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AI will coexist with workers, help with 'upskilling': Workday CEO

Corey Goldman
2 min read

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Artificial intelligence isn’t going to put you out of a job: It’s actually going to help you do it better.

AI will work alongside humans and complement the skill sets they’re bringing to the table, according to Workday (WDAY) co-CEO Carl Eschenbach.

“I think you'll start to see people talk about co-pilots,” Eschenbach told Yahoo Finance’s Brian Sozzi and Julie Hyman at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland. “We'll have generative AI co-pilots that will help you navigate through things.”

Eschenbach’s comments augment numerous discussions among executives and economists at this year’s WEF about the future of AI, and its potential impact on all aspects of the global economy and businesses.

Specifically, Eschenbach sees companies like Workday using AI to generate "push recommendations" that identify where a worker needs to be skilled or "re-skilled," and then advise what's next for that individual.

He also sees AI benefiting the HR department, which can leverage the technology to improve the hiring process. Furthermore, insights from generative AI can help increase internal mobility, as managers and employees use them to navigate their careers and spot areas of improvement.

And, of course, AI will help what all companies big and small look for: more productivity.

“We think it is an augmentation technology that needs to peacefully coexist with your existing workers,” says Eschenbach, noting that much of the current discourse around AI focuses on distrust.

“Companies want to implement this to drive business benefits and drive productivity gains, but workers are very nervous that it's going to be used to displace their jobs."

Instead, the technology can be used to supplement and automate some parts of workers' duties, freeing them up for more "productive and relevant" tasks.

For Workday itself, AI will help advance the management software company's offerings — while keeping its pricing affordable.

"We have not come to market like a lot of others and said, "We're going to raise our prices by 30% or some percentage just because we have AI now on our platform," says Eschenbach. “We've been doing AI for more than a decade, so this isn't new to us, and we think our customers are entitled to innovation, so we are not rushing to market with a new pricing model."

Read the latest from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland:

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