Insights You Missed: The Role of Emerging Tech and AI in Professional Training

At Corporate Learning Week Healthcare and Life Sciences last week, L&D executives from top organizations shared how they’re confronting the most pressing issues in the industry. Of course, the conference started off by tackling the most salient challenge of the year: implementing AI in L&D initiatives.

Our panel of experts, James Jay Kulesa, Head of Learning Center of Excellence, Innovation, Design, and Onboarding at Regeneron, Eileen Cooke, Vice President of Enterprise Learning, Development, and Performance at CVS Health, and Johann Laville, Chief Learning Officer at Merck, discussed leveraging AI for L&D in the Healthcare and Life Sciences sectors with moderator Kirsten Messina, Enterprise Account Manager at Coursera. They shared crucial wisdom during our opening keynote panel, “The Role of Emerging Tech and AI in Professional Training.

Check out these key takeaways:

Don’t lead with “AI”

“I don’t use the term AI,” said Eileen Cooke. “Lead with what it is you’re trying to solve. AI is just a wonderful tool that we can use to augment our staff and speed up the learning and development capability. But mostly, it’s a tool like any other that you can use to solve a problem in your organization.” Once you identify a problem you’re trying to solve or a gap you need to close, she said, you’ll naturally stumble across an AI-based platform that can help you accomplish what you need to do.

Be specific

When facing a problem that you believe can be alleviated with the help of AI, be specific about the type of AI you intend to leverage. Johann Laville noted that: “A lot of people want to say we can say we can solve it with an LLM, but then they use the word AI. As we become smarter, we need to be more specific.” Keep in mind that AI is an umbrella term and is comprised of a multitude of subsets, including Machine Learning, Large Language Models (LLMs), Natural Language Processing (NLP), and more, all with specific functionalities and potential use cases in the L&D sphere.

The business comes first

A key consideration when introducing AI-based projects is, of course, whether you have the resources to undertake them. Top executives will only agree to put money behind these endeavors if they can see a clear path to high ROI. James Jay Kulesa said, “The end result is the most important thing. That’s what sells the idea. You have to have an ironclad business case.” Before even piloting a solution, he noted, you should do a proof of concept. Illustrate the business case for spending money to leverage a specific AI-based solution for your L&D programs.

L&D leaders are coming together again in October to collaborate, share ideas, and innovate on best practices for leveraging AI in L&D, alongside other key topics. Don’t miss out on learning from and responding to key insights like these in person. Learn more about our next Corporate Learning Week, October 7-9th in Atlanta, and register here.