I was reading the report last week from Donald H Taylor and Eglė Vinauskaitė called AI in L&D: Intention and reality. It’s a fascinating piece, looking at the results of a survey and the introduction of an Immaturity Model for how L&D is using AI tool.

Here’s a couple of thoughts about what I read.

Firstly, I read the report. It seems peculiar to have to say this but I didn’t shove it into NotebookLM, Gemini, Claude, or another LLM and ask it be be summarised for me. There is still a need for us to uncover the insight for ourselves, and that can only happen when we experience some writing, audio, video, etc fully. The nuance comes from the association we make from what we see and hear in our context and make our own connections. We owe it to ourselves firstly, but also to the people who have created the original piece of work.

Next, I was interested in where we are using L&D right now and think it’s in the delivery space in my image below:

The Complexity Scale in Taylor and Vinauskaitė’s report highlights how AI’s use in content push – a step up from admin tasks – is where we have worked out where to use it now.

The opportunities to engage with it are so much wider than simple delivery though. As the case studies for Ericsson and EY show, AI can support strategic workforce planning, and skills intelligence. That means redesigning the learning strategy of the organisation.

The tactical approach of the learning function – what the issues are and whether learning is a solution – can also be addressed. The AI-driven role-playing tools used by BCG to practice critical conversations or AI platforms that help streamline project management as seen in Superside’s competency assessments​ are examples of this.

Moving AI into the tactics space will be the game changer. If L&D doesn’t do this, we will become obsolete.

You can hear more from Egle and Don at the Learning Technologies Autumn forum tomorrow from 9.30 to 10.30 BST.