What’s your problem? How AI can supercharge solutions.

Focusing on driving solutions to real problems with AI

At the end of our last edition of Insights we rounded off with a word of caution:

As we continue our venture into 2024 it is crucial for L&D teams to refocus on the fundamentals, ensuring that technology adoption aligns with organisational needs.

We also urged you to keep two questions front and centre: “How does this add value?” and “What would success look like?”.? These three points seem like a good place to start from in this edition, as we look at how AI is enhancing user experiences and helping to solve the variety of problems faced by L&D teams this year and beyond.

Over the course of 2023, we saw a growing interest and understanding of what AI can achieve, and as a result, there was a level of predictable experimentation with content creation and productivity hacks.

At the end of the year we also saw Donald Taylor and Egle Vinauskaite highlight content creation and improving efficiencies as the two most obvious perceived benefits of AI L&D. We were, and arguably still are, very much in the ‘what can AI achieve for me right now?’ phase of application, and broadly there’s been a steep uptake of more readily available AI-powered tools like Large Language Models (LLMs) or Ai-powered elements of creative tools like Canva.

Arguably we haven’t yet made it into the “What problems could AI solve for me in the future?” state of thinking yet.

So if you work in L&D, HR, Marketing or people teams and you’re wondering how to adapt to these changes, first you need to identify what pain points you’re trying to alleviate.?

We’ve pulled out six core problems we regularly see amongst the customers we work with, and made some suggestions for how AI might shape our response to them.

Problem one: Changing user expectations

Underpinning much of the way businesses like Thrive are currently developing their products is the simple fact that user expectations are changing. If we think about the experience and ease with which people are able to order food from multiple different restaurants to their door from the comfort of their own home, it leaves many employee experiences in the dust.

Soon the disjuncture between how you encounter things in your personal Vs professional life will seem unacceptable to many - particularly younger generations coming into the workforce. Everything is immediate; and rightly so: information is literally at our fingertips. Ensuring that our systems, tools and processes meet these expectations is where our focus should be.

Problem two: Limited personalisation for people

Building on from this, users have often been left feeling deflated by content that isn’t quite right or just misses the mark because it’s usually been made for mass consumption (a fact that has been inescapable up until now).

In line with changing user expectations, there’s also a purposeful focus on hyper-personalisation because artificial intelligence affords us the opportunity to more easily surface the right things at the right time. Not only that, but information will be available via integrated platforms wherever you do your work, and as a result you’ll be able to ask questions of your AI-co-workers as a first point of call.?

We’re also well into the stage now where AI can be trained on your own content so the whole experience of content creation can start on a better footing.

Problem three: Slow content-creation processes for creators

As mentioned previously, the obvious problem to solve for a lot of L&D teams is how to create the right content, at the right time, in the right way. Speeding up the content creation process has been a focus for many teams for a number of years now, but it’s only with the influx of new technologies that we’re really able to see this coming to life. And whilst this is hugely exciting, making more content is not the answer to a lot of the questions being asked.

Making the right content is where the fun happens.

There’s a real opportunity here to embrace AI to help ease the tension between learning designer and SME, but also between someone less skilled in learning design principles and effective content creation. Not only can AI speed up a process, but it can guide you as to what “good” looks like, based on fundamental principles of learning design.

Problem four: Lack of collaborative learning opportunities for teams

If you’re able to access and create content that is more meaningful and impactful, then it’s much more likely that you’ll want to be able to share that with your team - or beyond. Bringing the experience of sharing core information closer to the experience of social media (i.e. one click posting) will ease some of those tension points previously highlighted. AI can help take the pain-points out of social media posting and do all the hard work for you!

If we look ahead only a short future away we’ll have the right information surfaced to us or searchable with ease based on who we are and what teams we work with. Truly superpowered social learning is something we know is desperately needed.

Problem five: Time-consuming content moderation

If you’re in a position where content creation becomes much easier and faster, there’s arguably a risk associated with the validity of what is being posted. In other words, a big pain point for many organisations is moderation, and AI can effectively solve it.

Moderation will become second nature to any content-posting platforms as algorithms are trained to identify anything untoward and flag it automatically. This means administrators will ultimately save time, but also the concerns about what content is being posted will be alleviated.?

Problem six: 1:1 coaching is difficult to scale

Not only is coaching difficult to scale, but in today’s climate it might be impossible for some organisations to even consider it as an option. Due to the fact that one-to-one coaching and mentoring are considered the gold standards when onboarding and upskilling team members, the opportunities we have to lean into the more ‘human’ qualities of AI begin to unfold. If you can replicate a coaching experience through AI that can either fully guide you on a journey or at least begin to formulate what it might look like alongside you, then you’ll be placing yourself in a stronger stead to upskill faster.

This experience isn’t about simply having a conversation, it’s about opening doors that individuals may not even have considered themselves.

What do you think?

Are there any other key problem areas you see being solved by AI in the near future? Let us know in the comments.

Alternatively, take a look at our product roadmap to find out what’s in the works at Thrive.