Keeping Up With AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been evolving over the last several decades, but in the past two years, it has become ubiquitous in many parts of daily life, including in talent development. Recognizing the need to understand this new phenomenon called generative AI, the ATD Forum—a membership consortium—convened thought leaders in February 2023 to facilitate an initial discussion on how AI is affecting the talent development profession. This led to further exploration with thought leaders for idea sharing as well as sessions for members to share AI use cases and lessons learned.

As a continuation of this work, the Forum recently welcomed Josh Cavalier, a pioneering leader with more than 30 years of experience in the learning industry as a learning technologist, performance consultant, and instructional designer. As a recognized AI thought leader, Josh shares his expertise through various training sessions, workshops, speaking engagements, and publications.

Learning & Development AI Ecosystem

Armed with his wealth of AI knowledge and experience, Josh showed up as the Forum’s “AI guide” to support and encourage us as we continue to navigate the impact of AI in learning and talent development. Recognizing that the scope and breadth of AI tools changes day to day, Josh walked us through the latest version of his Learning and Development AI Ecosystem, an excellent visual roadmap of categories and examples of all of the AI platforms, tools, and tactics available for implementing AI in L&D.

The ecosystem illustrates various platforms and tools along with sample vendors and a description for each. Josh suggests that talent professionals think less about a “learning tech stack” and more about “learning tech orchestration with AI”—with every piece playing its part.

Since AI touches everything, the AI ecosystem allows talent professionals to make the connections between various AI integrations, ranging from our standard e-learning tools (for example, Articulate Rise) to the learning management system (LMS) hosting our trainings.

Human-AI Task Scale

Josh also addressed the Human-AI Task Scale he is working on. This scale illustrates the spectrum of human and AI involvement, ranging from complete human ownership to human-led with AI assistance to AI-led with human oversight and finally to full AI automation. Observations within our industry indicate progress towards automation, though full automation has not yet been widely achieved across most tasks.

Biggest Takeaways From the Learning & Development AI Ecosystem

1. AI Agents

Josh defines AI agents as automated systems that can perform various tasks including those in the field of L&D. For example, some have the potential to automate tasks such as writing learning objectives and potentially even creating entire courses. He views these agents as tools that can enhance and streamline L&D processes rather than replace human professionals entirely. Based on feedback during the webinar, and data from a recent Forum’s survey on AI, most participants reported using ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot as their primary AI Agent(s). Attendees noted that most businesses represented prefer Microsoft’s Copilot based on their security measures.

2. Content Platforms

As a result of AI, we will continue to shift away from the “one size fits all” approach and provide learners with more personalized learning. As explained in Josh’s AI Ecosystem, these platforms can “curate and manage educational content and then assist in the creation, recommendation, and delivery of learning materials that are relevant to the user’s needs and learning objectives.” LinkedIn Learning is an example of this, where users are provided with custom learning paths based on their profile, interests, and professional development goals.

3. Prompt Library

Why spend time reinventing the (prompt) wheel? Once you know your audience, the learning objectives, and type of learning activities and assessment, you can create reusable prompts aligned with the various ADDIE phases. Here is an example of a prompt that can be repurposed based on your need:

• Create a course outline for a course on <subject> for <audience>. The course outline should include modules, key points, learning activities, and an end of course assessment.

The output may not be perfect at first, but it is a great starting point that can be refined.

Since so many of our tasks are repetitive, Josh recommends saving and sharing prompts via a Prompt Library. If you are looking for readily available prompts to get you started, refer to Josh’s 250+ prompts, which are specific to the L&D field and free. These prompts can be used to create a course outline, video script, e-learning storyboards, and much more.

If you have, or will create, custom prompts, you can store and share your prompts via Notion, Microsoft Excel, or Monday.com.

The integration of AI at work can vary depending on the task, as well as security-related guidance provided by your company. The extent to which we will rely on AI to automate tasks or replace human roles in the future remains uncertain, but rest assured that is not in the near future.

Before 2023, it was the norm for all training products and materials to be designed and developed by an instructional systems designer (ISD). This often led to several months of work to complete a project. This level of human effort is depicted in Josh Cavalier’s Human-AI Task Scale. Nevertheless, I predict that we will continue to integrate AI as a collaborative partner, with AI taking on more leading roles while humans provide oversight and ensure accuracy.

Hear more from Josh about the integration of AI with L&D on this ATD podcast. For the most up-to-date information and the latest version of the L&D AI Ecosystem and Human-AI Task Scale, follow Josh Cavalier on LinkedIn.