I recently wrote in Fast Company about a question I’ve been noodling on: Why is HR, the part of the organization most responsible for human judgment, often the slowest to adopt AI?

After more than two decades in HR, much of it spent scaling startups, I’ve watched AI reshape entire businesses while HR debates whether it is safe, ethical, or appropriate to use at all.

The hesitation is not really about technology. It’s about identity.

AI now automates many of the tasks HR historically owned: drafting policies, analyzing compensation data, answering routine questions, or building presentations. When a function’s value has been tied to process and documentation, that shift feels existential.

Here is where resistance shows up:

AI exposes a capability gap. Many HR leaders were trained in compliance and employee relations, not in how value is created or how systems scale. In executive AI conversations, HR is often quiet. That silence is costly.

HR fears replacement instead of irrelevance. AI can manage administrative work. It cannot coach a leader through a moral dilemma or sense when a culture is quietly breaking. The future of HR is not efficiency. Its influence is grounded in psychology, trust, and judgment.

Companies underestimate HR driven innovation. When HR leaders use AI effectively, they increase decision velocity, reduce bias, and redesign how work gets done. That drives company business strategy and the future of work.

The risk is not that AI will dehumanize work. The risk is that HR will not evolve.

If this resonates, I go deeper in the full Fast Company piece here.

For practical, accessible entry points into AI, I recommend the Mel Robbins episode with Allie K. Miller on how AI is changing work. And for a thoughtful perspective on what remains uniquely human, read Human Work in the Age of Smart Machines by Jamie Merisotis.

Stay human, friends.

~Anna