Industrial Research Unit · Straits Institute for Applied AI
Applied AI in HR & People
17 entries on the record in hr & people — 6 deployments, 5 pieces of evidence of adoption, 3 regulations, 3 pieces of evidence of impact. Each one is traced to a named source and dated. Maintained continuously by the Industrial Research Unit; the record was last updated 14 Sep 2026.
Banco Hipotecario del Uruguay screens intern applicants with AI interviews
Banco Hipotecario del Uruguay (BHU) — Banco Hipotecario del Uruguay (BHU) is screening 2026 administrative internship candidates through AI job interviews on the MeetPIA platform. The eliminatory video interviews run about 45 minutes without pauses between 11 and 15 September, scoring up to 30 points with 15 needed to pass. MeetPIA chief executive Martín Liguori says the system assesses and suggests while a person always decides.
Maya puts AI behind its HR desk in the Philippines
Maya — Fintech Maya has put AI in HR operations alongside employee self-service, so staff produce their own certificates of employment and similar documents while managers handle promotions and transfers themselves. AI checks the company's BIR Form 2316 filings for inconsistencies and supports recruitment through market analysis and candidate sourcing. People group head Charee Lanza says technology clears away tasks employees should manage without waiting for HR.
California lawmakers pass ban on AI surveillance of workers' emotions
California Legislature — California lawmakers passed Assembly Bill 1883 on 30 August, sending Governor Gavin Newsom a measure barring employers from AI surveillance of a worker's individual emotional state or collection of their neural data. Violations would cost $500 each, with certain aircraft and product development for defence, military, space or national security exempt.
OPM tells agencies most AI in federal hiring is not high-impact
US Office of Personnel Management — The US Office of Personnel Management told agencies, in a memo from Director Scott Kupor, that AI in federal hiring is mostly not high-impact when used to draft job announcements, screen applicants, check files pre-offer or assess hiring metrics, as long as an official reviews it independently and adopts it. OPM plans AI features in USAJOBS, USA Staffing and USA Hire, but agencies need not wait for them.
Evidence of impactHR & PeopleUnited States12 Aug 2026
Employment for AI-exposed 22-to-25s sits 19% below peers
Stanford Digital Economy Lab — Employment of 22-to-25-year-olds in the most AI-exposed occupations is 19 per cent below the path of less-exposed peers, finds a revised version of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab paper Canaries in the Coal Mine. Using high-frequency ADP payroll data on millions of US workers through June 2026, Erik Brynjolfsson, Bharat Chandar and Ruyu Chen show the gap widening steadily since August 2025, driven by less hiring rather than more separations. Declines cluster where AI substitutes for people, while employment is flat or rising where it complements them; the authors call these early descriptive indicators, not causal evidence.
Half of Belarusian jobseekers now use AI in their search
praca.by — AI job search runs deep among Belarusians, praca.by found: 29.5% do so routinely, 24.4% have tried neural networks on a vacancy at least once, and 20.7% mean to try. A quarter refuse outright. Of users, 63% build CVs and covering letters this way, 53% rehearse interviews, 47% dig into employers and 44% pick apart adverts. Only 12% would hand AI-assisted jobhunting the entire task.
US court lets AI hiring-bias case against Workday proceed nationwide
In Mobley v Workday, a US federal court let a nationwide ADEA age-discrimination collective action proceed over Workday's AI hiring-screening tools, for applicants 40 and over rejected since September 2020. The flagship US test of AI hiring bias, it asks whether a vendor can be liable as an employer's 'agent'; opt-ins closed in March 2026 and core discrimination claims advanced in June 2026.
LinkedIn now receives about 11,000 job applications a minute
LinkedIn gets about 11,000 applications a minute, up roughly 45% year on year. Generative-AI 'auto-apply' tools largely drive the surge, shifting the volume problem to recruiters.
LinkedIn launches Hiring Assistant, its first recruiting AI agent
LinkedIn has launched Hiring Assistant, billed as its first AI 'agent', which sources candidates and builds shortlists autonomously, freeing recruiters for relationships. Early enterprise user Certis, a security firm, reported recruiter productivity up 60 to 70 per cent and shortlists produced in minutes instead of days, per its chief human resources officer.
51% of organisations have no formal policy for AI in HR
HR governance lags adoption: 51% of organisations have no formal AI-use policy and 52% leave HR out of AI strategy (SHRM). Yet 62% expect AI to raise headcount in 2026, and only 7% expect a fall.
EU AI Act's high-risk hiring rules deferred to December 2027
The EU AI Act treats AI in recruitment and employment as 'high-risk', but the Digital Omnibus (Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, in force 27 July 2026) pushed those duties from August 2026 to 2 December 2027, and embedded product AI to 2 August 2028. Article 5 prohibitions have applied since February 2025: banned now, regulated later.
Manulife rolls out generative AI tools to its entire global workforce
Manulife — Manulife has extended generative AI in insurance to 100% of its global workforce, and 75% regularly turn to ChatMFC, its proprietary GenAI assistant, alongside supporting training. Spanning Canada, the US and Asia, over 35 GenAI applications are already operating, with 70 further ones lined up for 2025. Nearly 200 machine learning engineers and data scientists underpin this generative AI adoption in insurance, pushing usage company-wide.
39% of organisations now use AI within their HR functions
About 4 in 10 organisations (39%) now use AI in HR, with recruiting the top use case (27%). An earlier SHRM instrument put AI-in-HR use at 43% in 2025, from 26% in 2024; the 2026 figure uses a different survey base, so it shows the current level, not a fall.
Chipotle deploys an AI hiring assistant across 3,500 restaurants
Chipotle has put Paradox's conversational AI hiring assistant, 'Ava Cado', in more than 3,500 restaurants across North America and Europe to handle candidate messages, interview scheduling and job offers. Announcing it in October 2024, the company said it expected in-restaurant time to hire to fall by up to 75 per cent.
Uruguay
Philippines
United States
Belarus
European Union
Canada