We’re In the Third Wave of Gen AI Adoption
In the evolving landscape of workplace technology, few voices resonate more clearly than Alex Alonso, Chief Data & Analytics Officer at SHRM. With a foundation in organizational psychology and a sharp lens on workforce trends, Alonso sees generative AI (Gen AI) not as a fleeting disruption, but as a steadily maturing force transforming how we work. “We’re in the third wave of Gen AI adoption,” he told me in a recent interview, and each wave tells a deeper story about both technological potential and human behavior.
From Experimentation to Strategic Integration
The first wave of Gen AI adoption came fast and curious. “ChatGPT had a million users in five days,” Alonso recalled, citing it as the fastest-growing application at the time. During this initial period after November 2022, employees across industries scrambled to test and play with the novel tools. Curiosity dominated as people experimented, unsure yet intrigued by the possibilities of machine-generated content.
The second wave, according to SHRM data, came in the latter half of 2023, when adoption matured into more targeted usage. In HR, five functional areas saw rapid uptake: talent acquisition (42% of employers), learning and development (38%), onboarding, benefits administration, and compensation auditing. Employers began moving past casual use, aligning Gen AI with specific workflows. Yet, this wave plateaued as users awaited better tools and clearer applications.
The third wave, emerging in late 2024 and gaining traction in 2025, is defined by AI agents—systems that don’t just respond, but act. This is where Gen AI is starting to reshape employee experience at scale. Not only are organizations using AI to streamline internal processes, but individual employees are also exploring how AI can become a personal assistant, not just a smart search engine.
Optimization Over Invention
Still, as Alonso emphasized, most employees aren’t using Gen AI to create—they’re using it to refine. “The average user is more focused on optimization and enhancement than true generation,” he said. SHRM data backs this up: 63% of workers classify themselves as beginners, and 22% say they have no real experience using Gen AI.
A case in point: U.S. marketers are not, by and large, building campaigns from scratch using AI. Instead, they’re using Gen AI tools to punch up ad copy or tighten messaging. This reflects a fundamental tension. While the technology can do much more, psychological barriers—ranging from fear of obsolescence to lack of technical fluency—are limiting its use to the safer territory of editing and support.
HR’s Expanding Role in AI Change Management
As Gen AI weaves deeper into organizational life, HR departments are no longer just managing people—they’re managing how people interact with intelligent systems. Unlike traditional IT rollouts like ERP or CRM software, Gen AI requires HR to lead not only adoption but also behavioral transformation.
Alonso is clear-eyed about this challenge: “It’s about managing human adoption,” he said. With an estimated 19.1 million U.S. jobs vulnerable to displacement over the next five years, the anxiety is real. But so is the opportunity.
He urges HR to pivot toward continuous upskilling—training employees not just in how to use Gen AI tools, but in how to monetize their knowledge in this new context. The goal is not to replace humans with machines but to enable “AI plus HI”—Artificial Intelligence plus Human Intelligence. In his words, “The HR professional who is proficient in using AI is going to displace you tomorrow.” That’s not a threat, but a call to empowerment.
Addressing Generational Anxiety and Status Disruption
One of the more nuanced observations Alonso shared is the tension older workers feel as Gen AI reshapes hierarchies. “People in their 50s and 60s feel like AI allows newcomers to do the same work they’ve mastered over decades,” he noted. The fear isn’t just about skill gaps—it’s about status and relevance.
Yet Alonso sees real advantages for older professionals, particularly in roles like AI ethics, where judgment, communication, and contextual knowledge matter deeply. “Older workers often have better communication skills, and that’s a huge asset when training AI systems,” he explained. Rather than being sidelined, they can anchor organizations in responsible AI governance, ensuring that human values remain front and center.
Why Gen AI Transformation Is Uniquely Fragmented
Unlike prior tech transformations, Gen AI doesn’t follow a linear path. It’s decentralized, flexible, and personalized—qualities that make it powerful but also difficult to manage. “This isn’t one transformation; it’s thousands of micro-transformations happening all at once,” Alonso said.
That fragmentation creates a change management challenge with no playbook. With open-source models, shadow IT risks, and varying departmental use cases, HR and IT leaders must navigate complexity without losing sight of strategic coherence. Upskilling programs need to be customized. Governance models must balance innovation and control. And unlike older technologies, Gen AI tools evolve fast, often without warning.
The burden of coherence now falls on organizations themselves—especially HR departments tasked with building frameworks for shared learning and policy development.
Tactics for Engagement and Collective Learning
So what works when it comes to employee engagement in this context? Alonso highlighted two tactics with strong impact: communal learning and AI immersion days.
Communal learning takes the form of open forums where employees can share prompts, tools, and insights—what he calls “prompting libraries.” This grassroots approach builds a culture of experimentation and demystifies AI for the average worker. Meanwhile, AI immersion days give teams a full day to explore Gen AI applications relevant to their roles, promoting both excitement and deeper understanding.
Alonso also cited an innovative tactic observed by Wharton professor Ethan Mollick: incentivizing ideation with AI. By rewarding employees for creative use cases and innovations, organizations are not only promoting adoption—they’re institutionalizing curiosity.
Looking Ahead: HR’s Strategic Shift
Alonso believes the HR function is on the verge of a transformation as fundamental as the one Gen AI itself is driving. “We’re going to see chief intelligence officers,” he predicted—leaders who manage both artificial and human intelligence, optimizing the synergy between the two.
Already, use cases like deepfakes for personalized onboarding and leadership training are emerging. Far from gimmicks, these tools are beginning to deliver tailored employee experiences at scale, reshaping how people learn, grow, and contribute.
In the coming years, organizations that embrace this vision of HR as both a guardian of people and a steward of intelligence will be best positioned to thrive. They’ll move beyond anxiety and hype into a new era—one where AI amplifies human capability rather than replaces it.
As Alonso put it, “AI agentry can unlock human agency.” In that equation lies the future of work.
Key Take-Away
We are entering the third wave of generative AI adoption—where AI shifts from novelty to strategic integration, driven not just by technology, but by human behavior, change management, and the evolving role of HR as a steward of both people and… Share on XImage credit: RDNE Stock project/pexels
Dr. Gleb Tsipursky was lauded as “Office Whisperer” and “Hybrid Expert” by The New York Times for helping leaders use hybrid work to improve retention and productivity while cutting costs. He serves as the CEO of the boutique future-of-work consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts. Dr. Gleb wrote the first book on returning to the office and leading hybrid teams after the pandemic, his best-seller Returning to the Office and Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams: A Manual on Benchmarking to Best Practices for Competitive Advantage (Intentional Insights, 2021). He authored seven books in total, and is best know for his global bestseller, Never Go With Your Gut: How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters (Career Press, 2019). His cutting-edge thought leadership was featured in over 650 articles and 550 interviews in Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Inc. Magazine, USA Today, CBS News, Fox News, Time, Business Insider, Fortune, and elsewhere. His writing was translated into Chinese, Korean, German, Russian, Polish, Spanish, French, and other languages. His expertise comes from over 20 years of consulting, coaching, and speaking and training for Fortune 500 companies from Aflac to Xerox. It also comes from over 15 years in academia as a behavioral scientist, with 8 years as a lecturer at UNC-Chapel Hill and 7 years as a professor at Ohio State. A proud Ukrainian American, Dr. Gleb lives in Columbus, Ohio. In his free time, he makes sure to spend abundant quality time with his wife to avoid his personal life turning into a disaster. Contact him at Gleb[at]DisasterAvoidanceExperts[dot]com, follow him on LinkedIn @dr-gleb-tsipursky, Twitter @gleb_tsipursky, Instagram @dr_gleb_tsipursky, Facebook @DrGlebTsipursky, Medium @dr_gleb_tsipursky, YouTube, and RSS, and get a free copy of the Assessment on Dangerous Judgment Errors in the Workplace by signing up for the free Wise Decision Maker Course at https://disasteravoidanceexperts.com/newsletter/.