Human Resources Executive Report

AI: Google’s Threat or Opportunity

Subject: Human Resources

Academic year: 2022/2023
Date: 28/04/2023
Executers: Iván López Landete, Sven Florentino Majerus, Cheng Haoyu, Carles Vilaplana &
Mario Hontoria
Index

1. Introduction …………………………………………………………………………….. pages 2 to 7

2. Google and its relation with AI……………………………………………..……… pages 8 to 10

3. Description of the challenge and analysis of the symptoms………….…………pages 11 to 14

3. Recommendations and implementation plan…………………………………..…pages 15 to 16

4. Conclussion………………………………………………………………….………. page 17

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1. INTRODUCTION

Artificial Intelligence consists of the capacity given by humans to machines to memorize and
learn from experience, to think and create, to judge and make decisions based on their own
reasoning.

Without doubt it is since last years’ second half when the largest percentage of society has
become truly aware of AI’s existence, although the birth of this technology goes back to
1943, when Warren McCullough and Walter Pitts published an article called ‘A Logical
Calculus of Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity’.

This article served as a presentation of the first mathematical model able to create a neuronal
network and preceded the creation, in 1950, of the first neuronal network computer, built by
two Harvard students called Marvin Minsky and Dean Edmonds.

During this last year plenty of AI based tools have been made public, enabling any person
with a standard Internet connection to access some of the most avant-garde technologies.
Excellent examples of this are Chat GPT, the most well-known AI chatbot with more than
one model developed, or Deep L, which is an intelligent translator composed of a total of 26
languages with no meaning variation.

Chat GPT logotype Deep L logotype

The question an increasing number of companies and organizations are asking themselves is
how these tools can affect the performance of their employees.
Despite these instruments being highly useful, especially when it comes to facilitating and
shortening processes, there is a clear counterpart to this: what if workers use them not as a
supporting feature but as a substitution for their job?

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In other words, companies would be dealing with inefficient employees who ultimately are
only copying what already exists, adding zero value to the equation and, in an extreme
situation, putting in danger the company’s competitive advantage.

This is the main topic we are going to address in this project, facing it through its different
perspectives in order to shed light on a matter which is often confusing and
miscommunicated.

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1.1 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN NUMBERS

As mentioned before, artificial intelligence is the ability for machines to learn and make
decisions based on their experiences. This can be used effectively inside businesses and
change the global concept of work.

Businesses today have more access to data than ever before. According to Forbes writer Gil
P.’s article 54 Predictions About The State Of Data in 2021 from
https://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2021/12/30/54-predictions-about-the-state-of-data-in-2
021/?sh=542f22cc397d, the number of data generated and absorbed increased by 5000%
between 2010 and 2020. Because of this, businesses can collect data in an easier way from
their customers, influencing them into making better or more suitable decisions.

In the report overview, (n.d.) Artificial Intelligence Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis
Report By Solution, By Technology (Deep Learning, Machine Learning), By End-use, By
Region, And Segment Forecasts, 2023 - 2030A. Retrieved, April 29, 2023 from
https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/artificial-intelligence-ai-market. It is
stated that general artificial intelligence market size was valued at USD 136.55 billion in
2022 and is projected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 37.3% from 2023 to
2030.

Consistent with this, a 2021 online study of 1,843 participants made by McKinsey of
emerging economies indicating artificial intelligence adoption shows that 56% of respondents
report AI adoption in at least one business function compared to 50% in 2020. Michael,C. ;
Bryce, H. ; Alex,S. ; Alex,S. (2021, December 8) The state of AI in 2021. Retrieved, April
29, 2023 from
https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/global-survey-the-state-of
-ai-in-2021.

In Accenture’s report on AI, published by Athena, R. ; Joe,D. ; Greg,D. (2019, November 14)
AI Built to Scale. Retrieved, April 29, 2023 from
https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insights/artificial-intelligence/ai-investments#:~:text=84%
25%20of%20C%2Dsuite%20executives,struggle%20with%20how%20to%20scale involving
1,500 C-suite executives from companies with a minimum revenue of US$1 billion in 12
countries around the world across 16 industries. 84% of C-suite executives believe they must
leverage AI to achieve their growth objectives.

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All these statistics demonstrate that artificial intelligence is no longer used by only a small
margin of companies. Around the world, lots of companies use it as their core function.

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1.2 THE UTILITY OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN BUSINESS

There exist numerous ways how artificial intelligence can help an enterprise according to the
Wharton School, (n.d.) How Do Businesses Use Artificial Intelligence? Retrieved, April 29,
2023 from
https://online.wharton.upenn.edu/blog/how-do-businesses-use-artificial-intelligence/

However, most AI is used to navigate expansion. Some of these include :

● Improving efficency by automation procedure

● Ameliorating speed and consistency of services
● Considering customer data for better decision-making
● Discovering opportunities for new products and services

In fact, artificial intelligence can be used for diverse business strategies. Nevertheless, it is
also important for a business to understand how AI is collecting data and analyzing it. By
understanding this approach, a company can determine how AI might be able to help them.

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1.3 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE’ UTILITY EXEMPLIFIED

In an online article published by Dr. Ramesh, R. (n.d.) 10 Examples of Artificial Intelligence

in Business. Retrieved, April 29, 2023 from
https://onlinedegrees.sandiego.edu/artificial-intelligence-business/, the author mentions
plenty of examples on how businesses use artificial intelligence.

For instance, Facebook uses artificial intelligence in order to identify people in pictures and
removes inappropriate visualizations.

Under Armour has an app which uses AI. The objective is to collect health information such
as physical activity, sleep and diet to make personalized recommendations based on workout
and health goals.

Hilton Hotels used a robotic concierge named “Connie” who greets guests.

Amazon uses AI to track customer spending behavior and also to anticipate how many units
of a specific product should be bought.

These are only a few examples of all the possibilities, since the number of AI projects keeps
increasing day by day.

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2. GOOGLE AND ITS RELATION WITH AI

The surge of Artificial Intelligence based projects and companies threatens the competitive
edge big technological companies had until now, highlighting especially Google.

The case of Google is curious and particular, since although being part of the most successful
technology holding in the world, Alphabet, it has still not been able to bring to the market an
AI tool capable of competing with younger companies such as Open Ai.

Google’s chatbot ‘Bard’ logotype

For Instance, the chatbot developed by Google, named Bard, is not even present in the fifteen
most used AI chatbots, which is currently dominated by Netomi and Chat GPT. Found in
https://www.netomi.com/best-ai-chatbot, Dylan Max (March of 2023).

Although Google is currently outpaced by several companies regarding the development of

this technology, the California based company has a long record in terms of Artificial
Intelligence projects. Now we proceed to dive into it.

In the first place, Google has been using AI in its search engine with the purpose of
optimizing and precising the results, being BERT their first project. BERT consisted of a
transformer model, revolutionary in understanding the intricacies of human language. Found
in https://blog.google/technology/ai/bard-google-ai-search-updates/, Sundar Pichai
(February of 2023).

Subsequently, in 2021 Google developed an improved model of this tool named MUM,
which is one thousand times more powerful than BERT and counts with next-level and
multilingual understanding of information.

In a whole, Google Inc has focused on improving the precision of its search engine, making it
easier for the user to find what he is looking for.

However, here comes the problem the company is facing:

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Its narrow vision has resulted in an outplacement by other companies in everything AI
regards, given that Google’s main competitive edge (search engine precision), is no longer
the most precise option in the market.

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2.1 GOOGLE’S VISION ON AI

According to Karthik Kashyaps’ (February 2023) article AI Generated Content Not Against
Its Policies: Google Clarifies
https://www.spiceworks.com/marketing/content-marketing/news/ai-generated-content-not-ag
ainst-google-policies/#:~:text=Google%20Clarifies%20Its%20Stand&text=Using%20autom
ation%20%E2%80%94%20including%20AI%20%E2%80%94%20to,including%20AI%20ge
neration%2C%20is%20spam, Google has already made clear its positive opinion on AI,
especially on that one related with the creation of helpful content, which is the one the
company is mostly affected by.

However, Google is openly against using automation tools or services, including AI, to
generate content with the primary purpose of manipulating rankings in search results, being
this a violation of the companies’ spam policies.

According to Venntov’s (January 2023) article What Does Google Think About AI?
https://venntov.com/blogs/blog/what-does-google-think-about-ai-content Google’s search
advocate, John Muller, expressed that while the quality of generated content has improved,
this one is still considered spam by Google.

In order to ‘solve’ this issue, in mid-2022 the company announced its Helpful Content
Update, which put stronger emphasis on creating content for people, not robots.

It is important to mention that Google has been coping with AI-generated content for some
years now, since a large number of content creators have already been taking advantage of
tools such as Chat GPT2, which was released in 2019. Still, the company’s system has been
dealing pretty accurately with it, so AI content generators shouldn’t be a threat for the
technology multinational.

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3. DESCRIPTION OF THE CHALLENGE AND ANALYSIS OF THE
SYMPTOMS

3.1 THE CHALLENGES

Before analyzing the existing challenges of GOOGLE, it is important to be clear about what
Google does now and to define what Google's philosophy, vision and development has
always been.

Google is currently the most used and largest search engine in the world. This is the main
business of Google. At the same time, based on the Google search platform, Google has
developed a series of complementary services, such as GMAIL, GOOGLE PLAY, GOOGLE
DRIVE, GOOGLE MEET, GOOGLE MAPS and other products that can increase the
stickiness of users. At the same time, Google's advertising revenue is also an important sector
for Google (look for data support).

Google's OBJECTIVE is to organize the world's information and make it universally

accessible and useful.

In this vision, Google uses an automated system that combines many factors, including the
words in the query, the content of the page, the expertise of the source, the language used and
the location of the user, to give the user a relevant and reliable search result. (AI is available).

But today's needs for information are numerous and complex. Information exists not only on
web pages, but also in images, videos, news, sports scores and many other types of content.
So if people want to search for directions, GOOGLE MAPS will show them first. When
people use email, GMAIL will be a good choice for them. A simple search engine is not
enough to retain the huge amount of users, so on top of that, it needs to be complemented by
products that increase customer stickiness.

These are the basic facts and advantages of Google.

However, nowadays Google has important issues regarding the expansion of Artificial
Intelligence companies, since they are not only its newest competitors but also an incentive
for its employees to come up with quality-poor work.

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Following several internal studies the Human Resources department of Google’s headquarters
has executed, the employees of the company have been making increasing use of AI tools
with the purpose of automatizing certain processes and tasks.

This is the most relevant challenge the multinational has, since the competitive edge Google
has comes mostly from the skills its employees are required in order to work there.

Moreover, the second most conflictive challenge the company is currently facing consists of
the lack of confidence a large number of employees have towards the Artificial Intelligence
tools Google has developed these last years.

The best example is the company’s ex engineer Blake Lemoine, who according to Michael
Kans’ article Google Fires Engineer Who Claimed LaMDA ChatBot Is a Sentient AI
https://www.pcmag.com/news/a-google-employee-thinks-the-company-created-a-sentient-ai
(July 2022), was fired for showing evidence of the extreme self-awareness the chatbot has
and that the company denies.

Obviously, this kind of news does not positively affect the image of the multinational, since
users may see the tool as a threat to their privacy.

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3.2 ANALYSIS OF THE SYMPTOMS

As Google is a company that relies heavily on the skills of its employees themselves.
Employees' own skills are what make them established at Google. And now, in their daily
work, employees use a lot of existing AI technology to cope with their work, and over time,
there will be a convergence of work across the company.

People's ideas are reflected less and less in their work, and the whole company will lack
flexibility and creativity. The company will then gradually become identical to those new AI
companies, resulting in the company's competitive advantage diminishing or even
disappearing. This is very detrimental to the future development of the company.

Secondly, since the employees' work may involve the company's privacy or some new
features that have not yet been introduced, new goals. In these jobs, the use of AI by
employees may cause leaks to happen and not fully protect the company's privacy.

Another symptom is that AI is not currently developed to the point where it is fully
trustworthy. Many studies by people have shown that AI currently has the potential to
develop self-awareness and keep evolving itself out of human control. As a result, the future
of AI is uncertain.

Recently, the Italian Data Supervisory Authority issued a ban on the artificial intelligence app
ChatGPT. According to the Italian Data Supervisory Authority, ChatGPT is unable to verify
the age of its users and "exposes minors to answers that are absolutely incompatible with
their level of development and consciousness", and there have been incidents of data leakage
involving user conversations and payment information.

It also pointed out that there is no legal basis to justify "the collection and storage of large
amounts of personal data for the purpose of 'training' algorithms to run on the platform".

AI is now growing wildly, like a double-edged sword, making it easier for workers to
perform repetitive tasks, but at the same time there are many unreliable and insecure factors
at play.

Therefore, it is still unclear how much of the work and how much of the management of the
company should be done by AI in the future. We need to explore and experiment further. But
what is certain is that, with the current development of AI, the use of too much AI in the

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workplace should be strongly discouraged. This could cause a certain degree of stagnation or
even "backwardness" in the development of the company.

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4. RECOMMENDATIONS AND IMPLEMENTATION PLAN

Google, being at the forefront of technological innovation, has the potential to leverage the
power of Artificial Intelligence (AI). However, we want to highlight how Google (and many
other companies) are having problems and will have problems to control and to try to keep
their employees from overusing AI. For that we will try to bring some actions that we think
could be the key to retain the talent and avoid the issues that can bring us the AI.

First of all, we believe in the necessity of establishing clear policies on the use of AI tools at
work, and the employees must know for what the use of the AI is allowed and for what it is
not. It’s true that this measure will not be very effective in many cases, and for that we
believe that it could be very interesting to use some actual tools like Google Bard, but a
limited version of it restricting and controlling the use and the access of the workers to other
AI tools.

A solution to this problem then could be to offer the workers limited versions of AI tools,
which would only have the possibility to be used in specific actions. In addition to this relies
the importance of Google developing its own AI platforms, since the limitation of artificial
intelligence-based instruments without the development of controlled platforms with, at least,
the same possibilities, will be of no use.

On the other hand, another interesting option is the creation of AI training and education
teams. These teams can provide AI training to employees, from a basic introduction to AI
concepts to specialized training in the use of specific systems. They can also provide
educational resources, such as online courses and video tutorials which allow workers to
learn on their own.

Additionally, AI training and education teams can serve as a point of contact for workers to
get answers to their questions about AI systems and provide feedback on the use of AI in the
workplace. They can also work with other teams, such as the software development team, to
ensure AI systems are easy to use and designed intuitively for workers.

In summary, AI training and education teams are an important part of a comprehensive AI

implementation strategy in the workplace. By promoting AI awareness and understanding
among workers, companies can maximize the benefits of AI while minimizing potential risks
and issues.

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One more possibility we have come up with on how Google can address the issue, is by
relocating employees who currently perform repetitive tasks which could be taken over by AI
to teams responsible for the development and control of the artificial intelligence projects and
products. Here comes the importance of the HR Triad, composed of line managers, human
resources professionals and employees, who all combined will be responsible for analyzing
the situation and making the correct decision in terms of rellocation.

In many cases, jobs that involve repetitive or routine tasks are the ones most likely to be
replaced by AI. However, instead of simply eliminating these jobs and leaving employees
unemployed, Google could relocate them to teams responsible for the development and
control of AI.

This has several benefits. Firstly, employees who already have experience in the company
and know its culture and operations could bring their skills and knowledge to the AI
development and control teams. Second, this could help workers stay employed and acquire
new skills and knowledge in a constantly growing field.

Eventually, the relocation of workers could help ensure that AI is used responsibly and
ethically in the company. Workers who are directly involved in the development and control
of AI can help ensure that the ethical and social implications of the technology are taken into
account.

In summary, relocating personnel who perform repetitive tasks to teams responsible for the
development and control of AI could help Google address the issue of AI overuse, as well as
provide opportunities for workers to acquire new skills and knowledge in a constantly
growing field.

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5. CONCLUSSION

Google’s task in the last two decades has been praiseworthy in all the areas a company can be
analyzed from.

However, human knowledge is also growing faster than ever and keeping its policies and
procedures updated is not an easy task. AI is shaping the new era we are entering in, and as
all disruptive technological advances, the use people and corporations give to them is key.

Being Google the giant technology company it is, this challenge will probably be easily
transformed into an opportunity to grow following some of the advice given in this report.

Clear, specific and well explained company policies for unlawful AI uses will be a great
solution for the existing challenge of workers misusing this new technology. Training and
developing new skills should also be a core aspect for the Google HR team to work in.

Suggestions made by this Consultancy include the use of experts, probably already working
in the company, to educate other workers not as used to AI on how those work. Moreover,
those experts should try to learn from the rest of employees on how to make the technology
more accessible and useful, since Google is not only an AI user, but also a builder.

Finally, some jobs might be lost during this actualization process, so we suggest a relocation.
Google corporate values, vision, and knowledge about how the company functions are pretty
specific and long-term achieved. Instead of recurring to massive layoffs as other companies
might do, when tasks someone performs happen to be better made by AI, those employees, as
the valuable resources they are for the company, should be redistributed in new or already
existing areas, in order to keep the talent such difficult to attract nowadays.

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