Human-Centric AI Council opens Year Two with five HR AI research tracks

The Human-Centric AI Council will hold a free public town hall on Sept. 9 to unveil five Year Two research priorities shaped by 27 senior HR leaders. The agenda focuses on how AI is changing HR work, where human judgment must stay in place, and what real-world implementations reveal about risk and cost.

Why it matters: - The Human-Centric AI Council is shifting the HR AI conversation from broad questions to specific decisions that practitioners can use in real organizations. - The Year Two agenda centers on where AI should assist, automate or stop short of autonomous decision-making in hiring, performance, pay and terminations. - The work matters because failures in autonomous systems can be invisible, such as qualified candidates disappearing without a clear alert.

What happened: - The Human-Centric AI Council launched Year Two with a free public town hall set for Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2026, at 1:00 p.m. ET. - The event will present the Council’s five Year Two research workstreams. - Registration is open at the Council registration page. - The Council is led by Kyle Lagunas, founder and principal analyst at Kyle & Co and founder of the Human-Centric AI Council. - Year Two was shaped by 27 senior HR practitioners.

The details: - One workstream will map where AI is already changing HR work, task by task, and identify what is augmented, automated or still reserved for human judgment. Kirandeep Virdi leads that track. - A second workstream will examine the HR operating model after AI adoption, including role redesign for talent acquisition, HR business partners, learning and development, and HR operations. Clayton Rodgers leads that track. - A third workstream will define where autonomous decisions are off the table and will build a risk index scored by vendor and HR process. Susan Jackson leads that track. - A fourth workstream will focus on what makes assistive AI safe and how to turn AI literacy into role-specific practice. Jelena Marjanovic, PhD, leads that track. - A fifth workstream will publish four to six analyses of real AI implementations, including what worked, what failed and what the business and human costs were. Rob Devlin leads that track. - The town hall will be open to questions, and the Council may revise its priorities based on feedback from attendees. - The Year Two cohort includes 27 senior HR and talent leaders across five pillars: HR technology, talent acquisition, people operations, transformation, governance and workforce strategy. - Council members implement AI inside their own organizations and meet regularly to pressure-test the frameworks they are building. - The Council says Year One produced four free resources now used across HR organizations: an AI Literacy Toolkit and applied learning course, a Responsible AI Transformation Framework, an AI change management ebook and an AI Solution Evaluation and Design Framework.

Between the lines: - The Council is trying to move HR leaders past vendor demos, which tend to show the best-case version of a product rather than the failures that surface after deployment. - Lagunas separates hiring AI into three buckets: assistive AI that works with a team, automated AI that works for a team and autonomous AI that works instead of a team. - That framing changes the risk discussion because the cost of errors rises as human oversight drops. - The Council’s structure keeps underwriters from controlling the agenda, even though companies such as Cornerstone on Demand, Glider, CodeSignal, HiBob, Gem and GoodTime.io fund Year Two. - The separation gives technology vendors a way to support the work without steering it. - Two workstreams are likely to influence vendor products directly: the risk index and the published implementation analyses.

What’s next: - The Sept. 9 town hall will let attendees question the agenda directly and may shape the Council’s next research priorities. - The Council plans to keep all publications free and open to the HR community. - Additional underwriting positions remain open. - HR technology companies are invited to attend the town hall as guests. - Everyone who registers will receive the recording.

The bottom line: - The Council’s second year is less about proving AI can help HR and more about defining where human judgment still has to lead.