Following on from Notebook LM, Google’s note taking and research assistant, I saw they have launched a new experiment called Learn About. Learn About is described by Google as a “conversational learning companion that adapts to your unique curiosity and learning goals”. Currently only available in the US, I did manage to obtain access and played about with it for a little while.

If you read the reviews of it from the technology press, you’d think this will be the death of the L&D function. It has been variously described as “an AI teacher”, “our new favourite learning aid”, “beyond an AI search tool”, and other various prophecies.

What it does is combine search with an AI chatbot and provide content based on the questions you pose it. It’s effectively taking your question, and curating the appropriate content for you. You can than ask it for further detail, less detail, themes, associated ideas, etc. I attempted a range of queries related to workplace learning and discovered a few things.

Firstly, it’s a great curation tool. It finds relevant content and sifts what may be relevant to you. It is, however, just showing you content; what you do with it, how you use it, which elements you use, how you interpret the results, etc, are all down to you.

Its suggested questions are relevant and appropriate. The questioning to take you deeper, or at a tangent to the topic, are useful and worthy of review. However, they’re still at a relatively simple stage and clearly first level effect driven.

The content it supplies is relevant but dated. I asked about a specific topic in a certain sector and the initial response was sound. When I posed it questions about how it was affected by three very specific and sector relevant events, it was only able to provide a cursory summary and links to the events. Using the ‘Go Deeper’ function, the tool attempted to try and bring the topics in but the response was cursory at best. Further prompts did not provide convincing results.

Apparently, this experiment has been around for a while and invitations and access is now being extended. If you get the opportunity, I would suggest trying it out. However, this isn’t (on its own) going to change workplace L&D. What it SHOULD do is get you thinking about how you curate and provide the pillar of support for your colleagues and customers.

Some good ways to use it as a thinking tool prompt:

• Look at the way it curates relevant content and how it frames the associated questions around it
• Think about how you might design your learning support using its framework
• Understand how it links topics together from a user perspective
• See what is suggests as content and use your organisation alternatives
• Identify topics you don’t currently support and see what content it suggests is relevant

If you want help negotiating the thinking around these tools, please do get in touch.