AI and the Future of Work: Artificial Intelligence in the Workplace, Business, Ethics, HR, and IT for AI Enthusiasts, Leaders and Academics
00:10:16 · Dan Turchin, Max Wessel
[00:10:16] S1: One of the things that I thought was most elegant about some of the new interfaces is that it felt like the right amount of UI, like the the the the right amount of conversational AI balance with the right amount of... I don't know if it's a traditional, but classic forms and classic UI. How do you think about the way to build agentic workflows and conversational AI in it... Right point [00:10:44] S4: in the workflow? So the cool thing about that UI that you saw today, it's it's all generative UI. And so we actually use the interaction with the agents in order to figure out what UI needs to be generated. One of the examples from today, we released a product called Workday Decision Intelligence. Workday Decision Intelligence is an agentic analytics tool. You could chat your way through data, but it's easier for humans to consume data in charts. And when somebody asks for a chart to be created and it comes out the way they want, in decision intelligence, you can save that as a playbook. And the next time you ask the question, when the agent goes through and does the analysis, understands the data relationships, and comes back with an answer, it'll be... Come back in that chart updated. And so we think a lot about how do we connect this incredible alien technology that is AI with all of the tools that we need to translate it into the way we consume information. You said something profound, more profound than I
00:10:44 · Max Wessel, Dan Turchin
[00:10:44] S4: in the workflow? So the cool thing about that UI that you saw today, it's it's all generative UI. And so we actually use the interaction with the agents in order to figure out what UI needs to be generated. One of the examples from today, we released a product called Workday Decision Intelligence. Workday Decision Intelligence is an agentic analytics tool. You could chat your way through data, but it's easier for humans to consume data in charts. And when somebody asks for a chart to be created and it comes out the way they want, in decision intelligence, you can save that as a playbook. And the next time you ask the question, when the agent goes through and does the analysis, understands the data relationships, and comes back with an answer, it'll be... Come back in that chart updated. And so we think a lot about how do we connect this incredible alien technology that is AI with all of the tools that we need to translate it into the way we consume information. You said something profound, more profound than I [00:11:57] S1: think you realized that I think will define kind of the next maybe decade of how humans interact with with machines, the term generative UI. So you kinda tossed it out and then went on. But take a step back. What does that mean at Workday, and how do you think about the role of generative UI?
00:12:14 · Max Wessel
[00:12:14] S4: So generative UI is UI that is created on the fly by an agent. And there are a lot of emerging standards around generative UI, and we're still very early in the process of building out all of the frameworks, all of the tools to be able to give agents the ability to speak in the way we consume information. UI is wonderful. I don't want to chat to my ecommerce sites, because the way they are laid out beautifully with pictures allows me to figure out exactly what I wanna buy, the way that I wanna buy it. It is a experience designed for a human. Getting a code full data dump in a table is not the same. Even though an agent might speak that language, we need that translation layer. And so when it comes to the work that Workday is doing right now, a lot of our focus is how do we build the generative UI components? How do we create the interaction system? How do we coach the agents to use those components to speak to humans? And what you get on the other side is things like forms and charts and workflow tools that feel like the types of systems we are all used to interacting with, but they're created flexibly on the fly by the agents. And so we have a whole team at Workday that focuses on creating those elements for our our Asana agent to use as it interacts with users.
00:13:55 · S2, Dan Turchin, Gerrit Kazmaier
[00:13:55] S2: Finally, we turn to Gerrit Kazmaier, president of product and technology at Workday. Gerrit shares Workday's vision for using AI to restore humanness to work, starting with why nobody comes home proud of answering 50 emails and how companies can decide what AI should do and what should stay human. He also describes the future he hopes for five years from now when more people can spend their days doing work that inspires them. [00:14:25] S1: Talk to us about the... Call it the why behind the what. You introduced a ton of innovation. [00:14:31] S5: Mhmm. [00:14:31] S1: But I think there was a theme beneath some of that innovation. Share with us kind of your philosophy around how you decide what to build.
00:14:37 · Gerrit Kazmaier
[00:14:37] S5: Yeah. And I think in macro, maybe the theme is that better and progress is possible. That's what we believe in. And we believe that there should be a better Workday. We don't think that that's the funny thing about AI, right? I think there is an assumption today that the workplace is basically perfect. Every company is basically practically perfect. And now we just apply AI to it to make perfect just go faster. Right? And that's a very theoretical and I think a very removed from reality perspective. Because the reality is for most companies, workday and organizing the workday is hard. Most people spend a lot of time on what I call work about work. Right? Not the things that inspire them, not the things which... Why they wanted to go into profession. You know, it's the nurse, you know, filling out filling out studying shift schedules instead of, you know, attending to patients or it is, you know, maybe someone in journalism, you know, answering emails and coordination or a manager working on alignment or a software engineer, you know, trying to clarify requirements versus then actually practicing their breath, right? You know, creating great podcasts, know, writing a great piece of software. And what I fundamentally believe in, right, that, A, for people it's important to have the purpose in life, right, in applying yourself to something and aspiring to achieve a certain degree of craft or mastery and and being committed to that and have an environment in which you can do that. And I think Workday plays a huge role in enabling that by, on the one side, right, in all of the functions, the professionals that directly work in Workday, freeing them from all of that mundane work so they can actually do what they're meant to do and the things that they care about, right? Nobody's coming home in the evening and saying, I had a great workday, I answered 50 emails, I had 20 meetings, right? This is what drains, at least for most people, the energy. Right? And what's really great, you know, what makes a great workday is, you know, when you had had an incredible customer meeting or, you know, we we created this beautiful design or we made progress by solving that problem. And, you know, I helped the patient. Right? You know? It's those things that I think are meaningful when it comes to the work experience.
00:17:12 · Gerrit Kazmaier, S2, Dan Turchin
We wanna gift this to everyone who is working with Workday as professional, right, HR, the finance, and IT professionals, so they can do things they care about and better add real value. And then secondly, because many people are being managed through Workday, right, who are not HR or finance professional, that we focus on helping them to get the support so they can also advance in their functions. And we introduced work intelligence, and this is not advertising. But like I said, companies are not perfect. Now, actually, people are trying to understand how does work actually happen. How should I introduce AI in a coexistent way, right, with the workforce that I have? And giving them the tools so they understand what AI should do, what AI can augment, what should stay innately human and how they reconfigure themselves around that. That is, I think, really purposeful. I think that's really important. And we all at Workday think we care about it, right? One of the reasons why I came to Workday was because I really connected with that idea of building a great work experience for everyone, right, and the limit for everyone. Who wouldn't wanna do that? [00:18:31] S2: So fast forward. So Gerrit's five year... Your your fifth year rising. [00:18:36] S1: Just just what... What are you really talking about on stage?