Generative AI: the future of Corporate Training

27 April 2023

With the advent of numerous advanced Generative AI-based technologies – such as ChatGPT, Voice Recognition, Big Data – those working in corporate training and Learning & Development have begun to think about how they can leverage these tools to improve corporate training.

In this article, we will delve into the topic of Generative AI in Learning & Development, analyzing its benefits, risks, and possibilities. At the bottom, you’ll find a list of the most popular Generative AI tools for corporate training.

The endless possibilities of generative AI
- However, the priority remains people!
Applying artificial intelligence to corporate training
Creating e-learning courses with generative AI
- Create smart content!
Improving corporate training with generative AI
Learning evaluation through AI
AI examples to apply to corporate training
- Besides Chat GPT…
To sum up
List of the main Generative AI in circulation for corporate training

generative ai benefits, risks, possibilities in learning & development

The endless possibilities of generative AI

So, the technological resources at our disposal are there, but how can they best be used? How can they be applied in the workplace and what role will they play?

These are the main questions that crowd the minds of those who want to graft change into corporate culture – a change that currently appears almost mandatory. Indeed, for employers, the cost of finding, recruiting, and training new employees year after year is no longer sustainable (we’ve already given you a solution here!). So companies must look for effective ways to engage and retain top talent for a longer period of time.

This is where Artificial Intelligence comes in, as it represents a great opportunity to improve and make more efficient the way we work and live. Just think of the United States, where most AI innovation finds its way into tech giants such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, IBM, Meta and Apple.

In the meantime, we recommend you watch the video of the lecture, by the University of Genoa, given by Professor Zunino at the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa this January. It talks about “Expressed and unexpressed potentials of Artificial Intelligence in the civilization of today and tomorrow.”

However, the priority remains people!

With today’s focus on digital technology, it is easy to overlook one simple fact: All that technology is meaningless without the right talent to use it. That means investing in new ways of working, training and hiring people with the right skills. This is one of the main reasons we know that generative AI will have a significant impact in L&D.

generative ai is a cool tool, but people able to use it properly are needed

L&D managers, therefore, must keep abreast of the latest methodologies and trends in order to anticipate future developments in corporate training. They must be able to develop strategies that:

involve methods such as adaptive learning;
allow them to better understand learners’ behaviors and predict their needs.

Applying artificial intelligence to corporate training

When AI is applied to the various learning tools and programs available today, L&D professionals can leverage them to deliver learning that is:

automated in its delivery;
personalized for each learner;
intuitive in its application;
data-driven in its management;
continuously promoted throughout the enterprise.

Artificial Intelligence enables the collection of data obtained on the use of learning programs, and this is a huge help to L&D professionals, who will have the opportunity to better understand Learners’ behavior.

ai collecting data about learning experience to improve corporate training

Not only that: the more information is collected, the more the overall learning experience will improve, thanks in part to the development of intuitive pathways. Indeed, learning content will respond to direct needs and be delivered through various means of communication-such as chatbots. Continuous delivery of the right courses to the right people, as well as methods such as Microlearning and just-in-time training – will help retain the knowledge learned.

AI, moreover, can make accurate predictions useful for understanding in which direction corporate training is going and should go. The result? The odds of success increase, while those of getting nothing from the investment made decrease.

Creating e-learning courses with generative AI

Imagine being able to delegate content creation to someone else. Someone who has access to an incredible amount of data and can use it to create every e-learning course you need. Curious? ?

We are talking about the possibilities offered by Generative Artificial Intelligence, a tool that automates the creation of digital learning content. This technology enables L&D departments to rapidly produce engaging materials-including text, interactive modules, images, videos, and infographics – by drawing on existing resources.

generative artificial intelligence for microlearning content of e-learning courses

This approach saves time and resources and produces stimulating learning materials, as well as developing personalized learning experiences without manual coding or rapid editing. To ensure quality and relevance, developers need to fine-tune AI models to specific learning objectives and balance AI-generated content with human review and editing; this provides an opportunity to focus on other tasks that necessarily require human intervention instead.

Create smart content!

Artificial Intelligence is not only used to collect data, but also to create so-called “smart content.” Basically it draws on existing online content and modifies it for the user based on his or her interests, needs, or past “behavior” in the system.

Smart content then gives the opportunity to take more functional courses, created ad hoc based on employee data and characteristics. Personalization is done through targeting methods, automatic optimization, and measurability to generate dynamic content.

create engaging and effective content, microlearning with generative ai

Improving corporate training with generative AI

Do you know the algorithm of streaming platforms like Netflix or social like TikTok? They ask you to select your areas of interest at first, and then create a personalized experience that becomes more and more accurate as you use the application. The same thing would happen with online training: once you take the various courses assigned to you, the system will recommend others. This is the inductive reasoning, also known as Machine Learning, which is a variation on traditional programming in which the ability to learn something from data independently, without explicit instructions, is predisposed in a machine. In this way, algorithms are able to learn from a set of data and make predictions about it, inductively building a model based on samples.

artificial intelligence represents a useful help for corporate training, thanks also to machine learning

Artificial Intelligence, therefore, monitors and accumulates data on everything employees do during online learning sessions: what courses they take, on what days of the week, at what times, in what ways. In this way, the L&D department will be able to create a type of learning designed specifically for its staff.

Learning evaluation through AI

When we talk about the impact of delivered learning, one question comes to mind: how do we measure and improve it from hard data? How can we encourage full-scale evaluation of corporate training?

To find a solution, new digital post-training support solutions are being developed that, based on coaching techniques, help each person reflect on what he or she has learned and build an action plan. In this way:

opportunities to apply learning are identified;
obstacles are overcome;
there is coaching regarding career advancement.

artificial intelligence collects data to understand how to improve learning for an effective corporate training

The main goal is to help Learners turn learning into concrete action, maximizing its impact and increasing engagement. The reflection to which Learners are pushed provides an enormous amount of specific data about their overall experience.

In addition:

are solutions that encourage them to conduct an in-depth analysis of their journey-between successes and difficulties. You get much more reliable information because you invest more time and they turn out to be more authentic.
Information can then be gathered on all the factors that influence the impact of learning, such as the work environment, time management, manager involvement, motivation…With these elements, L&D teams can better identify aspects to intervene on to improve corporate training.

AI examples to apply to corporate training

You are surely familiar with the first example we are about to mention, if only because of the media uproar it is causing around the world – for different reasons in each country. Yes, we are talking about Chat GPT, which has been blocked in Italy (and then has been made available again) due to concerns about privacy laws.

We asked the program directly for some information about itself, and here’s what came out. ?

Chat GPT is an open-source artificial intelligence model developed by OpenAI that generates natural language text. It uses deep learning techniques to analyze large amounts of textual data, learn natural language patterns and structure, and generate coherent and realistic text in seconds. Chat GPT works by asking the user to provide a textual input prompt, and then generates text based on that prompt.

As useful as it has proven to be in many ways, it is still a budding tool, not free from limits and bias. In addition, it can sometimes provide incorrect answers due to lack of context and its inability to capture the nuances of discourse. Therefore, it is important to use it cautiously when generating educational content, images and Microlearning modules.

Besides Chat GPT…

Another Artificial Intelligence software is MidJourney, which can generate new images on demand: in about a minute, it can provide you with four image options that can be used for educational content, presentations, and illustrations.

generative artificial intelligence helps l&d professionals to create contents for e-learning courses

Lately there has also been talk about Murf, an Artificial Intelligence tool that is used to quickly create voices for a wide variety of purposes: from voice-overs for videos, to voices for presentations, podcasts, and learning modules. As a user, you can choose the gender, accent, intonation, emphasis, and interjections of the voice…in short, you can get a highly personalized product tailored to your needs with access to over 120 text-to-speech voices and more than 20 languages.

Last, we would like to mention Codex – from OpenAI as Chat GPT – which, as the name suggests, is used to write code and help you create or edit websites and software. Not only that, it can understand both our language and twelve other programming languages. This makes it a valuable tool for instructional designers, who can use it to create learning experiences without needing to know a specific code.

To sum up

In this article we analyzed the use of Artificial Intelligence in the field of Learning & Development. The advancement of AI-based technologies has led those in corporate training to explore how these tools can be used to create effective e-learning courses in less time.

With the rising costs of finding, recruiting and training new employees, companies are looking for ways to engage and retain their best talent. Artificial Intelligence can offer opportunities to improve and simplify the way we work and live through the ability to automate, personalize and manage learning.

It also enables the collection of data on learners’ behavior, helping to create more effective and efficient training programs – saving time and resources and producing engaging and personalized materials.