AI is more than a tool — it's a new team member

Josh Penzell, VP of AI Strategy & Innovation at ELB Learning, is encouraging everyone to shift their perspective on AI. Rather than treating it as a tool, he proposes that AI should be seen as a new team member. This perspective change could lead to more effective utilization of AI and open up new possibilities for its application. He went into detail on what this could look like for leaders in the learning and development space in our recent webinar, How AI can be a partner in employee development. (You can watch the recording at the end of this article).

"AI is not just a new tool. AI is your new team member," stated Penzell. He argued that AI is capable of operating more like a partner or colleague than a tool, providing insights and identifying patterns that a human might overlook.

This shift in perspective can help alleviate fears and concerns about AI taking over jobs and replacing human workers. Instead, AI can be seen as a valuable asset that can enhance human capabilities and improve overall efficiency and productivity. By viewing AI as a team member, businesses and organizations can foster a collaborative environment where humans and AI work together towards a common goal. This can lead to innovative solutions and advancements in various industries, from healthcare to finance to manufacturing.

"I think that the future here is every single individual being able to hire and create their own team at scale. And I want you to think about this. You have something that is behaving like a human. It has the whole human knowledge," Josh urged the audience. This more strategic view of what AI brings can completely change an individual's day-to-day efficiency with some prompt engineering and upskilling around AI.

By working alongside AI, individuals can learn new skills and improve their own abilities, leading to personal and professional growth. Humans can tap into new capabilities and use it as a tool to tackle complex problems and create innovative solutions. It's an always-on brainstormer and teammate that you can train to respond in a way that fits your role, expected outcome, or business. With the combination of human creativity and AI's analytical abilities, the possibilities for progress are endless. But it's on the individual to embrace the technology and use it ethically to enhance, not hurt.

Enhancing productivity and employee engagement with AI

Josh Penzell explained that AI doesn't necessarily mean job loss. Instead, AI can increase productivity by taking over automatable and mundane tasks that can bog down a day's work. Statistically, employees who use AI are more engaged and motivated, which ultimately boosts their creativity. Because when AI can handle mundane and repetitive tasks, employees have more free time to focus on the challenging and engaging work.

"According to McKinsey, only 5% of jobs can be fully automated. But 60% of jobs have 30% of automatable tasks, meaning that those are easy things for us to let AI do for us," explained Penzell. This means that while AI may be able to take over some tasks, it's not there to take over your job.

The ability to think about and understand one's own thought processes can really up the ante on how the way we use AI for learning and development.

This means that instead of simply performing tasks and completing rote actions, AI, if trained properly, can reflect on its own decision-making and adapt accordingly. It may sound intimidating or like something out of a sci-fi movie, but this has huge implications for industries such as education and training, where AI can be used to personalize learning experiences and provide individualized feedback. The future of AI is undoubtedly exciting, and with a focus on metacognition, it has the potential to greatly enhance our world in ways we can only imagine.

Despite the advanced capabilities of AI, Josh, like many AI experts, emphasized the importance of human contribution. He suggested that the best way to effectively use AI is to engage with it in a conversation, provide it with feedback, and treat it like a colleague.

"You have a tool, and the tool's only as good as you are. You're putting information in, it's giving you some sort of something out. But with AI, it's able to look at that entire case study. It's able to provide and notice things we might not have noticed or we might have overlooked," Penzell points out.

This is where upskilling your team on AI, and training them on how to engineer prompts that churn out the best results comes into play. With proper training, teams can use this new machine for everything from brainstorming topics that leaders around the world are investing in to building out a script for the next coffee chat your CEO is hosting. It's on us, as humans, to build these prompts, ask the right questions, fact-check everything, and put the guardrails on this new technology.

When your team is trained and confident in their AI skills, productivity advancements will begin to flow in and new use cases will emerge. And Josh has you one step ahead with this custom GPT he's programmed to assist L&D professionals in applying concepts from this webinar!

For more on how AI can be a partner in creating employee development opportunities, don't miss the full webinar with Josh Penzell

How AI can be a partner in employee development

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Learn how AI can be a valuable asset to your team, enhancing productivity and employee engagement while opening up new possibilities for employee development.

How can AI be a partner in employee development?

Learn how you can put AI to work as a partner on your team, enhancing productivity and engagement while opening up new possibilities for employee development.

In an era where artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping landscapes across industries, its integration into the development of soft skills presents both promising opportunities and intimidating challenges. We invited L&D and AI Strategist, Scott Provence, to a recent webinar where he explored the nuanced interplay between AI and soft skills, particularly focusing on communication, empathy, and leadership.

Scott delved into how AI could be leveraged to enhance these essential interpersonal skills, covering the ethical considerations of AI deployment in professional settings. Scott emphasized that human values and integrity should always support AI applications and explored how AI could be utilized responsibly to foster significant improvements in workplace dynamics and personal growth.

What were Scott's key insights on integrating AI with soft skills development? Let's look at his recommended strategies, cautions, and methods for employing this transformative technology effectively and ethically.

AI as a catalyst for soft skills enhancement

AI's role in soft skills development is becoming increasingly pivotal. Tools like Large Language Models (LLMs) aren't just technological marvels; they're becoming essential in simulating realistic conversations that aid in practicing and honing communication skills. These AI-driven interactions can provide immediate feedback, allowing individuals to adjust and improve their communication strategies in real time.

Scott emphasized the importance of using AI as a catalyst for soft skills enhancement rather than relying on it as a replacement for human interaction. He stressed the need for a balanced approach, where AI is used to supplement and enhance traditional learning methods, not replace them entirely. Additionally, he cautioned against using AI in a way that could reinforce biases or perpetuate harmful stereotypes that can tear apart an organization and its culture. Instead, Scott encourages the use of diverse and inclusive data sets to ensure ethical and unbiased AI interactions.

Scott argues that empathy, a soft skill often difficult to measure and quantify, can be fostered and improved through the use of AI. In the webinar, he highlighted the potential for AI to standardize elements of empathy, such as active listening and the ability to understand others' perspectives.

By using AI to track and analyze these skills, teams can receive personalized feedback and guidance on how to improve, making empathy training more accessible and consistent across different demographics and professional fields.

This not only benefits individuals but the organization as a whole, as empathy is a crucial component of effective communication and collaboration. With the help of AI, we can continue to develop and enhance this important soft skill in the workforce.

But how do we do this? AI can be used to simulate scenarios and interactions, providing employees with a safe and controlled environment to practice and develop their empathy skills. This can be particularly useful for industries where face-to-face interactions are limited or difficult, such as remote teams or customer service roles. AI can analyze data from these simulations to provide personalized coaching and feedback, allowing employees to focus on specific areas of improvement.

But to have such success with AI, organizations must first upskill their teams on prompt engineering — one of the most crucial skills in the generation of AI.

Prompt engineering involves creating prompts that elicit specific responses from AI and then analyzing and interpreting those responses to assess if the desired state and response were met. It requires a combination of scientific methods and creative thinking to design prompts that accurately measure soft skills. Without prompt engineering knowledge, results from AI may not be reliable and could hinder the effectiveness of your training program. We'd recommend an organization using AI invest in upskilling their teams on prompt engineering to ensure AI use is effective, unbiased, and reliable.

The application of AI in soft skills training is intricate and will require meticulous prompt engineering skills and measurable, empirical heuristics. In the webinar, Scott emphasized the importance of understanding the capabilities and limitations of AI in this context. The design of AI prompts and the interpretation of their outputs must be handled with precision to truly benefit soft skills development.

While Scott was far from discouraging, it's important to not forget that the integration of AI into soft skills development comes with challenges. Measuring intangible qualities like empathy through AI poses significant ethical and methodological questions. The discussion highlighted the need for ongoing research and dialogue to navigate these complexities effectively.

There are valid concerns about the potential for bias in AI algorithms. If the data used to train the AI is biased, it can lead to biased outcomes and perpetuate discrimination. This is a particularly important issue in the context of soft skills development, where cultivating diversity and inclusivity is crucial.

Scott stressed the importance of ethical guidelines and continuous monitoring and evaluation to ensure that AI is used responsibly and inclusively. AI shouldn't replace human interaction and feedback in soft skills development and should instead be used as a tool to enhance and support the learning process. This requires collaboration between AI developers, educators, and employees to create effective and ethical solutions. Scott brings a great use case for AI in soft skills development, but like any new tool, there's a responsibility for careful consideration and ethical implementation to avoid negative consequences.

As AI continues to evolve, its potential to enhance soft skills like empathy, communication, and leadership is immense. However, as Scott Provence aptly pointed out in the webinar, understanding the nuances of soft skills and the mechanics of AI is essential. The future of soft skills development lies in the balance of leveraging technology while understanding the human elements that define these skills.

Watch the full webinar to hear Scott's detailed advice on building out successful soft skills training that utilizes AI for more interactive and an extra level of quantified learning.

Using AI for Soft Skills Recording

From our webinar with L&D and AI Strategist, Scott Provence, explore the role AI can play in enhancing soft skills training: the challenges, ethical considerations, and real-world applications..

AI is designed to support, not supplant, humans, especially in critical areas like education and development. In our recent webinar on the ethical use of AI, Mark DiMauro, PhD, emphasized the importance of responsible AI application, including the full disclosure of AI usage, adherence to ethical and moral standards, and the preservation of integrity in its applications. This transparency in the education of AI is crucial, and deployment of AI tools should follow a comprehensive framework that addresses ethical, moral, legal, and integrity issues. This structured approach prevents misuse and ensures that AI enhances learning and development while maintaining ethical standards.

What were Mark's biggest takeaways on how to approach AI ethically? Let's get into his advice, warnings, and approach to using this new technology effectively and responsibly.

One of the core themes of the webinar was the importance of transparency in AI use. Transparency is crucial, and AI deployment should follow a comprehensive internal framework that addresses any ethical, moral, and legal issues transparently. DiMauro stressed that all stakeholders, including employees, trainers, and administrators, must be fully aware of how AI is being used within the organization at all levels.

This transparency is crucial not only for organizational integrity but also for building trust with stakeholders and informing all parties on the data being used and the decision-making processes involved. Everyone must understand the capabilities, risks, and limitations of AI technologies in all settings for success.

Mark highlighted that while AI can provide valuable data-driven insights, it's humans who can consider the contextual and ethical nuances that AI might not fully grasp or may hallucinate in making final or ethical decisions. Use AI to support your judgments, rather than relying on it entirely. Human judgment and critical thinking skills are vital in ensuring that AI-generated recommendations align with organizational values and goals.

DiMauro emphasized the need for continuous monitoring and evaluation of AI algorithms to ensure they aren't biased or contradicting your organization's ethical standards. By involving humans in every step of the decision-making process, organizations can utilize AI effectively, mitigate potential risks, and improve the overall effectiveness of the AI technologies they employ. Ultimately, the successful integration of AI with human judgment can lead to more informed and ethical decision-making, benefiting internal and external stakeholders.

AI is transforming content creation, but not completely replacing writers

"There will be some kind of disruption recomposition of what our roles look like," Mark explained, referring to the role of educators and trainers. "The roles should become more fun, [with] higher leverage."

While AI is increasingly being used to generate content, it isn't expected to replace human writers. Instead, as Mark explained, we can expect it to transform roles, providing a higher level of work, creativity, and automation. AI allows writers, strategists, and instructional designers to focus on higher-value tasks such as strategy, without getting caught in the weeds of nuanced writing.

And good news for marketing teams, as Mark predicts, "AI-generated content is going to mean more content marketing jobs. Because people are going to get leverage faster — which means content marketing will meet goals faster, [and] marketers will get more budget to do more content marketing.”

But what about ethical integrity, laws, and standards in AI? Mark dedicated a major part of the webinar to how you can build out a robust ethical framework for deploying AI at work. DiMauro emphasized that while AI has transformative potential, it must be governed by strict ethical standards to prevent misuse, mitigate risk, and avoid major backlash. Legal implications, data privacy, and the necessity of maintaining human control over AI technologies are critical considerations.

The development and deployment of AI in learning and development must adhere to a strict ethical framework, developed by experts for your organization, that respects moral and legal standards. Mark advocates for a structured approach to AI implementation, which includes safeguards against misuse to ensure that the technology is used to enhance learning experiences, without compromising ethical standards.

We are seeing firsthand in the world right now that there is an inherent need for the responsible and ethical use of AI. Mark acknowledged that while AI has the potential to greatly benefit society, it also poses certain risks and challenges that need to be addressed. He emphasized repeatedly that AI shouldn't be used to handle sensitive data, due to potential security risks. He noted, “It's really critical and it's really important to use them [AI tools] for a purpose and with ethical, moral, and integral guidelines in mind." He emphasized that as AI evolves, it's crucial to ensure that it is being used responsibly, securely, and ethically.

While there is no standardized law or governance at this time for the ethical use of AI in organizations, or specifically in learning and development, Mark recommends starting with these three steps internally:

Creating a code of ethics for AI developers and users

Implement transparency and accountability measures

Continuously monitor and evaluate the impact of AI on society

Everyone should be prepared for a future with AI at work

Even those who may not be directly impacted by AI (yet) should know the implications and benefits it currently brings to the world of work. The future of AI in learning and development is promising, but it hinges on our ability to implement it responsibly. Mark DiMauro's detailed insights and expert advice provide a roadmap for professionals looking to integrate AI into L&D settings ethically.

By adhering to high ethical standards and ensuring human oversight of AI, it can be a powerful tool for enhancing learning and development, rather than a disruptive force.

Watch the full webinar to hear all of Mark's detailed advice on ethical AI in learning and development, including real examples, considerations, and expert guidance.

Ethical use of AI for learning and development

The ethical implications of AI can be confusing, but we're here to demystify AI and help you take a responsible approach to AI usage. Dig deeper into the topics with this recommended article, Building trust and transparency in generative AI learning.

From insights on our webinar with Mark DiMauro, PhD, understand the ethical implications of AI and learn how to use it responsibly and effectively at your organization.

Pop quiz (don’t worry, we promise it’s easy): last week, did you do any of the following?  

If you answered ‘yes,’ you’re not alone. That would make you one of ChatGPT’s 100 million weekly users, or the creator of one of DALL-E’s 14 million weekly images. Perhaps you work for one of the 35% of businesses that regularly use AI.  

A decade ago, this question would have seemed ridiculous. AI was a far-flung fantasy. Now, it's an everyday tool, useful for both work and leisure. And as the technology evolves, the future looks even brighter.  

Today, we’ll glimpse into that future, as we announce our latest product offering: Go1 AI. With Go1 AI, admins can turbocharge the content discovery, curation, and selection process, boosting productivity and efficiency through features like enhanced search functionality, AI chat, and advanced personalization options.  

We’ll share the key details of this new offering, discussing the benefits of Gen AI for personalized learning, before explaining Go1 AI’s features, showing how it supports admins, and sharing testimonials from some of our beta testers.  

There aren’t many things that all L&D leaders agree on. However, the significance of personalized learning is an exception. A whopping 93% of high-performing organizations agree that personalized learning supports employees in reaching their professional goals more efficiently. Yet, achieving personalized learning is easier said than done — especially at scale. Enter, Go1 AI.   

With Go1 AI, admins using Go1 can now create personalized experiences, with help from an unbeatable algorithm that sits on top of the largest content library for training, compliance, and personal development. 

Go1 AI includes several features that make admin’s lives easier. This means you can spend more time doing the work that really matters, leaving Go1 AI to handle the time-consuming curation.  

Go beyond merely matching keywords to receive more contextually relevant results. As you search for content, Go1 AI understands the underlying intent behind your search query and adds suggestions, surfacing the best-matched recommendations by mapping out the Go1 library in seconds.  

With AI chat, you can refine, identify, and group skills, discover, compare, and filter content, ask clarifying questions, add content to your library, and more. Before long, we’ll be adding additional AI chat features, so stay tuned.  

This is where personalized learning shines. Previously, personalized playlists had to be hand-curated. Now, Go1 AI lets L&D admins generate playlists from scratch based on their unique goals and parameters. Instead of browsing the entire library to manually create playlists, Go1 AI curates relevant, personalized playlists in seconds, making it scalable. Simply input your learning goals, refine your parameters, and let Go1 AI do the rest. 

Our approach sets us apart from other providers as we focus not on a single test or skill assessment, but on building comprehensive learner profiles to thoroughly understand learner’s needs. By asking relevant questions throughout the learning journey, we can consistently infer learners’ needs and recommend appropriate content. 

Go1 AI is designed with L&D admins in mind. We want to make your lives easier. As Dan Hayward, Go1’s Chief Customer Officer, says, “empowering L&D admins is essential to supporting the learning journeys of our customers. Go1 AI provides ‘always on’ access to learning and supercharges the ability to tailor individual learning experiences to employees' preferences, needs and learning styles.” 

Go1 AI streamlines how admins search our library by sharing powerful content recommendations, comparing relevant courses, and curating tailored playlists. We believe this level of granularity empowers admins to deliver personalized learning like never before. 

What’s more, we're integrating AI across the board, embedding AI-powered insights directly into the Go1 product to support administrators throughout their workflow. We want to leverage AI to handle 80% of your task, ensuring it’s a powerful ally for L&D administrators. 

Don’t just take our word for it, Go1 AI has completed extensive beta testing with some of our existing customers and partners. Here’s what they had to say.  

“We appreciate the diversity of learning content available to us in the Go1 platform, but we don’t want to get stuck in choice overload when building content playlists,” said Andrew James, digital learning manager at Lloyd’s. “Go1 has streamlined our curation workflow while adding confidence that we found the most relevant content for our team as they explore their own learning and skills development.” 

Or, as Holger Seim, Chief Product Officer at Go1, put it, "Having a vast library of learning content isn’t enough to engage learners in the workplace. L&D leaders need to surface the right content at the right time for each learner to achieve the best outcomes. By leveraging the wealth of data within our content library, Go1 is in the best position to provide smarter recommendations to L&D departments so they can build the most personalized and effective learning programs for their people." 

Don’t worry, among this talk of advanced features and artificial intelligence, we haven’t forgotten that our product is fundamentally for humans. Whether you’re worried AI will take your job, fearful of a robot uprising, or just overwhelmed by this whole AI thing, we’re here to reassure you: Go1 AI will always put humans first. Why? A couple of things set Go1 AI apart.  

Firstly, Go1 AI is trained on the world’s largest learning dataset. This matters because AI technology on its own is fundamentally imperfect. AI is only as good as the data it’s fed. That’s why stories of biased AI are common — you’ve probably heard some.  

To avoid this, Go1 AI utilizes information from 156 million yearly course completions, encompassing 130,000 data points from 250+ content providers in 48 languages. By leveraging data from our content library accessed by hundreds of users daily, we enable best-in-class content-to-learner matching and surface accurate, honest results. 

What’s more, we listen to learners. Recently, 87% of L&D professionals said they want the content they consume to be created by a subject matter expert. The survey concluded that “respondents are not opposed to L&D practitioners using AI technology to improve their efforts, but they still want humans to create, plan, and direct the activities.”  

Accordingly, we firmly believe AI should complement, not supersede, human creativity. AI is great at analyzing data and recognizing patterns. However, it lacks the nuance and emotional intelligence that only human judgement offers. Think of Go1 AI as your ally, picking up the slack when you want it to, and leaving you to focus on your strengths. Human judgement should always come first – Go1 AI is here to help.   

Finally, this is only the start! Over the coming months, we’ll have more exciting announcements as we continue to improve and refine Go1 AI. Keep an eye out for more to come.  

Go1 AI features are now available for select customers and partners. To learn more, contact your Customer Success Manager.  

We're announcing our latest product offering: Go1 AI. With Go1 AI, admins can turbocharge the content curation process, through features like enhanced search functionality, AI chat, and advanced personalization options.  

Go1 + Gen AI: Unlocking creative learning journeys

Ever find yourself wondering if AI is going to take over your job – or worse, take over every job? We get it – new advances in technology can feel unsettling, especially if you're not well-versed in how the technology works.  

The reality, though, is that AI's role in learning and development isn't a case of humans versus machines – the truth is far less daunting, but also far more exciting. By integrating artificial intelligence into L&D, humans and machines can work together to revolutionize learning for employees and lighten the workload for L&D professionals. 

As the L&D industry increases its AI use, we’re seeing AI function not as a replacement to human expertise but as an assistant that helps L&D teams work faster and more productively. In fact, organizations that have adopted AI for their learning programs have seen a 57% increase in efficiency on average! 

While AI can help streamline tasks and reduce human error, it isn’t fully autonomous. Humans still play a vital role in learning and development, and human knowledge is necessary for AI to successfully improve the learning experience. 

Keep reading to explore just a few ways that L&D is using AI in collaboration with human proficiency to ensure learning and development programs meet real human needs. 
 

AI-powered course creation is enabling L&D admins to build higher-quality courses faster. Note that AI isn’t creating courses on its own – AI is simply a tool that helps teams make content more effectively. 

This human approach to AI is widespread across L&D. In the promotional video for their AI-powered learning management system, LMS365 says, “To us, AI is not about replacing people. It’s about making people better, more engaged, and more successful.”  

With course builder tools like LMS365’s AI-assisted course creation, L&D admins can prompt Gen AI to create a course based on a specific piece of educational content, like a video, document, or presentation. After the course is created, admins can then further prompt the AI to customize the course for the unique needs of their employees. 

At first glance it may seem like AI is doing all the work here, but human involvement is vital for a high-quality outcome. Without an L&D admin’s specific knowledge about their company’s upskilling needs, the AI would simply create generic content. The admin’s expertise takes the course to the next level by tailoring it for their organization. 
 

L&D companies are releasing many AI tools and features focused on content search and recommendations – and for good reason. If you’ve ever been asked to find a course on a topic you’re not an expert in, you know how much time it takes to gain a baseline understanding of that topic before you can even start looking for content. With AI, there’s no need to spend hours researching and digging for just the right course. 

About 35% of L&D organizations are using AI to improve search and simplify tasks. Many of these organizations are migrating from traditional keyword search to AI-enhanced search for smarter content recommendations. How does it work? Rather than searching for a term like “business development” and getting results for every course that has the words “business” or “development” in the title or description, AI-enhanced search can better understand what you’re actually looking for and surface more relevant results.  

Absorb takes AI search one step further with intelligent ranking. This feature ranks search results in what the AI determines to be the best order according to the user’s history of searching for and enrolling in courses. While the AI determines the ranking, it makes its decisions based on real human data and behaviors. 
 

Personalization is another key L&D element that has been aided by AI in several different ways. First, AI is creating personalized learning pathways with help from L&D admins. Rather than browsing an entire catalog of content and selecting individual courses, admins can now tell the AI their learning goals and receive a personalized learning pathway in seconds. 

AI is also beginning to take its place in content curation. At Go1, for example, our content curation team uses generative AI programs as a starting point in their curation efforts. They might ask, “What’s a recommended pathway for new leaders?” or “What topics do you recommend for new leaders?” However, knowing that new leaders’ needs differ from one organization to the next, they then take the ideas and customize curated content. 

Take it from Shannon Herrera, Head of Content Curation at Go1: “AI is about enhancing human intelligence, not replacing it. It's a great tool to help us get started on things that can often be time-consuming, like research or building a basic program, and then, as L&D experts, we can go in and add the human elements to our programs, ensuring we’re meeting the unique needs of our employees and organizations.” 

It takes human expertise to successfully curate content – AI merely acts as the foundation that saves our experts time. 

But the relationship between Go1 and AI doesn’t stop with our internal teams. With Go1 AI, admins can now create personalized learning experiences for the entire workforce with support from our unique AI solution. Go1 AI gives Go1 admins access to some of the features we’ve already discussed, including AI-enhanced search, smart recommendations, and personalized playlists, plus additional features like AI chat and content evaluation, which we’ll review in more detail below. 
 

Let’s say you’ve run an AI-enhanced search on Go1 and found a few relevant courses. Normally, you might spend hours sampling the content to decide which one best fits your employees’ needs – but with Go1 AI, this is no longer necessary.  

Instead, Go1 AI gathers data through machine learning and uses it to supply learning outcomes, course summaries, topics and skills covered, and course ratings for all Go1 content. It can also use this information to compare courses on similar topics and evaluate which pieces of content are top contenders based on what you’re looking for as the admin. These evaluations come from real learner experiences – we simply use the data from AI to connect the dots. 

We hope this has helped you feel more confident about working alongside AI, instead of against it. Ultimately, AI isn’t going to replace the human element of L&D. AI may bring speed and productivity to learning and development, but it’s real humans who bring the heart to L&D. Embrace AI, and you’ll have more time to do what you do best – human-centered work. 

For more insights, subscribe to the Go1 newsletter to stay on top of all the latest L&D trends. Or, you can book a demo today to discover how Go1 can help with your team’s learning needs. 

AI's role in learning and development isn't a case of humans versus machines. Learn how humans can work in partnership with AI to revolutionize learning.

Humanizing the use of AI in learning and development

When you picture the future, what do you see? Flying cars? Talking robots? Recently, we asked ourselves the same question and saw AI front and center. So, we created Go1 AI, a new curation resource specifically designed for our admin customers.  

Now, we want to share our vision with you, exploring how Go1 AI saves time and effort for L&D admins. Let’s take a detailed look at the key features, including advanced personalization, content recommendations, AI search, and even the ability to predict your learning needs before you know them. Don’t worry, we promise there’s no satellite out there actually reading your mind!  

If you haven’t already, check out our product announcement to set the scene, which introduces Go1 AI from a more technical perspective.  

Enabling personalized learning at scale 

When people discuss AI, they tend to focus on flashy features. "Hey look, this one passed the Turing test!” This makes sense — it’s an exciting, futuristic technology, after all. But at Go1, we see things differently. Fundamentally, AI is about data. While machine learning is becoming increasingly intelligent, AI is only as good as the data it’s fed. Why? A recent study by the USC Information Sciences Institute answers this question.  

Researchers analyzed two AI tools: one relatively popular (ConceptNET), the other smaller and more niche (GenericsKB). Their goal was simple: “see if their data was fair.” Unfortunately, they found that 3.4% (ConceptNET) to 38.6% (GenericsKB) of the data was biased. According to Ninareh Mehrabi, the study’s lead author, “some results were so shocking that we questioned putting them in our paper. It was that bad.” 

Accordingly, AI isn’t infallible. It can be as helpful or biased as the data it’s fed. This is why we trained Go1 AI on the world’s largest and most diverse learning dataset, utilizing information from 156 million yearly course completions, encompassing 130,000 data points from 250+ content providers in 48 languages. This way, you have peace of mind that Go1 AI’s recommendations are relevant and timely.  

Drawing on the world’s largest learning dataset doesn’t just provide peace of mind; it also allows us to deploy several exciting features. It’s a win-win!  

Our semantic search goes beyond basic keyword matching, instead focusing on the deeper meaning of your search queries. Go1 AI understands the context, intent, and relationships between words, leading to more relevant results.  

For example, when you ask a friend for restaurant recommendations, you wouldn't just say "food," you'd mention your favorite cuisine, budget, and dietary requirements. Similarly, Go1 AI’s semantic search takes the keywords, relevant secondary skills, and any other context you provide to deliver contextually relevant results that take your L&D search a step closer to your goal.  

Previously, if you wanted to check if a learning course was relevant for your employees, you had to sample it manually. Now, admins can quickly evaluate if content meets their needs by using Go1 AI to preview ratings, learning outcomes, course summaries, and skills covered, while also comparing similar courses. Think of the endless hours of curation you'll save!   

One of the best things about AI is that it’s never ‘complete.’ As the name suggests, artificial intelligence is continuously learning and evolving. Go1 AI is highly iterative, analyzing learning data in real-time to personalize recommendations, and it gets better with each customer that uses it.   

With our personalized playlists feature, this real-time analysis shines. Put simply, Go1 AI can produce personalized learning playlists for your whole team in seconds.  

Once upon a time (last week), L&D admins had to hand-curate personalized learning playlists. One-by-one. From scratch. For a team with disparate learning needs, this required hours of research and curation, plus an encyclopedic knowledge of your team’s needs. We don’t doubt your capabilities, but our rockstar product team wanted to make this process much faster and easier.  

Now, Go1 AI streamlines the curation process. L&D admins can generate personalized playlists based on their unique goals in seconds, making it highly scalable. Instead of manually creating playlists, Go1 AI searches our library of over 80,000 courses and curates relevant, personalized playlists in just a few clicks. Simply enter your learning goals, refine your parameters, and let Go1 AI do the rest.  

As Holger Seim, Chief Product Officer at Go1, put it, "having a vast library of learning content isn’t enough to engage learners in the workplace. L&D leaders need to surface the right content at the right time for each learner to achieve the best outcomes. By leveraging the wealth of data within our content library, Go1 is in the best position to provide smarter recommendations to L&D departments so they can build the most personalized and effective learning programs for their people." 

We know we said that Go1 AI can’t read your mind, but with some features, it might feel like it.  

We've upgraded our content tagging system by developing our own skill taxonomy. Put simply, that means we’ve grouped courses into sub-categories like “HR” or “Compliance” – like the tags you’d see when online shopping (i.e. “men’s activewear.”) A skills taxonomy is a fancy way of describing how we grouped these tagged skills into related ‘clusters’ (for a common example, see the OECD skills taxonomy). From there, we’ve tagged 98% of our library with relevant skills. In total, over 7,000 skills have been thoroughly mapped so far, and we hope to reach that 100% mark soon.   

What does this mean for admins? Simple: this vast map of skills is interlinked, meaning Go1 AI is constantly learning what skills and courses relate to each other. Go1 AI can break down learning concepts into skills and sub-skills, recognizing links between closely matched skills and recommending associated content, thereby predicting future learning needs. We hope you’re nerding out as much as we are over this! 

By achieving this level of granularity and detail, admins can find the best-matching results faster and more seamlessly.  

To provide more effective recommendations, Go1 AI takes a hybrid approach to searches, applying both lexical (matching words to words and synonyms) and semantic (understanding the underlying intent behind your search) matching.  

Lexical matching is the style of searching you’re probably used to. However, with semantic matching, it feels like Go1 AI knows what you want before you, as it understands your deeper intent. From there, it can suggest related content and surface the best-matched results. Types of searches you might want to try include:  

Topic-based searches, like “suggest content to improve decision-making.”   

Role-based searches, like “what should I learn as a sales manager?”   

Skill-based searches, like “what skills should I learn in product management?” 

Content intelligence adds science to the art of learning, helping admins make informed decisions to meet their L&D goals. To develop this, we use resources like quality scores, user feedback, consumption data, content metadata, and content transcripts.  

The bottom line? By harnessing our content intelligence, Go1 AI matches the right content to the right learning program, consistently recommending the most effective learning strategies for your team.   

Launching Go1 AI is only the first step of an exciting journey of improvements to make admin work more inspiring and fast-paced. Over the coming months, we’ll keep refining Go1 AI by deepening our content intelligence, improving discovery and curation tools, and adding more AI-powered capabilities. So, stay tuned for more announcements soon.  

Go1 AI features are now available for select customers and partners. To learn more, contact your Customer Success Manager. 

We'll detail how Go1 AI saves time and effort for L&D admins, analysing key features like advanced personalization, content recommendations, and AI search.

Introducing Gen AI: The future of personalized learning at Go1

In the past year, we’ve seen AI transform from a new phenomenon to a tool that’s becoming seamlessly integrated into our everyday lives. From powering chatbots to crafting personalized learning experiences, AI is rapidly transforming the landscape of learning and development. In fact, in 2023 we saw more than 8,000 enrollments in AI content! While we can’t predict the future of AI’s role in L&D, its potential to enhance learner engagement and boost team productivity is undeniable. 

The seemingly endless possibilities of AI have brought about excitement and enthusiasm, but the arrival of this new technology has also understandably stirred up some concern regarding its ethics. For example, machine learning algorithms rely on vast amounts of data to learn and improve over time.  

In the world of L&D, this might look like an AI-powered LMS collecting employee data to personalize their learning experience, which raises questions about how learner data is collected, used, and protected. 

This level of personalization is a positive use-case – it allows employees to quickly and easily find the right content for their goals, so they can spend less time searching for courses and more time learning. However, it’s important to be aware of AI’s ethical considerations to ensure it’s used responsibly. We’ve compiled some tips and insights to help you do just that. 


With GenAI tools like GPT-4 and Dall-E on the rise, it’s important to remember that these aren’t hands-off solutions to content creation. For example, if you prompt GPT-4 to create a learning strategy for you and then simply copy and paste the AI-generated text into your strategy, chances are, most readers are going to notice. It takes a real person to review the AI-written content for accuracy and brand voice alignment, and then make any needed changes. Sometimes many changes will be necessary to get it right and sometimes light edits will do, but regardless, it’s rare that AI will generate exactly what you need without any human involvement. 

Rather than using AI to replace human expertise, we suggest using it as a supplement to your or your team’s expertise. You’ll find that the combination of human proficiency and AI efficiency is where the real magic happens. 

Transparency in AI usage is crucial. According to a study by UKG, 78% of C-Suite leaders say their business is actively using AI, but 54% of employees have no idea how their company uses it. This knowledge gap can breed mistrust and uncertainty in the workforce, but the solution is simple. Of the survey participants, 75% said they would be more willing to embrace AI if their company was transparent about its AI use. The message is clear: when companies are honest about how they’re using AI, employees get on board. 

Conversely, employees need to be truthful about AI’s role in their work. In a survey by Fishbowl, 68% of professionals said their boss doesn’t know they’re using AI at work. Dishonesty about AI-generated content can be considered plagiarism, so be clear about how you’re using AI. Remember, transparency builds trust. 

AI data privacy and security is a hot topic these days. As an emerging technology, AI is complex, and its role in society is still being determined. Consequently, it’s continually being evaluated and regulated both locally and globally. To remain compliant, organizations and individuals alike need to stay current on new laws and requirements regarding AI, adjusting their usage and privacy policies accordingly. 

Be sure to check privacy policies associated with your learning and development programs, including policies from your LMS and your content provider. Find out if their products use AI, and if so, understand how they’re accessing and using learner data. Make sure your learners are also aware that these privacy policies are available to them and that they understand how to access them. 

AI algorithms are only as accurate as the data they're trained on. When faulty training data is used in machine learning, or the person training the AI consciously or unconsciously inserts their own prejudice into the data they use, the AI may produce incorrect or biased results. These results are commonly referred to as “hallucinations.” 

Additionally, “black box” artificial intelligence refers to AI that doesn’t allow users to see how it reaches its conclusions. We see point A (our prompt to the AI) and point B (the results the AI produces), but everything that happens in between is a mystery. Without knowing how the AI reached its conclusion, it can be difficult to understand whether the conclusion itself is biased. 

While mitigating bias within AI models themselves might be beyond your control, you can still take steps to ensure responsible AI usage. Along with reviewing the privacy policies for information on how they handle bias in AI, try reaching out to the organizations directly to get information about how they’re addressing bias in the R&D phase. When shopping for AI tools and L&D programs, look for those that prioritize fairness and transparency in their development and deployment. 


Equipping your team with the knowledge and skills they need to navigate the world of generative AI learning is crucial. The Go1 library offers a wealth of AI-related content, including courses on AI ethics, safety, and security. By investing in employee education, you can foster a culture of responsible AI usage and build trust in this transformative technology. 

So, you might be wondering – how is Go1 ensuring they’re using AI responsibly? 

First and foremost, we are committed to adhering to ethical standards and treating your personal information with respect. While we aim to continuously enhance our product to better meet customer needs, we won’t make changes at the expense of breaking trust. The following are some steps we’re taking to maintain integrity in our product with the introduction of AI features: 

Guidelines: We've created a set of guidelines that all AI products and features must adhere to. These guidelines ensure our AI products are built ethically and function responsibly. 

Development: We prioritize ethics in the development stage of AI products, and we promote transparency by openly communicating how we make decisions about our products. 

Security: All customer data is safely encoded. We don’t share your data with third parties or other Go1 customers, and we don’t use your training data or inputs to improve AI models. Data is hosted on Microsoft Azure and is not transferred to OpenAI. 

Bias: We prioritize fair outcomes for all users by actively working to identify biases in our AI models and creating feedback loops in the event of detected bias. 

Adaptation: We stay up to date on the latest ethical concerns regarding AI and we continually revisit and adapt our products accordingly. 

We believe trust and transparency are key to unlocking learning potential, and we’ll always prioritize customer safety and satisfaction. Learn more about how Go1 is using AI to enhance learning here.

The ethical implications of AI can be confusing, but we're here to demystify AI and help you take a responsible approach to AI usage.

Building trust and transparency in generative AI learning

In today's diverse work environment, learning and development teams face the challenging task of curating content that addresses skill gaps and aligns with organizational business goals. With fluctuating skill requirements across different teams and departments, as well as ever-changing business goals and objectives, the task of building a versatile, adaptable workforce through skill development has become increasingly complex and multifaceted.

Existing tools used by L&D teams often fall short of meeting employee needs for scalable and personalized learning programs. Navigating through these tools and features feels like searching for a needle in a haystack, compelling admins to resort to manual workflows. This results in countless hours and days spent on the painstaking task of identifying and preparing high-quality, relevant learning for learners. All the time spent on such repetitive work eventually detracts from some of the more strategic aspects of their jobs that link back to business goals.

That’s why today we are thrilled to announce Go1 AI, a new suite of AI-powered features and tools that transform the way L&D admins get their work done. With Go1 AI, admins can turbocharge content discovery, curation and selection, and delegate their most mundane tasks, exponentially increasing productivity and efficiency.

For some of the more strategic L&D initiatives – whether it's demonstrating high-quality content, providing region-specific training for a global workforce, fostering self-directed learning, or implementing organization-wide skill-based learning – think of Go1 AI as your intuitive colleague. It not only lays the foundation but also expedites your progress.

Discover relevant skill-based content, instantly

Finding relevant content starts with core search functionality. This typically involves traditional keyword-based search technology that focuses on specific words or phrases. However, they often fail to grasp the broader context and sentiment, leading to a tedious process of many steps to uncover content and verify associated skills.

Now, with AI-Enhanced Search, admins can go beyond matching keywords to receive more contextually relevant results and skills. As they search for content, Go1 AI immediately understands the underlying intent, adds suggestions, and surfaces the best-matched skill recommendations and content by mapping out the entire Go1 library, in seconds.

Alternatively, admins can go to our new AI Chat interface to select skills, receive content recommendations aligned with their unique needs, and start building a series of courses to directly import into a playlist or sync to their library, all within a streamlined workflow.

Sampling results before enrolling or assigning content is a standard practice for admins to be confident that they're delivering the best learning for their employees. Before the time of AI, admins were compelled to go through every single course and dedicate endless hours of manual work to validate quality and relevance.

Now, admins can quickly evaluate if a course meets their needs by previewing learning outcomes, course summaries, skills covered, and course ratings, and compare similar results with other relevant content across providers and formats.

Stitch together content into personalized playlists, effortlessly

If you want to organize, structure, and sequence content into personalized learning paths, Go1 makes the process significantly easier. Previously, this involved only relying on human intervention and guidance by Go1 Content Consultants to curate learning playlists.

With Go1 AI, L&D admins can soon generate new playlists based on their unique goals and parameters from scratch, with no human wait time. Instead of browsing the entire catalog and manually creating playlists, Go1 AI will curate highly relevant and personalized learning, in seconds, helping admins get a head start.

Built on the world’s largest and richest learning content dataset

We've quietly utilized the power of Large Language Models (LLMs) and AI to facilitate better decision-making behind the scenes — improving content classification and tagging, developing a skills taxonomy, breaking down learning concepts into relevant skills and content suggestions, enhancing content metadata, etc.

Now, with AI at the forefront of the admin experience, we’re enabling L&D teams to streamline how they search for skill-based content, receive recommendations, compare relevant courses with quality signals, curate tailored playlists, and gain insight into content retirements — all within a single product.

By leveraging unparalleled content intelligence from 130,000 learning courses and 250 content providers in 10+ formats and 48 languages, Go1 AI stands out for its ability to surface the right content for every employee. We believe that this level of granularity and consolidation will empower L&D admins and leaders to make more informed decisions and deliver personalized learning programs like never before.

We are just at the beginning of our AI journey at Go1, and we see limitless potential in how AI can shape the future of skill-building and learning. Over the coming months, we will continue deepening our content intelligence, improving our core discovery and curation tools, and adding new AI-powered capabilities, for best-in-class content to learner matching. Go1 AI is available to customers on a rolling basis, starting today. To learn more, visit our product page.

We're thrilled to announce Go1 AI, a new suite of AI-powered features and tools that transform the way L&D admins get their work done.

Introducing Go1 AI: Make All Learning Relevant and Personalized

We're thrilled to announce Go1 AI, a new suite of AI-powered features and tools that transform the way L&D admins get their work done. 

To say AI is a hot topic would be an understatement. No longer consigned to the margins of Sci-Fi, generative AI is now a reality, with many of us using tools like ChatGPT and Bard regularly. To contextualise AI’s rise, LinkedIn posts about generative AI have skyrocketed by 33x over the past year. Additionally, the Global Generative AI Market will grow 26x larger over the coming decade, reaching an estimated value of $1.3 trillion by 2032. 

Put simply, artificial intelligence has arrived. However, as technology evolves, AI’s influence will grow, forcing many businesses to adapt and evolve. The L&D industry is no exception. It’s no longer a question of whether AI will influence L&D, but how these influences manifest. 

So, what’s next? How will AI influence the future of L&D? To answer these questions, we’ll analyse the state of AI, before examining the benefits of AI for L&D and outlining Go1’s future AI plans.

After years of speculation featuring flying cars and robot apocalypses, the rise of generative AI was swift. It took ChatGPT just five days to clock one million users. AI is here and here to stay. So, let’s set the scene. 

A recent survey found that 48% of businesses have adopted “at least one AI-backed function or machine learning system.” More specifically, well over half of HR & L&D teams use AI for: 

Payroll processing & benefits administration

This is only the beginning, as surveys show almost all HR leaders intend to increase their AI usage within two years to avoid lagging behind competitors. 

In the immediate future, estimates suggest that 47% of LMS tools will be enabled by AI capabilities by the end of 2024. It’s no wonder industry expert Josh Bersin predicts that “AI (and generative AI in particular) is going to radically change the HR Tech landscape.”

How will AI influence the future of L&D? To answer this question, we’ll analyse the state of AI, before examining the benefits of AI for L&D.