How To Deliver Enhanced Corporate Learning With Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence or AI, unbeknownst to a lot of people, is already used by a number of organizations such as Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Netflix, to provide better services to customers. Of course, you could argue that these are large enterprises and will obviously have the budget and the resources to integrate advanced technologies into their operational framework.
However, it is not so. There are medium and even small enterprises that have worked out that AI isn’t just some advanced technology that’s going to be big in the future, but something that can help them get a lot of things done at their organization in the present, including the Learning and Development (L&D) of employees. And, it isn’t as expensive as it is made out to be, although it will require effort and expertise. In this article, we’ll discuss how AI is being used by corporate organizations in order to transform the learning support provided to employees at the workplace.
1. AI Virtual Assistants
With search engines such as Google available to modern employees on their smartphones, getting the answer to a question isn’t that difficult anymore. However, search engines only provide you with a list of links based on the keywords you search and they aren't actually answering the specific question you asked. Employees on the job require their questions answered as soon as possible, without having to sift through pages upon pages of links to find the specific information they’re looking for.
An AI virtual assistant, on the other hand, can understand the employee’s specific question or need along with its context, and provide them with the specific answers they require. AI virtual assistants will actually have a dialogue with you in order to refine the answer they provide to your query. AI virtual assistants also learn with each interaction they have with you, which means that they’ll get better, more refined, and personalized with time.
2. AI-Personalized Learning
Because an AI assistant learns by analyzing data, the more data you provide it with, the better decisions it makes. AI can thus be used in personalized learning to determine learning pathways for employees/learners in accordance with their needs, interests as well as short-term and long-term goals. This will ensure that they only get digital learning courses that are relevant to these interests, needs, and goals. This offers immense learning support to the employees, as they no longer have to concentrate on the mechanics of learning (i.e., choosing what to learn).
They can focus on simply consuming whatever the AI assistant provides them with, as it follows the learning pathway based on their own preferences and goals. Such hyper-personalized learning will ensure that each employee is the best version of what they can be.
3. Grading/Quality Assurance Of Courses
Employee Learning and Development doesn’t end with the employees simply consuming digital learning courses. Somebody has to grade them, which, up until now, could only be done by a human. Grading the courses of hundreds—sometimes thousands—of employees takes time, especially if there’s only one person doing the grading.
By using AI in order to grade courses—which is trainable and can be taught—organizations can save a lot of time as well as money on hiring a resource to grade courses. Also, although we’re a little way off, in the future AI could very well be used to design, develop, and upgrade digital learning courseware. As it is, AI assistants can be presently trained to analyze the quality of digital learning courses to ensure that the employees only get the best courses.
AI is still a relatively new technology, which has led to a lot of speculation on its future role in the L&D industry as well as in corporate workplaces. Although the rumor that AI will be able to do 99% of all the jobs humans do presently is highly exaggerated, it is going to transform how we do things as well as how we learn. However, it is not something to worry about, but rather be excited about, as it is going to make the employees’ jobs and lives easier. For now, organizations should start implementing AI in learning support to take advantage of its present capabilities, as well as to familiarize the organization with how AI works.