Fear of displacement by AI is rampant across all industries and jobs. But there’s one role where job security shouldn’t be a worry for the occupants, says Aaron Levie, CEO and co-founder of Box: the chief people officer.

The head of the content management platform says the degree to which HR executives have to “interface with the outside world” makes the role AI-proof.

“You can automate software creation; you can’t automate people creation,” Levie said at a recent CPO Council Summit hosted by The Wall Street Journal.

Balancing reinvestment and reduction

HR is in an “incredibly exciting position” at the moment, Levie says, largely because “the way we work as humans is pretty timeless.” So, while AI is taking over the core of so many other jobs, the heart of what HR is meant to do isn’t going to change. But at the same time, HR leaders will be asked to layer on even more—and newer—challenges.

In particular, he envisions AI’s exponential growth, the pace of change, and its ensuing impact on the workforce, to be one of the greatest tests HR is going to face.

“Most people are not good with change,” Levie says. “They want things to be the same, the processes to be like they used to be, the same timelines. With AI, that all goes up 5x.”

HR is also going to need to wade into new workforce planning decisions.

“How do you manage the tradeoffs between people and agents?” he asks. “That’s the hardest problem any organization is going to have going forward: Do you hire 100 engineers or 80 engineers and the other 20 are agents instead?”

As these decisions get made, it may also fall on HR to help change the narrative on AI and job displacement.

As AI has exploded into the mainstream over the last few years, he acknowledges that Silicon Valley has probably done a poor job preparing other sectors for the reality: “This is a tech that, by and large, has optimistic outcomes,” Levie says, yet the common refrain is that AI is leading to widespread job loss.

While he acknowledges disproportionate impacts on the front line, he says smart organizations will reinvest that talent to drive innovation.

“Can we find a way to tell the optimistic story of AI?” Levie asks. “Yes, in some areas we are going to slow down headcount growth, but in other areas we’re growing, reinvesting, reallocating. We’re seeing a lot of use cases that are going to expand what we end up doing—and the amount of people you need to do those things.”

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