By Samir Hamladji/The Africa Report
Recruitment, staff management…Between the advent of new professions and new business methods, AI is gradually beginning to transform how things are done in Africa.
We might as well say it outright: no, artificial intelligence (AI) is not going to replace humans and destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs, especially in human resources departments.
These fears were already present in public opinion at the time of the emergence of Altavista, the first internet search engine, in the mid-1990s, even before the rise of Google. With its innovative spirit, Altavista was supposed to sweep away everything in its path and render human added value obsolete and irrelevant.
Nearly 25 years later, the forerunner of search engines has been relegated to the dustbin of history, and human resources have retained their prerogatives as a force for innovation and creativity. What will become of the solutions that AI makes possible?
If there is to be a confrontation, it will not be between man and machine, but rather between those who have mastered these tools and those who scorn them.
“The distinction will be between those who manage to integrate the tools of artificial intelligence into their practices and the others. An employee’s real added value will lie in his or her mastery of these tools,” says Mourad Zéraï, PhD in applied mathematics and director of the AI teaching pathway at the Esprit higher education group in Tunisia.
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While Zéraï understands this apprehension towards artificial intelligence, he is nevertheless a champion of peaceful coexistence.
“AI is not a trend, but a reality that is being implemented day by day; and in a world that is rapidly becoming obsolete, it is imperative that we lay the foundations for collaboration between man and machine.”
Mistrust and defiance
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In the HR sphere, artificial intelligence could therefore enhance new skills and help create new professions, such as HR data analyst, HR marketing manager, recruitment and mobility manager, human experience expert or corporate culture director.
“These titles reflect the diversification of HR responsibilities, which extend well beyond traditional human resources management to encompass areas such as corporate culture, employee experience and diversity,” says a recent study conducted by the Humanskills group, which supports companies in their transformation and in all their HR needs.
AI is a tool, a companion, a facilitator that in no way replaces human perception. Nothing can replace human contact.
What do the main stakeholders – human resources managers – think? Do they harbour this same mistrust and defiance towards artificial intelligence? Ilham Mouhriz, recently appointed head of human resources at Capgemini for Morocco and its 6,500 employees, understands her peers’ concerns, even if these are starting to fade.
“AI is a tool, a companion, a facilitator that in no way replaces human perception. Nothing can replace human contact. In our business, AI helps us to optimise our recruitment processes, but it does not and will never make the final decision,” she says.
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Among the procedures mentioned, for example, is the tedious and time-consuming task of reviewing and selecting CVs. Senegalese start-up Socium plans to make this job easier. Founded by Samba Lo, the start-up is positioned as a complete provider of human resources management information systems.
It operates throughout French-speaking Africa (from Mauritania to Gabon) and uses AI to analyse CVs according to the criteria required by companies, thereby simplifying the work of human resources.
“The companies we work with [Orange, Mazars, EY, among others] receive a huge number of very similar applications. Some are relevant, but [many] others are not at all suited to the profile we’re looking for,” says Lo.
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“A client who receives 500 CVs for a job vacancy can spend around 10 hours simply sorting through these CVs by hand, assuming they spend one minute on each one. This time-consuming stage can be entrusted to our tool, which, in an hour, will carry out a selection process enabling recruiters to concentrate on the 50 most suitable CVs,” says Jordan Tchato, AI specialist and director of Socium’s Central Africa office in Douala.
Disaster at Amazon
But AI is not infallible. Between 2014 and 2017, for example, e-commerce giant Amazon’s use of the tool to simplify its recruitment process ended in disaster.
Based on the data it had collected between 2004 and 2014, the company’s AI systematically excluded women from web development and other technical jobs, because during this period most of these jobs were held by men. The AI therefore decided that male applicants should be given preference.
“This is one of the biggest problems with the use and deployment of artificial intelligence. If an AI makes a decision, it has to be able to explain it. However, the most advanced technologies in this field, such as neural networks, are not yet able to provide such explanations for their decision-making,” says Zéraï.
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Despite these limitations, AI has predictive virtues that can prove particularly decisive in the field of human resources, especially in the context of the battle for talent. “Artificial intelligence can help us anticipate employee behaviour. Our HR teams are equipped with turnover prediction solutions, which help to reduce and prevent the risk of staff leaving,” says Capgemini’s Mouhriz.
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Thanks to these tools, the human resources department benefits from indicators on the level of commitment – or disengagement – of employees. “These alerts enable us to take action to try and remedy the situation,” says the manager.
AI ‘houses’
To continue to embrace this revolution, a number of initiatives are flourishing on the continent, such as AI houses, physical locations whose mission statement can be summed up in three words: explain, demystify, acculturate.
The first of these has opened its doors in Oujda, in eastern Morocco. The city is home to Mohamed-Ier University, renowned for the quality of its teaching in mathematics, a discipline that is inextricably linked with AI.
“The AI House is a place where we can look back at the history of artificial intelligence. We also offer an educational course in the subject from the age of three,” says its founder, Jérôme Ribeiro, for whom postgraduate training in coding is “absolute nonsense”. “In China, children know how to code from the age of nine. Why are we waiting until they start higher education to teach it to our [own] children?”
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The stakes are high, and Africa, with its youthful population and dynamic forces in the face of an ageing Europe, needs to be at the forefront of the AI revolution. “This is an extraordinary opportunity for Africa, which has been excluded from [previous] industrial revolutions due to a lack of resources. This time, there are no excuses. All you need is a computer and an internet connection,” says researcher Zéraï. The time has come.