Harry McCracken’s Stuff (@technologizer.com)

LinkedIn’s new AI people search unlocks the power of its network The world’s greatest business expertise still resides in the brains of individual humans. This feature is about making it easier to find them. Last June, LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky took on a second job. Microsoft, the social network for business professionals’ owner since 2016, expanded his responsibilities to include Microsoft 365—the suite still better known by its former name, Microsoft Office—and its Copilot AI assistant. The role charges him with making AI useful in a productivity context, a goal that’s still very much a work in progress. But Roslansky also remains in charge of LinkedIn, a place whose entire reason for being springs from the network effect of its billion-plus members. Their unique connections, learnings, and willingness to help other people can’t be fed into an LLM and reprocessed into the kind of generic advice a chatbot can spout. In a world of increasingly commodified information, Roslansky argues that LinkedIn’s essential humanity is more essential than ever. http://dlvr.it/TPFVyh