How AI Is Helping Better Training And Development

AI is enhancing human potential rather than hindering it

What are the images that pop in your mind when you hear the word Artificial Intelligence? Do you imagine a dystopian world as shown in the Terminator movie series? Or do you visualize a Ray Bradbury world where AI machines replace humans to the point that they continue existing while we do not? Or do you, like me, envision a world where AI enhances human potential rather than hindering it?
 

The last decade has seen significant advancements in Artificial Intelligence. We’ve seen Sophia, the humanoid robot who became quite a celebrity online, self-driving cars, we even had OpenAI beat players at Dota 2 video game. Personally, I count that as significant as the Deep Blue beating Garry Kasparov at chess!

All the progress in AI has given rise to the inevitable question, ‘will AI robots replace human jobs?’ Be honest, has this thought never crossed your mind. If you believe the conspiracy theorists, we have a lot to fear from AI. That is not true; sure AI has caused a disruption, but like industry experts say “AI has disrupted HR and enhanced the way HR professionals get things done”. An increasing number of training and development tools are integrating their analytics with AI to help them perform better.
 
Here’s how AI can help improve training and development:
 

1. Personalized Experiences and Adaptive Learning: AI can help personalize the experience of people based on their behavior patterns. By studying a person’s learning pace and results, AI can suggest different training methods and personalize the study material to cater to specific individual needs. Studying user behavior and the insights gathered by AI, companies can create intelligent and smarter content that adapts itself to the needs of the learner.

 
Speaking about personalized learning experience Miguel Caraballo, Director of Learning & Development at Hodges-Mace provided one of the best examples of it. Imagine this, your rookie salesperson is about to visit a client. Before she heads to the client location for the meeting, the learning-bot pings her phone offering to show a micro-learning class about positive first impressions along with a link to the prospect’s ‘About Us’ page and her manager’s last coaching notes. Now that is a personalized learning experience.
 

2. Generating and Augmenting Content: Creating content for training is a time-consuming task. It involves manpower, resources and lots of time to be spent on research. AI systems can be trained to search for relevant material and store them in a readable format. Content Technologies Inc. has spent a lot of time in developing AI that creates content based on the books and articles available on any particular subject. That's just one example of how AI has changed the landscape of content creation. When it comes to workplace training one of the biggest challenges is content creation. AI has made its impact at just the basic level, and with the advancements in AI technologies, the future holds endless possibilities for it.

3. Virtual Mentoring and Teaching Assistants: At some point or the other, we have all used Google Assistant, Cortana, or Siri. You regularly find screenshots and stories of these assistants providing replies that the users didn’t think were possible. Imagine if the same was done in training, except instead of an assistant, there’s a virtual mentor. Popular language learning app Duolingo has shown just how helpful bots and AI can be in learning. Millions of people are learning new languages with the help of their AI-powered chatbots. The US Navy ran a test study where they trained new recruits in IT skills with the help of virtual mentors. As the costs of AI and machine learning decreases, it is becoming easier to automate training.

4. Advanced Analytics: 10 years ago, you’d use survey software to gather information and manually sift through loads of data for insights from feedback surveys, NPS forms, and satisfaction surveys. Surveys still remain integral to collecting customer data, but there has been a major change. That game changer has been AI, instead of manually poring through hundreds of replies, machine learning has made it possible to study data streams quickly. AI in analytics can help predict customers’ next purchase through relevant feedback and targeted campaigns. Employee training and development is not far behind either. AI analyzes the results from survey software and helps identify key insights on learner progress and retention. As reported in a study conducted by Gartner, AI will create 2.3 million jobs while eliminating 1.8 million by 2020. It has never been more important for businesses to embed a culture of continuous learning and change.

The pursuit of knowledge is endless. Every day you learn something new, it doesn't just magically stop once you finish college and start working. Learning is something that continues throughout an employee’s lifetimes. With all the tools available to them, organizations need to invest in corporate training programs and such to improve employee engagement and maximize their own potential and that of their customers.

Angela White is an Ed-Tech enthusiast with a passion for writing for the consumer market in the areas of product research and marketing using eLearning softwares. Having a knack for writing and an editorial mindset, she has been writing for ProProfs. Visit www.proprofs.com Connect Angela White Follow @angelawhite_ca