Working to simplify AI adoption and trust

As head of AI at work management platform monday.com, Orr Friedman is at the forefront of an ever-evolving industry. As AI gradually transforms the workplace and becomes an integral part of project management tools, Friedman said driving AI innovation often feels like a race to stay ahead.

“It’s a race, but it’s a fun race,” he told TechRepublic.

For Friedman and monday.comhowever, it is important to deploy AI technology correctly. Their platform is used by 225,000 customers in 200 industries worldwide, often non-technical teams who use monday.com for their daily tasks. As he explained, the way AI is deployed is critical.

“It’s important for us and for me personally to get it right,” Friedman said on the sidelines Elevate 2024 conference in Sydney. “But it’s important for us to see how people are using (artificial intelligence features) and remove the barriers to their use.”

Make artificial intelligence user-friendly and integrate it seamlessly into workflows

After launching the AI ​​assistant on Monday, which was a more immediate response to the release of ChatGPT, Friedman said monday.com began thinking more deeply about how to integrate AI. The company began looking for a greater understanding of customer acceptance of AI and what customers are using it for.

WATCH: Our 2024 monday.com review, including pricing, usability, pros and cons

“We really learned about the issue with adoption, the fear of being replaced and the reluctance to trust it,” Friedman explained. This led to monday.com’s current approach to AI, which is really to follow pretty much the same recipe with products it’s used up until now.

He added: “We took a similar approach to what monday.com did for software in general. Monday’s approach is to democratize software, to reach different types of people, tech-savvy and non-tech-savvy, and empower them to use the tools at work to do their jobs better.”

This approach allowed the company to follow its previous strategy of creating low-code and no-code interfaces previously used for automation on monday.com, which brings Monday into a new era of AI. Monday also now talks about “no-prompt or low-prompt” actions, Friedman said, which make it easier for non-technical users to use the AI.

Another direction was moving away from using AI in a separate interface, such as a chatbot.

“For some use cases it makes perfect sense, and I use it that way as well,” Friedman said. “But we really believe that people want to work (with AI) into their workflow where the work is there. If I manage my work on a board (monday.com), I want to work on a board. I don’t want to work in a separate interface.”

Facilitating artificial intelligence with ready-made tasks

monday.com’s strategy is now taking shape on the platform. One strand of the strategy will be adding product capabilities to “recharge” existing products. For example, the firm plans to introduce a risk analyzer into its portfolio management product, using artificial intelligence to identify risks in a portfolio of projects.

Another the primary way AI is deployed carried out using off-the-shelf automation or AI-supported tasks. Known as “AI blocks,” these elements are designed to resemble the platform’s current brightly colored blocks for easy integration and visibility into workflows. Friedman calls them “easy-to-use AI actions that can be integrated into your workflow.”

WATCH: Top 10 Project Management Software in 2024

At Elevate 2024 in Sydney, Friedman demonstrated how artificial intelligence can help recruiters on Monday. He said artificial intelligence could be used to extract specific information, such as email addresses, from a resume document. Recruiters can also use artificial intelligence to provide resumes or get a candidate’s skill set.

Users will also be able to create their own actions with natural language prompts. For example, Friedman said, a recruiter can create an action by comparing candidate resumes to a job description, highlighting any potential matches or gaps for the candidate pool they’re reviewing.

“You can see that we have virtually automated the process of reviewing job applicants,” he told the audience. “Artificial intelligence has really helped us greatly simplify the candidate screening process and help the reviewer and manager really focus on their work. And this is what is important for us to do.”

Building user trust over time in monday.com’s AI results

While monday.com emphasizes simplicity for users, it doesn’t limit them to just basic, out-of-the-box automations. For example, Friedman said more complex and robust workflows will be possible using various triggers and conditions similar to his automation center.

However, as Friedman noted, building trust in the technology is perhaps the most important factor in user adoption. If users don’t trust the actual results—such as getting an accurate representation of a job candidate through skills or resumes—they won’t use them with confidence in their daily workflows.

WATCH: Our Monday.com CRM review

Friedman said monday.com is trying to overcome this problem by giving users control and visibility. In terms of visibility, Friedman said users will be able to see what the AI ​​is generating on monday.com. Control will be achieved by allowing users to correct AI results in a non-technical way, helping the AI ​​learn over time.

“Artificial intelligence is constantly learning,” Friedman said. “It will learn from all your work, your whiteboards, your data. The combination of visibility and control is, in my opinion, the key to solving the trust problem.”

AI will recharge rather than replace commands

Friedman said that while there is a certain level of fear and distrust surrounding AI, it is here to stay. He believes that instead of replacing large numbers of people, it is more likely to increase their potential.

“We think this will inspire teams and help them not to be replaced, but perhaps to shift work and focus on things that AI can’t do,” he said.

Friedman gave the example of a project manager who in the past spent a lot of time pushing team members and gathering status updates on projects.

“It’s a lot of manual labor,” he admitted. “We believe that with the help of artificial intelligence, such things will be redundant, and then the project manager will be able to focus on how to organize the project. They will be given the tools to predict what lies ahead.

Friedman concluded: “Things like this will also lead us to new developments in the product. Therefore, for each of our products, we will imagine how it will work in the future. And we’re just going to use artificial intelligence to make it stronger.”