Sunday, November 3, 2024

She leads LinkedIn’s AI transformation to create more jobs: ‘I am an AI optimist because I believe in humans’

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What she saw propelled LinkedIn’s GenAI technology stack and products. Since November 2023, LinkedIn has been launching the features described earlier to function as a “co-pilot” for their users’ professional life.

The idea is to replace the drudgery of work, Ya, who has a PhD in Statistics from Stanford University, said.

For recruiters, instead of wasting time writing messages to candidates or painstakingly searching for the right candidate, this AI efficiency boost means they can spend more time talking to candidates, to hire the right talent for the role, Ya explained.

And as a candidate, “instead of trying to edit my resume 100 different times, AI can help with that process – instead of spending 10 hours, I only spend an hour”, she added.

As for ethical concerns about AI-written resumes, Ya said: “I think it matters less whether our resume is written by AI, but whether the content is what the human can stand behind. AI can help communication but humans need to be in control.”

A BRAVE NEW WORLD WITH AI

“I know there are AI pessimists – people who think AI is going to take over the world,” Ya said. “I would say, first of all, they think too little of human ingenuity.

“When the automatic teller machine (ATM) first came out, everyone was like, it’s going to take over the bank teller’s job. Fast forward 60 years, you would have imagined that with ATMs everywhere, we would have less bank tellers.

“But no, actually, there are more people working in bank services than ever before. Because all of a sudden, the bank teller’s job is not giving cash, which a machine can do. There is so much more that banks are doing now. Financial management as a career was created,” she said.

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