The examples under the headline are the real story
I read a Bloomberg piece this week about AI giving HR an existential crisis. The headline is hyperbolic, but the examples underneath it are more interesting.
Bloomberg describes MS International moving roughly 100 software developers under HR, Cognizant bringing engineers into the function, and Dropbox reworking recruiting around simulations and workforce planning.
Software developers reporting into HR sounds strange
It sounds especially strange if you have ever budgeted headcount in HR. Then you think about the work ahead.
If HR is going to help decide what people should do with AI and how the two work together, we cannot limit our role to buying software. We will need HRBPs who can map a messy workflow, build or test a better version, and tell whether it helped.
The technical work is moving closer to HR because the design choices are becoming people decisions.
The HRBP skill is workflow design
Take recruiting. A team can add a simulation or an AI-assisted review and still leave the underlying workflow vague. Someone has to map how a candidate enters the process, which evidence matters, what the tool may prepare, where a person can challenge it, who owns the decision, and what would count as an improvement.
That work is close to what good HRBPs already do when a process is messy: find the actual decision, separate useful information from noise, clarify ownership, and check whether the change survives contact with the people doing the job.
Technical skill does not replace HR judgment
I have spent enough time building AI-assisted HR workflows to see how easily a clean output can hide a bad assumption.
A hiring, performance, or workforce recommendation still needs someone who can see the evidence, spot what is missing, and own the decision. An approval button at the end is not enough.
I think HR should get pulled closer to the actual design of work. That is a harder job than administering the old processes, and a more valuable one.