhere, opening up new possibilities across the board."
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