We are working to simplify adoption and trust in AI

As head of the artificial intelligence management platform at work monday.com, Or Friedman is at the forefront of an ever-evolving field. As artificial intelligence gradually transforms the workplace and becomes an integral part of project management tools, Friedman said implementing AI innovations can often feel like a race to stay ahead.

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

However, it is important for Friedman and monday.com to get AI technology right. Their platform is used by 225,000 customers in 200 industries around the world, often non-technical teams who use monday.com to perform everyday tasks. As he explained, the way AI is implemented is critical.

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

Make artificial intelligence user-friendly and easily integrate it into workflows.

Following Monday’s launch of the AI ​​assistant, a quicker response to ChatGPT’s release, Friedman said monday.com has begun to think more deeply about how to integrate artificial intelligence. The company began looking for more information about the perception of AI and what customers use it for.

SEE: Our 2024 review of monday.com, including pricing, ease of use, pros and cons.

“We really learned about the issue of adoption, the fear of being replaced, and the hesitancy to trust it,” Friedman explained. This has led to monday.com’s current approach to AI, which is actually following the same recipe with the products it has used so far.

He added: “We took a similar approach to what monday.com did for software in general. Monday’s approach is to democratize software, reach different types of people, tech-savvy and non-tech-savvy, and let them put the tools to 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 that bring Monday into a new era of artificial intelligence. Monday’s announcement also now talks about “unprompted or low-prompt” actions that make AI easier for non-technical users to use, Friedman said.

Another focus 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 too,” Friedman said. “But we really believe that people want to work (with AI) in their workflow, where the work is. 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.”

Simplify your AI experience with predefined task actions

monday.com’s strategy is now taking shape on the platform. One element of the strategy will be to add product capabilities to “enhance” existing products. For example, a firm plans to implement a risk analyzer into its portfolio management product, using AI to identify risks in a portfolio of projects.

The other main way to implement AI is through the use of pre-built automation tools or AI-supported tasks. Known as “AI Blocks,” these elements are designed to resemble the platform’s current colorful blocks, allowing for easier integration and visibility into workflows. Friedman calls them “easy-to-use AI actions that can be integrated into your workflow.”

SEE: 10 Best Project Management Software Systems in 2024

At Elevate 2024 in Sydney, Friedman demonstrated how AI Monday can help recruiters. He said AI can be used to extract specific information, such as email addresses, from a resume document. Recruiters can also use AI to create resume summaries or identify a candidate’s skill set.

Users will also be able to create their own actions using natural language prompts. For example, Friedman said a recruiter could create an activity that compares candidates’ resumes to the job description, highlighting any potential matches or gaps in the candidate pool they’re considering.

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

Building user trust over time with AI insights monday.com

While monday.com emphasizes simplicity for users, it doesn’t limit them to just basic, pre-built automation. For example, Friedman said more complex and robust workflows will be possible using different triggers and conditions, similar to an automation hub.

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—for example, getting an accurate reflection of a job candidate through skills or resume summaries—they won’t use them with confidence in their daily workflows.

SEE: Our review of CRM from monday.com

Friedman said monday.com is trying to solve this problem by giving users control and transparency. 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 outputs in a non-technical way, helping the AI ​​learn over time.

“AI is constantly learning,” Friedman said. “He will learn from all your work, from your boards, from your data. The combination of transparency and control is, in my opinion, the key to solving the problem of trust.”

AI will enhance, not replace, teams

Friedman said that while there is a certain level of fear and mistrust around AI, it is here to stay. He believes that rather than replacing large numbers of people, it will likely increase their potential.

“We think this will energize teams and help them avoid being replaced and maybe switch their work and focus on things that AI won’t be able to do,” he said.

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

“It’s a lot of manual work,” he admitted. “We believe that with the advent of AI, such things will become redundant, and then the project manager can focus on how to organize the project. They will gain tools to predict what’s ahead.

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