RECRUITMENT & RETENTION

Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Photo: Unsplash

Who would’ve thought spending significant amounts of time talking to AI chatbots would do a number on us?

Loneliness is such a significant problem in societies around the world that global officials in recent years have declared it a public health emergency. Like many other challenges in life, it doesn’t disappear once people clock into work: One in five workers globally reported feeling lonely, a 2024 Gallup poll found.

AI could potentially exacerbate that problem. Generative AI tools typically help boost users’ productivity, but emerging research suggests heavy AI users exhibit higher levels of social isolation. In cases where “lonely” humans turn to AI to seek companionship and advice, these tools can worsen users’ loneliness, while chatbots’ sycophantic-like responses to personal questions can potentially atrophy users’ social skills.

For more on the relationship between AI and loneliness in the workplace, and how HR can help, keep reading here.—PM

      

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HR STRATEGY

Where does an employee’s personal life end and professional life begin? Kate Noel sat down with Sarah Emilio, VP of learning and employee communications at Cisive and host of the Don’t Get Played podcast, to find the line—starting with a rapid-fire game of “HR business or mind your business” that covers everything from a viral vacation video to a surprise DUI.

From there, they get into a framework. The throughline? Trust, and why building it is HR’s actual job, even when no one’s clapping for it.

For more from our conversation with Emilio, keep reading here.—LH

      

TECH

Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before. SpaceX will start training Grok on “the sum total of all SpaceX information,” including data from its employees. This kind of thing didn’t go so well for Meta, but it’s part of a broader push to harvest all the know-how human workers have to offer.

What happened? Elon Musk told his staff that they would now be AI training fodder in a company all-hands video posted to X last week. “You will effectively be the parents of the AI,” he declared, after praising staff for both their capability and “goodness.” “It will inherit your thoughts and ideas and beliefs, and I think that’s a good thing.”

It’s also a cheap way to get a kind of AI data that’s currently all the rage: humans performing real-life tasks to teach agents how to work autonomously. And it’s a fresh source of knowledge, since frontier AI models have already ingested practically everything books and the internet have to offer.

Getting déjà vu? SpaceX isn’t the first big tech company to try this.

For more on the trend of using workers to train AI, keep reading on Tech Brew.—WK

      

Sponsored By Indeed

Humanity at the heart of AI. As AI transforms everything from hiring to daily workflows, humanity is the key to making it all work. Join Indeed FutureWorks from Sept. 2–3 to learn how leaders can prioritize humanity as tech shifts. Get free tickets to the virtual event.

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Francis Scialabba

Today’s top HR reads.

Stat: If you have European colleagues, you may have noticed they’re often gone in August: As many as 40% of French white-collar employees and around 20% of UK workers on Deel take the same day off at once, primarily in August. (LinkedIn)

Quote: “Kick rocks and don’t come back.”—Delsia Bare, a farmer in Kentucky, in response to representatives of a company that offered $26 million to purchase her family’s farmlands to build an AI datacenter that has divided the town (the Wall Street Journal)

Read: A Stellantis plant in Detroit became a top performer for the company after it gave a giant robot arm that picked up and moved car parts for welding the gift of sight—that is, a specialized camera that allows it to more accurately pick up parts and reduce risk of damage. (the New York Times)

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