AI and training: insights and reflections from a Talent Agent Coach Trainer at Lincoln

A TECHNOPHILE REVOLUTION

Artificial intelligence is on everyone's lips. It's invading every sector, including training. In our interview with Frédéric Bailleul, we explore the impact of AI on training and talent management.

Frédéric Bailleul's background

Frédéric Bailleul has been a talent development consultant and leadership consultant at Lincoln for over four years. His aim: to generate a significant impact on people's behaviors, and to help anchor these changes in daily business practices. His innovative approach has led him to take a keen interest in integrating AI into training.

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FACILITATING AND ENRICHING CONTENT

AI brings undeniable added value to the creation of educational content. It is capable of generating structured, complete and illustrated content, as well as highly elaborate pedagogical exercises (quizzes, case studies). I challenged it to design a complete teaching scenario on the theme of emotional intelligence, and was surprised to read the answer. In just a few seconds and from a fairly light prompt, AI produced a fully operational teaching itinerary. Admittedly, the biases are weak and debatable, and the teaching methods are not very inspired, but the ideas and main concepts are present and logically arranged. What a time-saver in content engineering! After reengineering to improve fluidity and originality, I was able to develop a training course in just half a day, twice as fast as usual, so that I could concentrate on optimizing the materials. And here again, AI helped me.

Image generation, for example, enhances the visual quality of training materials. Gone are the days of approximate illustrations, vintage avatars and vague icons! AI-generated videos are just around the corner, boosting situation scenarios and revitalizing serious games. AI-generated voices, on the other hand, are already available, with breathtaking realism, enabling the same voice to be used for uniform translations and new uses in face-to-face or e-learning situations. This virtual assistant undeniably enhances the learning experience.

THE IMPACT OF IA ON THE TRAINER'S ROLE

Learning management platforms (LMS) automated by adaptive learning offer many advantages, such as: accessibility, skills assessment, needs prediction, content appropriateness, ease of use. AI can even provide exercises that encourage divergent thinking and innovation, by presenting complex scenarios that require unconventional solutions. Of course, the quality of the content and its relevance to needs are essential.

But we all remember a teacher, a Pygmalion, who inspired us to excel. AI cannot play this role.

Learner commitment is based on a variety of drivers, including the sense of Personal Effectiveness produced by rewarding effort. A trainer plays a crucial role in accompanying learners beyond their comfort zone, something that AI cannot fully accomplish.

The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted the need for human interaction in learning, underlining the importance of being challenged and put into real-life situations. Face-to-face interaction increases emotional intensity and impact.

The role of the AI-assisted trainer is to focus more on the relational and motivational aspects of teaching.

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THE IMPACT OF IA ON THE LEARNER

All technological revolutions begin by improving existing uses before replacing them with new ones. The calculating machine has made us more efficient, but who can still extract a square root without its help? I sometimes see people (whose names I won't mention) getting out their phones for a simple multiplication by 10. The impact of AI on training is incommensurable with that of the calculating machine. It is foreseeable that we will collectively lose certain skills by relying on AI.

Why make the effort to learn if AI can tell me what to do? It's enough to know how to write a prompt that AI can help us write. Elon Musk urges us to learn to code, but AI already knows how. And it's a safe bet that it will surpass humans very quickly. The more tasks we delegate to it, the fewer skills we'll need to master. The very need and taste for learning could well be affected. We could well become occasional consumers of express training.

Despite these challenges, AI and human training are not mutually exclusive. AI can play a predictive role by detecting needs, defining repositories and compiling models, thus complementing the work of human trainers. The key lies in harmonious cohabitation, where AI and humans work together to create rich, balanced learning experiences.

AI offers exciting opportunities and powerful tools for training. However, it must be used in conjunction with human interaction to overcome its limitations and maximize its potential.

At Lincoln, we believe in a balanced approach, combining technology and people.