by Peter Cosgrove, MD of Futurewise Ltd.
I recently came across a story about a woman who found a photo of herself on the internet — sitting on her own toilet at home! After some digging, she discovered the source: her Roomba vacuum cleaner. When she’d accepted the terms and conditions, she’d unknowingly agreed that the device could capture images for AI training and camera optimisation. None of us realistically read those endless agreements… but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t stay alert to what today’s technology might be collecting — and where it could end up.
During some interviews, companies use tools like Humantic AI and Crystal to scan your social media to “reveal your real personality” — even if we believe the social-media side of us is not for work. Platforms like Alight analyse your benefits-related data and can detect things like when you have removed a spouse from your health plan, quietly inferring you’re going through a breakup, which may or may not be the case, and ideally should not be information taken into account by an employer. If a company is making redundancies, you can imagine how access to these insights might be used.
But there’s a better side, too. Platforms like Visier analyse patterns in workload, hours, absence and team-level sentiment to flag early signs of burnout. That data has helped hospitals make the case for more staff and redesign rotas before people hit a crisis point.
And tools like Eightfold and Gloat can pick up skills you might not even realise you have. They look at what you’ve done in your job, the tasks you’ve handled and the skills people like you have developed — then suggest internal roles or projects you’d probably never think to even consider. It’s a simple idea: helping people see options they didn’t know existed. It means more employees get noticed, and organisations fill roles faster by using the talent they already have.
AI isn’t just reading our data anymore — it’s reading us. And we need to decide how comfortable we are with that.
About the author
Peter Cosgrove leads Futurewise and is an expert on future trends and a much sought-after speaker on talks related to the future of work. He has over 25 years business experience on executive teams as well as on not for profit boards as board member and Chairman. He has been Chair of Junior Achievement Ireland, the National Recruitment Federation and currently serves on the 30% Club Steering Committee tackling gender balance and is Vice Chairman of Aware, a leading mental health charity. Peter has served as a Board adviser for a number of Staffing organisations and has been a contributor to the Expert Group on Future Skills.
