I saw a piece from Dannielle Wallace last week where she discussed the approaches L&D needs to take with AI and what L&D needs to do about it

In turn, business leaders and decision-makers often believe they “understand training.” As a result, they harness their own subject matter experts and teams to create their own courses without involving the L&D department. I’ve had excited senior leaders let me know how they’re now able to create training themselves and without the “push back” that their L&D teams provide. 

AI Is Speeding Up L&D But Are We Losing the Learning? – Dannielle Wallace

I think Wallace is correct and this presents a few issues.

Firstly, who are vendors selling to now? If, as Wallace writes, we’re just speeding up content production, I can see the market shifting. Subject Matter Experts and small organisations with limited learning budgets would be a potential target, outside of the learning function. The vendor is now appealing to functional leads, the CEO who came through the business, and the Personnel type HR lead.

I’ve seen systems which can produce learning materials from simple prompts and, as the technology improves, I could see some smaller organisations losing their L&D functions and replacing them with simple course designers. I think this is both short-sighted and dysfunctional but, as budgets are squeezed, it might appear a different value proposition.

This where L&D has to be the value add. You can’t compete on the pace of content, but you can improve on the quality. You might not be able to beat the speed of delivery, but you are better placed to make sure the right thing is delivered, at the point of need.

Lastly, if you can prove your value and impact, you’ll always be ahead of the cost centre. Know of anyone who can help you with Proving Impact…😉