AI transparency in People Skills

What is People Skills? 

People Skills is a new service in Microsoft 365 experiences and Microsoft 365 Copilot to help you connect with others, discover opportunities, and develop your skills. This service also provides leaders in your organization with insights about employee skills.  Learn more about People Skills.

What can People Skills do? What are its intended uses? 

People Skills uses data from the Microsoft 365 Graph and information from Microsoft 365 profiles to generate AI-based skill profiles for individuals based on role and work activity.  Specifically:

• People Skills uses AI to automatically generate a personalized skill profile for you to make it easy to share your skills with others. You can edit and confirm these skills, add others, and decide how they are shared. You can also use skills to find and connect with others through experiences like the Microsoft 365 profile card, Microsoft 365 Copilot, People Companion, and Org Explorer.

• HR Analysts can view aggregate skills data (skills generated by AI and those confirmed by users) to integrate into their organization’s skills landscape.

• Group Managers and leaders can view aggregate and individual skills data for their teams (skills generated by AI and those confirmed by users) to gain insights about their teams and integrate into their organization’s skills landscape.

• Knowledge Administrators and Global Administrators can set organization-wide skill availability and map skills to roles by selecting from a pre-defined list of skills or uploading their company skill library and role-to-skill mapping files.

How was People Skills evaluated? What metrics are used to measure performance? 

Microsoft has been measuring confirmation and rejection rates of skills suggested to People Skills users to help improve AI-generated skills. These metrics have been and will continue to be used to measure and improve system performance.  

What are the limitations of People Skills? How can users minimize the impact of People Skills limitations when using the system? 

Skills generated by AI depend on the signals available to Microsoft, such as your Microsoft 365 profile and your work activity in Microsoft 365. These signals may not be a comprehensive reflection of your skills or abilities.

People Skills generates skills inferences that are restricted to an organization's skills library. This is the set of skills that all employees in your organization can choose from to create your skills profile. This limitation can impact the quality of skill inferences provided to users.

Even within the signals available to Microsoft, AI models may contain errors or inaccuracies based on a misinterpretation of the user's role or activity. We aim for the system to be accurate in aggregate.

AI-based answers related to skills may not always be accurate since they use a large language model and may have inaccuracies due to the underlying model performance. Users of the data should treat People Skills insights as one source of information and apply their judgment when using the data generated.

What operational factors and settings allow for effective and responsible use of People Skills?