Taking up the challenge of Donald H Taylor

I went to London on Friday to participate in a roundtable discussion about the Global Sentiment Survey. The roundtable lunch was hosted by getAbstract and chaired by the GSS author Donald H Taylor . During the session, Don issued a challenge to the room of learning leaders. He wanted us to consider what we could say if asked how we would use AI as an empowering tool for learning with businesses. In other words, if the CEO knocked on the learning leader’s door and asked, “How should we be using AI to train our team?” we would have an answer.

There are many ideas to unpick in this challenge.

1.????Is AI a fad, or is it here to stay?

2.????Is AI a threat to learning professionals, or does it make our role more important?

3.????If AI is here to stay, what potential does it have to impact learning positively?

In short, do we want AI to stick around and play a part in learning? It seems inevitable that the technology will evolve further; the bubble around it will grow, and the commercial demand for it will strengthen. As learner leaders, we have an opportunity to make sure this bubble is not an illusion and that the positive impact of AI leads to our organisations thriving in the future.

So, the challenge from Don Taylor is a call to action. We can feel threatened by AI, and we can predict doom. Or we can step outside the science fiction stories of Terminator and I, Robot, and realise it is within our power to shape a future for this tool that enables humans to evolve further and faster and become better because of what we have created.

When my CEO, David Carter came to me convinced that AI was the future and we needed to be on board, I initially pushed back. It is not that I didn’t see what he saw; I didn’t want to join a bandwagon purely because of FOMO. I wanted a genuine and purposeful reason why we would deploy AI as a technology tool to help human beings develop their Character. It felt counter-intuitive to me to use artificial intelligence to create the potential of human beings and allow those humans to excel in a world where their humanity was their only differentiator in the workplace.

In effect, David had asked me the question that Don Taylor predicted our leaders would be asking of learning professionals.

My answer to David was that I would love to use AI; I can see its power, though its use depends entirely on if a) we can find a purpose for it that genuinely enhances our offer and b) we can help the learner understand that they are more emotionally and spiritually intelligent that the tool and they are allowed to challenge what is being offered by the technology. In other words, I wanted us to empower the learner to be superior to the technology and maintain agency over personal and professional development.

To successfully co-exist with Artificial General Intelligence, as the futurists predict we are on the path towards, we need to increase the foundational learning skills of humans. We need to take responsibility for elevating the importance of critical thinking, empathy, collaboration, and creativity and pioneering the future that AI has no vision of because it hasn’t learned from what we input into its algorithms.

Entelechy is exploring how to use AI, and I am excited by the possibility of using it to enhance human potential. We hope that AI can learn how to support the human being with the right questions at the right time, the correct motivational input for each individual, and deliver the proper tip or prompt about moving learning forward. We have started with some basic machine learning, focusing on educating our model on what is valuable reflection. It is the start of an exciting journey.

However, we are using it in tandem with other approaches to learning. We are equally responsible for moving the learner towards independence and mastery so that they can exceed the capabilities of our learning tools. In short, we want our learners to be smarter than AI on every level, and if we keep that as our aim, I am excited to take Don Taylor’s challenge.