The News: IBM is working to explore how generative AI might be used to match job seekers with employment opportunities that best meet their skill levels and education. In collaboration with the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation, the new initiative will look at whether AI models can help job seekers identify their skills and generate digital credentials that could match them accurately to jobs, while evaluating the risks of using AI. Read the full post about the project on the IBM Blog website.

IBM Looks to Generative AI To Match Job Seekers To Needed Job Skills

Analyst Take: Now here is a generative AI use case that could offer immense possibilities, while opening many eyes to potential risks for prospective workers and their privacy. What I like best about it is that IBM, in collaboration with the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation, is directly addressing these important issues head-on to see what might be possible.

Of course, this initiative comes as every kind of use case is being explored using the immense power of generative AI to solve all kinds of business problems, from addressing business processes to finding the right qualified candidates for skilled jobs. But as IBM and the Chamber Foundation properly recognize, with these tasks comes responsibility, and potential employers must be certain that their use of generative AI for such hiring does not discriminate against or harm workers through the information that is gathered and processed.

To evaluate these possibilities, the Chamber Foundation asked IBM’s Open Innovation Community to collaborate to analyze the potential risks of using AI models in these efforts, according to the group. IBM Consulting is involved in the project due to its deep AI expertise.

This great matchup will produce useful data for IBM and the Chamber Foundation, I believe, because IBM’s history with AI and its expanding work in generative AI, with its watsonx AI and data platform, are the right tools to build and analyze these questions about generative AI’s effectiveness for this task.

How Generative AI Would Perform Job and Skills Matching

Under the initiative, the Chamber Foundation proposed that IBM “explore a test case for job seekers” by looking at whether AI models can accurately and safely be used by learners and workers to help them identify and tally their real-world skills as they pursue jobs. Those skills, gathered by generative AI using data in various file formats from worker resumes, school transcripts, and other materials, could be converted into digital credentials that could be confirmed by job seekers and then shared with prospective employers, according to the partners.

The project proposed by the Chamber Foundation evaluates whether this type of generative AI approach is applicable to a wide range of communities and employers to evaluate the skills and experience of diverse people around the world. To ensure that it is being used to evaluate workers fairly and safely, the project is also determining how to mitigate potential risks and reveal and correct inadvertent impacts with this generative AI use case.

To begin the effort, the Chamber Foundation worked with its lead partner, the nonprofit Education Design Lab, to identify four sample worker personas for the first tests and evaluations of the job and skills matching project – a caregiver, a ride-share driver, a soldier, and an incarcerated person. The four personas were used to see how the participants might be viewed in terms of bias, data privacy concerns, or accessibility issues related to language or computer literacy. To further protect workers evaluated by the model, the Chamber Foundation established four principles to ensure safety, accountability, fairness and efficacy to guide the generative AI analyses.

Experimenting With Generative AI, Workers, and Hiring – What Does It Mean?

This generative AI exploratory effort by IBM and the Chamber Foundation to look at how this technology could match job seekers with jobs based on their skills is clever and right on target. I applaud this kind of creativity when it comes to finding and proving new generative AI use cases.

We will learn how these concepts stack up in real-world use and whether the positives overshadow any concerns about bias, privacy, security, or other issues as the trials continue. If matching prospective workers to skilled jobs using generative AI can be done safely and well, it could be a tremendous tool for workers and employers alike.

Certainly, these generative AI models will be tweaked and refined over time, helping to resolve concerns as they arise, but this idea at its core should be celebrated as an innovative approach to solving a vexing global problem. I believe the overall strategy will be dependent on the creation of strong safety nets for privacy and security that can ensure the protection of worker data while using any generative AI tools. There is a lot at stake here –the future success of these efforts would be especially helpful in many industries where there are serious shortages of skilled workers.

I am particularly happy that maintaining privacy and security is an inherent part of this effort. I firmly believe that this approach will be a critical part of IBM’s ongoing success with its generative AI tools and services, because if customers feel secure and believe that their privacy is maintained, it will make users more trusting and comfortable with this fledging technology.

There are many people around the world who are worried about the power of generative AI and how their lives and families will be affected by this technology. But as IBM said in its announcement of this initiative, many of these concerns can be resolved if “leaders think carefully about how AI is created and applied and take a human-centric, principled approach to each use case.”
With those words in mind, this is a great start to reaching those goals.

Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.

Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.