The extra responsibility isn't going away, but one longtime HR industry analyst says it's worth leaning into
Across corporate America, artificial intelligence adoption is increasingly becoming HR's problem to manage. IT departments handle much of the infrastructure, and legal and compliance teams absorb plenty of the risk. But walking a workforce through what artificial intelligence actually changes about how people do their jobs keeps landing on HR, often without any change to title, scope, or pay to reflect the added responsibilities.
William Tincup, Editor, Analyst, Advisor & Host at WRKdefined, a podcast network covering the future of work, based in Texas, has spent more than two decades studying how HR departments absorb organizational change. He's watched several major technology shifts move through the profession, and he said this one is playing out differently.
"It's painful because promotion assumes a title and a bump in pay. Sorry, not sorry. They're getting none of those things," Tincup said.
William Tincup, Editor, Analyst, Advisor & Host at WRKdefined, is shown here in this contributed photo.
No new title, no new pay
Tincup described what typically happens once a company decides to roll artificial intelligence tools into a department. The person tasked with leading that rollout is usually an HR manager who already has a full plate, and the added responsibility arrives without any adjustment to their role, their title, or their pay.
"But you Janet, Bobby, you're now tasked with rolling this thing out. They can't outsource that because the learning that comes with it is the juice. That's actually the good stuff," he said.
That doesn't mean the extra work gets any easier, though.
"The beatings will continue until morale increases," he said.
The strain he described shows up in the data too. SHRM's 2026 State of AI in HR report found that AI is now 5.7 times more likely to shift HR responsibilities than to eliminate them outright. HRD America has covered a version of this trend playing out well beyond HR, reporting on ghost growth, where employees take on more responsibility without a raise or promotion. That expectation runs deeper than workload alone. HRD America has also reported on how employees are turning to HR to fill in what executives aren't explaining about AI.
An AI transformation with no finish line
Tincup said this shift doesn't resemble the technology rollouts that came before it, including the move from on premise software to software as a service, or SaaS.
"SaaS change had a beginning, a middle, and an end. AI change has none of those things," Tincup said.
He said HR leaders built their change management instincts around projects with defined endpoints, something this shift doesn't offer.
"That's daunting for pretty much everybody, but it's daunting for HR leaders because they're so used to in the last 30 years of being able to say, okay, we'll just start the project. At the middle we see where we're at and we have a go-live and then we kind of set it and let it go and then we go do some other stuff. This isn't that," he said.
That pace already shows up in the numbers. U.S. Census Bureau survey data shows AI use among American businesses climbed to roughly 20% by the spring of 2026, up from about 17% just months earlier. That means the added workload Tincup described isn't a temporary spike tied to one rollout. It's an ongoing condition, renewed every time the technology shifts again. At least one other HR leader agrees, arguing that AI adoption isn't a Y2K-style moment that will pass.
Tincup said the constant change isn't going away, but it becomes easier to manage once HR leaders realize they aren't navigating it alone.
"If you get yourself over that hump, it's like, okay, that's fine. It doesn't have to control you. It doesn't have to slow you down. Everyone else is going through the same stuff. Every other HR practitioner, your competitors, are going through that stuff," he said.
Choosing to lean in anyway
Despite everything he just described, Tincup doesn't believe the added workload should be something to dread.
"Instead of looking at it as, oh my God, now I have to do this, it's like, now I get to run. And you know what? I get to learn," Tincup said.
He said the alternative to that mindset is resisting a shift that isn't optional anyway.
"It's like I'm being forced to learn something new at gunpoint. But it's either we adapt to this new normal or we get run over by it. That's why I think it's a wonderful opportunity for HR leaders to say, yeah, I'm not gonna get run over by this," he said.
Tincup said that willingness to adapt is rooted in something deeper, a trait he sees as foundational to the HR profession long before artificial intelligence entered the picture.
"They have hope, like in their soul they have hope. You know all the darkness, you know the sexual harassment claims, you know the pay inequities, you know everything. Yet by and large, you still have hope," he said.
Tincup also spoke to what all of this means for HR's position inside the organization.
"It's going to create a rift between the executives who are doing this, trying, failing, learning, and succeeding, and the ones who aren't. HR's wanted a seat at the table for as long as I can remember. Well, this is the seat. It's been presented," he said.
