Published to clients: February 10, 2026 ID: TBW2099
Published to Whisper Club: February 10, 2026
Analyst(s): Dr. Doreen Galli
Photojournalist(s): Dr. Doreen Galli
ABSTRACT
“This Whisper Report explores how CTOs should rethink organizational design in the world with Generative AI. Generative AI introduces structural shifts that accelerate delivery and reshape skills, workflows, and talent strategy. The research was conducted at HR Tech in Las Vegas. It highlights how agile cycles, cross‑functional skills, and HR collaboration strengthen organizational resilience.Quotes come from leaders at RChilli, Darwinbox, FitFirst, Fountain, FranklinCovey, Eightfold AI, Gem, and Aptia USA.”
Published to clients: November 28, 2025 ID: TBW2098
Published to Readers: December 1, 2025
Public Release Date: April 13, 2026
Analyst(s): Dr. Doreen Galli
Photojournalist(s): Dr. Doreen Galli
Abstract
This Whisper Report reveals nine overlooked AI risks in HR—from loss of human connection and identity challenges to compliance, data quality, and black-box concerns. Insights from HRTech2025 experts stress the need for ethical design, integrated systems, and AI literacy to safeguard trust and organizational resilience.
Target Audience Titles:
Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO), Chief People Officer (CPO), Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Chief Information Officer (CIO), Chief Data & Analytics Officer (CDAO)
VP of HR Technology, VP of Talent Management, Director of HRIS (Human Resource Information Systems), Director of Data Privacy & Compliance
HR Technology Manager, HRIS Analyst, Data Scientist (HR Analytics), AI Ethics Specialist
Key Takeaways
Keep humans in HR: Overreliance on AI erodes trust and relationships—HR must preserve human touchpoints for employee engagement.
Protect identity and ethics: AI adoption impacts employee identity; embed responsible AI design and ethical standards from the start.
Secure and integrate systems: Data security lapses and fragmented AI tools increase risk—prioritize compliance and cohesive integration.
Invest in AI literacy: Lack of training leads to misuse; HR teams need prompt engineering and clear goals for effective AI use.
We took the most frequently asked and most urgent technology questions straight to the human resource technology professionals gathering at HRTECH2025 held in Las Vegas. This Whisper Report addresses the question regarding the biggest AI risk in HR no one talks about? Figure 1 displays the nine risks we will now discuss.
Figure 1. Nine Hidden AI risks in HR No One Talks About
Human resources is all about managing the employees of an organization. It is one of the most critical relationships an organization has. Fountain’s Bastian Botella raises one very concerning risk. “It’s the loss of trust between employees and the company. AI is all over right anywhere from the hiring phase down to retention communication tools everywhere. Okay. At some point and I think it’s going to be sooner rather than later all employees will figure out that the human has been removed from all processes. Removed from interviews, removed from communication, removed from any touch points that they have with their employer.” BambooHR’s Paul Swenson is on the same page. “I see in HR is the over reliance on AI. HR is all about people, right? Like interacting with people and AI can sometimes pull you away from that. So HR needs to stay close to the people. Build relationships with the people that they work with in their companies. But sometimes I think an over reliance on AI can lead to people not doing as much of that which is really the bread and butter of what HR is good at and what they excel at. Right? So as we use AI we need to make sure that we’re you know remaining consistent with our relationships with the people at our companies and providing great employee experiences for our people.” In other words, let’s keeps the humans in humans resource management!
HRTech2025’s opening keynote speaker, FranklinCovey Leadership’s Patrick Leddin observed, “a lot of people in the organization find a lot of value in the work they’re doing. It isn’t just about replacing a task and giving somebody a new task or saying this is going to be something that generative AI is going to do and you you’ll be able to do more analysis. It’s recognizing that people’s sense of self is often times connected to their work and if you take that away from them, how are you going to help them find their new identity?” Given that one of the first questions a stranger asks outside of your name is your profession, it is easy to understand how one’s profession is tied to one’s identity. What is a software engineer who no longer writes code but monitors the AI writing code?
Our next risk came from Eightfold AI’s Michael Dunne. “Great concern that should be attention given to is responsible AI by design.” Many of the critical aspects of a solution need to be thought of from the very beginning. TBW Advisors LLC repeatedly reminds one that security, privacy, and accessibility cannot be an afterthought. Ethical AI is right in the center and a critical part of the predesign work. Michael continued, “You having this bloom of hype around AI and the possibilities. There’s a lot of excitement but one is always take into account then how was this system built from the start and so what I like to say is people should look at their providers and see has this been done by design which means have they done understandings about managing the data what’s called feature sets and how it goes in for recommendations also understand whether the right certifications have been done around data privacy data residency and controls around the use of AI. One is for developing applications being consumers of applications and the use of that data. And you’ll see that now with a number of standards that have come out a lot of people pay attention about the EU AI act. There’s also ISO 420001.” Thus the organization’s ethical stance on how to use the data and AI should be defined in conjunction with your security and privacy policies.
With AI comes a lot of data and information. Darwinbox’s Eli Kameron warns that, “people are sending their data all over the place without even thinking about security. This was a problem already with APIs and it is going to explode with agentic AI particularly folks using MCP protocol servers. So a lot of folks are not thinking about the risks and the compliance risks that they are exposing themselves to when they send data everywhere.” Just because it will take your data, doesn’t mean you should be sharing it with the application. Even lower tiered paid models do not provide the privacy expected by many enterprises.
Risk number five comes to us from Benifex’s Joe Sears. “All these different AI agents out there with different functionality. But each of these companies has their own thing that they’re doing and we need to keep that message joined up and all of the different AI needs to talk to one another. If we can integrate our AI capabilities with the wider AI capabilities that are going on, then that’s going to be that best experience for the employee.” In other words, much like what we saw with commercial UAV’s in the enterprise, AI systems are popping up by function within organizations. Enterprises should take a cohesive desired solutions approach to achieve the best ROI with their AI investments. If AI and your data is becoming siloed in your organization, be sure to schedule your inquiry with your TBW Advisors LLC’s analyst. We can provide you guidance based on first hand experience that is sure to make the difference even is the work is outsourced.
One concerning risk was highlighted by Paychex’s Nathan Shapiro. “Over reliance on AI and even furthermore folks outside HR trying to practice because lacking the expertise can lead to dangerous things. The democratization of AI and the proliferation is fantastic and is going to really change the way we work. But lacking that expertise can run you into some significant challenges and liability. Just think about asking AI for guidance on a termination scenario with an employee and lacking the expertise to know that their age is really critical for discrimination law. What jurisdiction is going to rule on that and the liability it could create?” As long as worker’s have rights and the AI isn’t training on the complexities and nuances of those rights, it may be best to keep seasoned professionals as the humans in the loop!
A tool is only useful if it is used and used properly. As Attensi’s Joanna Akar denoted, a huge risk in, “AI is actually not having the knowledge on how to use it. If you don’t know how to prompt engineer or use AI or Gen AI or whatever type of AI you’re using within your day-to-day. If we fall
you risk not being able to follow the trend, not being able to be more efficient within the learning environment. So, it’s super important that HR people are trained in how to prompt AI or prompt engineering to make sure that they’re utilizing it in the best way possible to get the most return on investment that they can get out of their people.” Lollipop’s Jonathan Ferrell shared very similar concerns. “Lack of understanding on what AI is and what it isn’t. I think a lot of people recognize how quickly it’s able to solve immediate tasks and maybe make it feel like it’s a more complex task, but what really matters is what you’re trying to accomplish. And if you don’t know upfront what you’re trying to accomplish, you could really go in the wrong direction.” Thus to minimize this risk, start with the problem and learn how to communicate with the specific AI you are using for best results!
One Model’s Phil Schrader reports our next risk. “Data quality. The AI is going to be able to answer questions in new ways for organizations. But if you don’t have a quality data model to feed into it or quality reliable tools for it to use, it is going to generate noise, it is going to generate nonsense that actually moves you backward.” Or as previously highlighted in Whisper Report: What are the biggest challenges of Using Gen AI in Logistics?, you put garbage data in you get garbage out. Without quality data, it is not possible to get reliable answers.
The final risk should come as no surprise from anyone but is always important to remember. Aptia USA’s Jeff Williams reminds all, “AI is a black box the way it’s permeating everything we do on an everyday basis. And think about how little each of us really understand about what AI is, how it’s generating the answers it’s generating, and the advice it’s dispensing, and the actions that are being taken as a result. I think the fact that we are lumping AI together for things as simple as a chatbot and things as complex as fully generative large language models. I think kind of lumping all that together, calling it AI and expecting to solve all of our problems without really knowing what’s feeding it underneath, I think is a big un-discussed risk that we really need to address.” Clients will recall a similar warning arrived in Whisper Report: What’s the biggest Cybersecurity Myth in 2025? One of the biggest requirements to shine the light on the black boxes are logs. Let’s make 2026 the year all AI systems are required to provide immutable logs.
Published to clients: September 22, 2025ID: TBW2097
Published to readers: September 23, 2025
Published to Email Whispers: September 24, 2025
Public with video edition: September 24, 2025
Analyst(s): Dr. Doreen Galli
Photojournalist(s): D. Doreen Galli At HRTECH 2025, more than 10,000 attendees gathered in Las Vegas to explore the technologies shaping the full employee lifecycle—from recruiting and benefits to human capital management. With 433 exhibitors, including ninety-four startups, the expo floor was the largest in the event’s history. Our team captured over 120 minutes of footage across forty-nine videos and three livestreams, documenting not just the tech but the tone of the conversations. While generative AI continues to blur lines with legacy automation, the real story lies in how HR leaders are rethinking org design, talent matching, and employee care.
The Conference
A community of 10,000 gathered for HRTECH2025. The event featured 433 exhibitors including ninety-four startups.
HR Tech featured technologies a human resource professional and department would need through the entire employee relationship lifecycle.
Cautions
The conflation of AI for artificial intelligence that has been around for decades and the newer generative AI that can hallucinate continues in prevalence.
Friendly reminder: this research provides examples of what was shared with us at the event, not an evaluation, validation, or recommendation of the given technology.
After 49 videos and over 120 minutes of video including three livestreams and over forty-five fact checks, our coverage of HR Tech 2025 closes. HR TECH 2025 gathered 10,000 human resource technology enthusiasts from around the world including USA, Canada, UK, Sweden, Germany, Japan, China, India, Australia, and UAE. Expo Hall was just shy of 100,000 square feet and displayed 433 exhibiters including ninety-four startups surpassing all year’s prior! Registration had no lines whatsoever. We were able to capture the breakfast on Wednesday.
We once again live streamed from on site. On Tuesday requesting those attending to find me to answer Questions 1-3, Wednesday to let you know about upcoming events we have scheduled and to introduce all to TBW Advisors LLC, as well as Thursday from Expo hall itself requesting assistance. Specifically, I requested assistance on your favorite videos for my segment on the September 20th broadcast edition of Computer Talk Radio.
While at HRTECH 2025, we conducted research for three additional forthcoming Whisper Reports for our clients. The playlists are unlisted but available and will eventually fill in with the video version of the report so you may wish to bookmark these playlists.
Readers and viewers wishing to experience the entire event are encouraged to view the Conference Whispers: HRTECH 2025 Playlist in its entirety. Once the video edition is available, the playlist will be sited as a pinned comment on the video edition. It is also easy to locate any previous Conference Whispers playlists through TBW Advisors LLC corporate website.
One of the more fascinating aspects of HRTECH 2025 was to see how recruiting may be expanding or dare I say, finally improving past trying to box engineers into keyword searches, Booleans, and over filtering. Endorsed AI is an agentic solution that understands, for example, all the nuances and behaviors software engineers are involved in providing a fuller picture to match talent over traditional systems. Understanding that interviews do not accurately represent how one will perform as an employee, FitFirst allows organizations to identify the talent they want. Gem is an AI first recruiting platform focused on finding you your next gem of an employee. HeyMilo focuses on recruiting at scale even providing adaptive interviewing capabilities.
If you need is strictly on technology to parse resumes, RChilli specializes in exactly that! However, if you want to find tech beyond ATS (applicant tracking systems) perhaps with a side of Employee of Record tech (EOR) – olamee can handle even mid-size organizations.
An important aspect of recruiting and maintain employees is that of benefits. As such, it is no surprise to find technologies in the benefits space. If managing benefits on a global scale has got you overwhelmed, Benifex specializes in global benefits for 120 countries. Seeking a modern benefits platform leveraging AI from the ground up vs bolt on legacy solutions? Aptia would be one to add to your evaluation list. If, in caring for your employees, you simply want a direct answer to the question, “How are you doing?” Lollipop was on site sharing their solution. If you are seeking analytics in general over everything about your employees, One Model was on site.
If you are attempting to make training interesting in your organization, Atensi has a gamification solution ready for you to evaluate. If your challenge is more about the acquire, deploy, cultivate/train and redeploy life cycle of employees, Eightfold AI may be on your radar. However, if your employees are demanding payroll in a stable coin crypto current – Pebl has a solution already worked out for you to deploy quickly.
If your business employes front line workers, Fountain has a front-line worker operating system design to give you speed across the entire process. If you are in the SMB space, BambooHR is designed to empower your HR teams. Perhaps your HR team is exceptionally lean and you need technology so you can still get the job done? HireRoad was designed with you in mind. An enterprise HCM solution that also provides an Employee Gateway Management Systems, Darwinbox believes their solution will make all the difference. If you are seeking an HCM solution with a side of services, Paychex was in expo hall for you.
HRTECH 2026 will once again return to Las Vegas and will be held at Mandalay Bay Convention Center on October 20-22, 2026.
*When vendors’ names are shared as examples in this document, it is to provide a concrete example of what was on display at the conference, not an evaluation or recommendation. Evaluation and recommendation of these vendors are beyond the scope of this specific research document. Other examples of products in the same category may have also been on display.
