Nigel Cassidy: Artificial intelligence powers our daily work tools, customer service relies on it, so why don't we use AI much in learning and development? I'm Nigel Cassidy and this is the CIPD Podcast.

Now the other day I was online playing with one of those AI generators that comes up with punchlines for jokes and well here are three it came up with when I typed HR brought in AI to help with L&D only to find that…It was worried about the future of AI. Now this was clever. The AI was learning more from them than they were learning from the AI. Well, how about this one? HR brought in AI to help with L&D only to find that It doesn't work well with people. So, why isn't AI used so much in L&D yet? Well it seems while the switch from face-to-face to online learning during Covid brought many benefits it also left us wedded to rather generic and inflexible learning. I mean L&D must be struggling a bit to harness AI when you think that just 5% of learning professionals polled by CIPD were currently using it. 

So, if the rest of business are merrily crunching vast data sets and optimising their supply chains with the help of AI then why not use it to improve learning? Maybe stretch that training budget. Well, joining me for the second of our podcasts on Everything AI a first self-confessed digital learning geek with 20 years L&D experience with top brands such as LV, British Gas and Virgin. She hosts the AI for the Average Joe podcast and is the co-founder of Quantum Rise. She's Erica Farmer. Hello. 

Erica Farmer: Hi Nigel. Thank you so much for having me on this podcast today. 

NC: Really looking forward to it. And with her a specialist among other things in supporting HR and using AI to boost employee learning. She's got long corporate experience in financial services, energy and life sciences. She's the now Dubai-based co-founder and CEO of the work consultancy Rhythmic. It's Radha Bharj. Hello. 

Radha Bharj: Hello Nigel. Thank you so much for having me today. 

NC: OK. Now Radha, just 5% current adoption of AI in learning departments. Another 6% apparently trying to bring it in this year tops according to CIPD. It's not exactly impressive, is it?

RB: Exactly it's not. And there's a lot of things that are sort of contributing to that. Right. So, firstly, the fact that a lot of this is still quite new. AI, although it's been around for a while through generative AI, which sort of emerged on November 30th 2022. What we've seen is, is that people are now more, it's become more accessible and therefore more and more people are using it. But there is this big thing around, you know, people not being able to, you know, using it so much in their roles, as you've kind of described at the moment.

There's lots of things that contribute to that. You know, technology and change is quite scary. You know, we're going through the fourth industrial revolution at the moment. The technology and AI is not going anywhere anytime soon. And we do need to adapt to the way that we work and the way that we use this and sort of, you know, the fair element around it. We need to work towards and make our teams more comfortable with using it. 

NC: I mean, Erica Farmer, I wonder why. L&D is on the back foot, people are hesitating to experiment or change. I think you've called it analysis paralysis. 

EF: Your numbers are definitely on the lower side than what I've seen for other polling and other information. But the narrative is the same that, are we just waiting to be taught how to use generative AI, ironically, in a learning function? Is it the analysis paralysis where we just don't know where to get started because it's so conceptual and there's so much going on and we're not entirely sure where the starting point is. We know there's probably not going to be a finishing point. So, that's quite difficult for some people. And as learning HR people, typically we're the type of personalities that like to talk. We like to consult. We like to engage. We like, we're good at that stuff, understanding business problems. That doesn't always equal action and impact. And sometimes we get caught up in company politics, ego, whatever it might be. 

But actually, if you look at studies from LinkedIn Learning, from the World Economic Forum, for example, one of the top skills to support the future of skills is things like clear expression. So, as much as we're saying things like skills around being AI literate, prompt engineering, understanding the future of work are super important. I think sometimes we need to stop marking our own homework in regards to how we come across and work on things like clarity of how we engage with the business. If we're going to be at the forefront of new revolutions like AI. 

NC: OK, well, it might be helpful at this stage rather to just talk a little bit more about the technologies that are actually on tap here. Now, AI, we know simply the science of making machines that can think like humans. And that's been around, I think, since the 1950s. I mean, it's embedded everywhere, as I said at the beginning. Generative AI, that focuses on creating new data and chat responses, among many other things. Can you just sort of take this on and tell us in a bit more detail, what technologies we're talking about and how they might be helpful in devising, running and evaluating our learning? 

RB: Yeah, there's a few that are already in existence, right? So, like we've already sort of talked about, AI has been around for a number of years and actually within the L&D space as well, it's already, it's already being used. But there are a few areas that we can talk about now in terms of where it's sort of coming into play in the application of it. First of all, the personalised learning paths. Right. So, this is what we have learning that is given to learning. And it's based on their roles, their objectives, their preferences and their progress. And what that is giving them is more tailored, relevant content. And in a world where data and everything we have and everything outside of work as well is so personalised to our needs, we're bringing that external experience into our internal learning environment. And what does that mean? We're creating better experiences, better engagement rates, better effectiveness in the learning that we're giving to our to our employees. And therefore, that's going to have a positive impact on retention. Another area that we see this in is for content creation. So, specifically to your point, Nigel, as you mentioned, Gen-AI. Now, content creation using Gen-AI is everywhere. If you turn on the news, if you read any article, every single function is using it. And actually, even in the L&D space, creating content, that's also an application of it. And what is that in turn doing? It's freeing up our time as L&D professionals to focus on perhaps more complex design of learning, or do more in that time in terms of the delivery of it.
 
Another area is chatbots for support. So, you know, we've seen AI and chatbots again in our in our sort of personalised and we interact with our brands outside of work. But having chatbots coming internally again, it's been around for a while. But what we're seeing is we're able to provide that real time support to learners at the point of need in the flow of work. And another area I'd just like to touch on is, you know, AI avatars. You know, we're seeing more and more of this popping up now where we're creating again, more enhanced learning experiences which are more interactive, again, the more personalised and the more engaging. And then what are we getting as a sort of by-product of that or as a result of that rather, is that we're able to produce content a lot more quicker and it's a lot more cost effective, right? So, if you think about the prep that it takes to create shooting schedules around this, the actual shooting itself, the post and pre-production, you're seeing that. And then you're seeing that kind of getting freed up, too, and also your capacity as a function and what you're doing is freeing that up, too. So, these are just some of the examples, Nigel, that I wanted to sort of bring to life in terms of how we're seeing it at the moment in the world of work today specifically for L&D.

NC: Erica, I'm getting slight warning bells ringing in my head about chatbots. I still can't get this image in my head of a sort of robot teacher like C3PO, you know, gliding up and down the aisles of a company. And I mean, if you take the chatbot. Some of the conversations we have with customer service chatbots are pretty dispiriting. So, can you infuse this a bit more and just take this on a bit more and explain how you begin the process of working out where the AI can help in both these areas of creation of content and then in delivery? 

EF: It's important to take a step back and understand how people are feeling around this technology because, you know, geriatric millennial, you know, born in 81, grew up with Star Wars, C3PO, movie franchises like The Terminator, Skynet, becoming self-aware, Judgment Day. You know, this stuff goes to the heart of people in our generation where they think, what happens if AI does become self-aware and our robot overlords, you know, come to rule us and all this kind of stuff. I laugh when I say it, but actually, you know, people are nervous around this and understandably so. 

Only last year. Last year, we saw Hollywood go on strike because of these AI avatar potential. You know, what does that mean for my skill and my ability and me as a human? And what's the human robot relationship? That's why hearts and minds bridging that fear gap for people, I think, is the first place to start. When I work with clients and I start to talk to them about how what are your people saying about creating content with AI? Oh, well, what does that mean to my job? You know, or if I don't want to work with AI or become, you know, AI literate, where's my future career going? 

And actually, we need to recognize that there's a whole set of embedding skills that sit around this. And it enables you to automate the parts of your job that perhaps you aren't so enamoured with. For example, for me, that would be numbers, spreadsheets, you know, P&Ls. I already stick data into ChatGPT and I make it more visual for where we're spending money and where we're making profit. That kind of stuff. And it allows me to do more stuff like this, speaking to people because it frees up headspace, time space, time and energy. So, it's, this isn't just a technical upskill. This isn't just another business change project. The AI is going to change your life, both professionally and personally. And we are emotional social creatures. We know that in HR and L&D. So, this is where I think we start to get people on that journey. Then you do the hands on stuff with ChatGPT, get people to try and break it, create prompts that are going to make their personal lives a little bit easier rather than just having business prompts and things making your work more accessible. 

NC: And just before we leave you on this, you mentioned about people's fears, maybe they've delivered L&D in a particular way. This is something rather new. Do you think there might be people who need to think about working elsewhere? That this isn't going to suit them, that this change is going to be profound, whether they like it or not. 

EF: I mean, like any major change, you will get people who exit the workforce because it is a step too far. I mean, you know, bless her. My mum retired between Windows 8 and Windows 9, you know, because it was a stretch too far in terms of the operating system. She said, you know, I've learned enough in my working life. This is just too much for me. The time to go and do something else. So, I do think that's a potential. However, I often say and I thoroughly believe that L&Ders get excited about this kind of new way of doing things. And that's why you've got to let people talk about it, feel it, get hands on and also get excited about what the future means. Because if you listen to thought leaders like Dr. Philippa Hardman, the way she talks about L&D in three to five years is that the L&D function looks very different to how we typically see a design and delivery function today. It's more around quality assurance and making sure that the techs providing the best output for the learner and having the learners directly engage with generative AI as a learning tool to do role play with and things like that, rather than us being stuck in the mindset that actually I'm just going to use it to create e-learning and slides. And that's fine. That's the first step. We need a step by step plan, but that's not the be all and end all. 

NC: Well, it's interesting you mentioned mindset. I was going to mention that at the end, but seeing as you brought it up now, I just wonder, Radha, is there a kind of a L&D mindset thing at play here? Learning and development teams, I mean, have always sat right between the people that know, you know, the management, the executives, the subject experts and so on. And at the other end, the staff, the users, the people who need the learning, and they've just kind of delivered it from one side to the other. I mean, maybe it's hard for people to grasp. They've got to kind of get out of the middle. I mean, their job is to facilitate people accessing the knowledge, isn't it? 

RB: It's absolutely, you know, what you're saying is right. And I think there's also an element of accepting that it's everyone. So, the mindset absolutely is really, really important, regardless of kind of, you know, the function of a particular role. But, you know, if we talk about this very specifically, and Erica, you had mentioned sort of hearts and minds and things and, you know, the thing around empathy, kindness, values that make us better. The human intelligence versus the artificial intelligence is an understanding that both of that there is existence right now. And they each have their plate. So, understanding that from the mindset perspective and building awareness around that I think is really important, it helps eliminate the fear factor around it. I think the other thing that I like to talk to a lot of people around and you know our clients and stuff around is, just acknowledging that no one is an expert in this space. 

We're all kind of on this discovery mode and this is not just unique within our organisations, within our teams. As a society we're still experimenting and it's OK, it's OK to be scared and I think that's probably where I would, where I would encourage people to start with the mindset and then sort of building the gaps, bridging the gaps that exist, you know, this whole piece around re-skilling and upskilling acknowledging that we need to do that is first of all the most important thing to do. And then secondly understanding, OK where are, where do we need to start with this because from what I see also is knowledge around AI and the specific use cases within HR and L&D, it's very patchy. So, you'll have some people who have a lot more knowledge. You have some people who are who are very much at the beginner side of this. So, just acknowledging that, that we have a very interesting landscape where we're sort of starting off is very important and building that through empathy, building that through kindness, building that through role modelling, encouraging psychological safety, eliminating some of the fear factor. Every day you put on the news, you know you look on LinkedIn and you know there's some sort of stat around how AI is going to replace us. So, just appreciate that it's going on at the moment and work with your teams on that within the profession I'd say. 

NC: OK so, we talked a lot about the mindset of the landscape. Let's be a bit more practical now. Erica can you maybe touch on one or two examples from your own experience of how and where AI can be brought in to deliver better training and maybe it's a big ask but could it help straight stretch that training budget? 

EF: Oh 100% and I would say let's park training, this is where we talk about L&D and HR having the learner own their learner journey and all these cliches that we hear. You know, stopping the L&D function pushing training via an LMS onto a large audience where we sheep dip. This for me is where the the easiest, the biggest and the most impactful change you can make it as an L&D practitioner is just having access to either whichever products you're using. You know, Gemini from Google you might be using Microsoft co-pilot that's just launched. A lot of people using ChatGPT in my experience. Even things like, where you would bring in professional actors or extra trainers and facilitators you know, you've got to think about that enablement mindset. 

So, how can I enable my learners to work with the technology and use the technology as a coach or a trainer or a thought partner and work with it one-on-one. So, part of that might be an example where I'm sure we've all written management skill programmes, development programmes which take weeks and weeks and we build new powerpoints and resources and people sit in classrooms for days on end wondering what are they going to have for dinner at the end of the day nodding away. And you know, I'm being a bit kind of facetious when I say that but actually if you put the right prompt into ChatGPT, you can make ChatGPT a difficult team member and practice you're giving feedback to someone who's going to respond in a difficult manner. Or if you want to think about how you make broader, more critical, business critical decisions or complex problem solving, asking your large language model to play things like devil's advocate and your decision making or to ask it to become a certain persona, almost like you're working with an SME or an intern or somebody like that, another trainer, another facilitator. 

We are only limited by our own creativity and imagination in this space and if you haven't gone on to ChatGPT and given it a persona of some kind, a difficult team member, a learning consultant, an instructional designer, a member of the exec that doesn't buy into the project that you're delivering and therefore won't sign the budget off. Practice your influencing skills, practice your communication, I find it really valuable in those, in those moments to really stretch your own thinking and not feel like you have to build this massive ivory tower of budgets and actors and trainers and resources and all this stuff that we're used to doing. When actually, a really good large language model can do that for you. Now caveat, if you're using open source like Open AI, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, you don't want to be putting sensitive information into these large language models because it's there owned by Microsoft. After that it goes out into the ether and anybody can access that data. So, this is where we need to also provide things like behavioral frameworks, when it comes to generative AI. Because you can't reprimand a learner or somebody in your organisation for putting data into ChatGPT, when they don't understand the impact of why they shouldn't be doing that. 

EF: So, there's the element of things that sit around like data protection like digital literacy like understanding how technology works. Critical thinking, problem solving etc, all of those human distinctive skills, like human intelligence that Radha talks about versus the artificial intelligence, that needs to be in your skills gap analysis organisationally as well as other things that you'd expect normally. 

RB: One thing I wanted to sort of add to what Erica's saying I think more than any time before this is a time where we do need to break the silos in our organisations and we need to work closer with technology and legal and all the other teams in the organisation to really understand the consequences, as Erica was just talking about right. And when we have those coming together, we're able to look at the bigger picture. So, yes from an L&D perspective this is what we're doing and this is how we want to do it but we understand the impact from legal. We understand the legal, the technical limitations that might surround some of those things. So, again we're working completely different, it's not just about the mindset now this is about the way that we work and embedding into our every day and how we innovate, ultimately. 

NC: It's interesting how so many conversations we have on this podcast about different innovations and things that are coming into the profession come back to that same issue about getting rid of silos and maybe here it’s a necessary thing, you’ve got to talk to IT, haven’t you? You’ve got to talk to the people who’ve got the knowledge and people to need it. One other thing from what I've seen, AI does seem to be right to help us have what was rather lost with the demise of face-to-face learning personalising the content. I mean, it's a bit of a paradox really because you're learning from a machine. So, I mean, how can you personalise learning? If you think of somebody on the job who needs knowledge information to do their job better, is there a way you can harness the AI? 

EF: Yeah, absolutely. So, Radha was talking earlier around using learning in the flow of work for example and we use that term quite a lot in HR and L&D but not everybody really knows what it means. I mean for me that's accessing learning when I need it, when I'm doing my job right so, if say, I'm in a contact centre and I'm speaking to a client and my client has a certain policy that I don't quite understand the ins and outs of.  Can I access some knowledge particularly hosted by a large language model that gives me two or three lines so in the moment I can understand what that policy is about for example. 

NC: Well, you could be sitting in the car about to go in and see somebody. 

EF: Absolutely or I could be sitting outside the office waiting to go and have a disciplinary with one of my team members and I don't know what to say, we know that managers find the difficult conversation, one of the toughest skills. So, actually can I quickly work with my LLM to say right, you know, what's the best way to land this message or could we just quickly practice this before I go and do it in person? Or I think that access to knowledge and then facilitating of skill, in the flow of work is how I personally see and for all the experts and people that I work with, where personalization really comes into its all. 

NC: Yeah, I mean Radha, I was reading a piece in Forbes, we had mentioned, Erica there of learning management systems it was describing how an AI powered system couldn't you know tailor individual learning to people's needs and tasks, harvest the data, use it to improve the learning experience for everybody. I mean is this happening yet, I know you're in Dubai, you've knowledge of what else people are doing in the world. Are we that sophisticated with AI? 

RB: And there are nations in the world that are very much looking at sort of the upskilling around AI. So, Singapore for example have upskilled and reskilled their employees through a programme which was announced a few weeks ago in fact. Where they are helping people understand how to obviously use AI. So, there's lots of different programmes that nations are doing based on their own AI vision and strategies and where they want to go with it and obviously the upskilling and reskilling and people development aspect of it's incredibly important. So, we're not just looking at this from a an organisational perspective now, this is this is far greater right on a sort of nation level that countries are now basically doing. 

NC: OK so trying to draw all this together, I mean clearly there's a lot to do. Erica some tips then, ideas on how you start this collaboration across the organisation to harness the AI to use it more as we say both to prepare content and then to allow people to use it for better results. 

EF: Yeah so, what's the problem that you're trying to solve? I think in L&D, we're very good at jumping in to solutionise and AI might not be the answer to everything. So, let's just put that out there. If the problem statement does involve cross collaboration across functions implementing AI to do xyz. How do people feel about that? Hearts and minds, we've talked about that. Give people the space to grumble and moan and worry and be excited and be shocked and all of the emotions that sit within that because if you don't deal with that element for people then it that's going to keep bubbling up and affect it you know, embedding skills and implementation and stuff like that. Understand what's in it for me so, the first exercise I tend to run in some of our hands-on workshops is, we're going to build a very basic prompt in ChatGPT but I want you to build a prompt that's going to make your personal life easier, rather, we're not thinking about work, we're not thinking about business, you know, and I'm getting wonderful examples from people saying things like I've got the mother-in-law from hell, I never know what to buy for Christmas, she likes these kind of perfumes or products, I never know where to buy them. ChatGPT give me a list of five things I could buy my mother-in-law for Christmas. 

You know, so once you start to drop those barriers with people, people get it. The light bulbs start to get on, they realize they're not being done to because they've had a chance to talk about it and share how they feel. They've started to understand the purpose and what that means to the organisation and its clients or learners or whoever that might be. They've started to do the WIFM, the what's in it for me, started to use the technology and you build your frameworks around that. Your do, do this, don't do that when it comes to data and that stuff. You bring it together as a full facilitated skill set, people need to understand the benefit of using this technology for you know, their productivity, the motivation the, you know, if you are using it for creating content great but actually that's just the first run on the ladder. What else can you be using it for? How can you stretch it? How can you work towards being agile and using and I think Microsoft's been very clever with this term by the way. Using your LLM as a co-pilot, as a digital colleague to almost outsource part of your job that you don't want to do. 

EF: I mean who wouldn't want to do that right? There has to be the right safeguards. There has to be the things that sit around that and the governance and all of that good stuff. Of course there does. But I think just get started and talk to IT, HR, senior leaders, understand what your organisational stance is likely to be on this but don't just look inwards, look outwards. There's so many great resources from organisations like UNESCO, you've got the Global Observatory which is an online website. There's a bunch of great templates on there for policies, procedures, frameworks, exercises. Reach out to experts like you know, Radha and myself. Well, we can support you on this stuff as well and the CIPD and the content that you guys are creating. There's a bunch of really good stuff there. Just get started. 

NC: And you mentioned experts, obviously some excellent ones out there but also a lot of AI snake oil salespeople and of course one of the jobs often is assessing outside solutions. Where it does need to be a wall garden rather than just people using generative AI. So, any thoughts on how you bring in the right partners Radha and don't waste your money? 

RB: Understand what you're using today. Because it's probably likely that there is an element of AI that's already in what you're using today as an organisation. But it also helps you understand actually, what else is out there. So, at the moment we're doing this is what currently exists and what is next and does that then satisfy some of the criteria that we're looking for that Erica kind of described earlier. You know, where is it that we want to go with this but get familiar with what you're doing at the moment. What you've got in your own organisation, I would also go a little bit further and I'd say when you're starting off this journey, understand what your organisation broader than just the HR function is doing in the AI space also. It's very credible as a function to also know the application of what we're doing externally out of the function in that space too. But definitely watch out for that because wherever you go at the moment you know, being powered by AI is kind of everywhere at the moment. So, just make sure that you're, that you're aware of that. 

EF: Yeah I think that's such an important point. So, to give you a really tangible example of that, I was at a education conference in November and we ran a workshop but in the morning, there was a lot of kind of ops directors, chief learning officers etc on the conference floor being kind of wooed by all the vendors as you get at these kind of exhibitions, giving away free merch and hey we've got AI doing this and AI doing that and neural networks. And we ran this workshop me and my business partner and this lady came up to us afterwards and she went, I get it now. I get it. She said I've spent three hours walking around the conference hall talking to these vendors and I haven't got a clue what they're talking about, telling me the AI is going to do this and the new AI functionality in their platforms. And she said it went right over my head and because of that I didn't understand the facts, let alone the benefits to my organisation therefore, I was never going to buy. But now I understand I've got AI 101 effectively. I now know what they were talking about. 

So, there's an ask I think for vendors particularly in the tech space with HR and L&D, not to just throw jargon at people and expect people to get excited about this stuff as much as we do because we're probably about 10% on the bell curve at the beginning. Pretty much every, the 80% is everybody else in the middle and it's going to those folk, whether it's their own fear, their own understanding, wanting to get it right, Radha you psychological safety, super important in organisations and we know that's a big problem and specifically in HR functions. You know, actually we need to be confident and knowledgeable and OK with making these decisions in a real agile way and if we're just surrounded by vendors or communications with just a load of jargon we don't get, we go back to that analysis paralysis that we started with. 

NC: Excellent, well tips for vendors as well as people in the people profession. There we must leave it. Super thanks to Radha Bharj Rhythmic and Erica Farmer Co-Founder of Quantum Rise. Great to share time with two people with such positive angles on the future of AI. Beyond using AI in L&D, we have done a podcast on the wider implications of AI for people professionals in general particularly, how the large language models GPT3 and 4 might help in your delivery and effectiveness. It's on our podcast page on the CIPD website, it's edition number 195 and you’ll also find a transcript there or you should indeed be able to find it wherever you get your podcast in which case subscribe when you're there, so you don't miss an edition. But until next time from me, Nigel Cassidy and all of us on the podcast team, it's goodbye.