GLN 2024 - AI and Learning

[Paul Terlemezian]

This session will expand the community of AI advocates within the Georgia LEARNS Community.

• Alfredo’s company is using AI to assure the right Product/Market Fit.
• Read’s company has a mature AI product and is interested in finding another market fit.
• Vontarius’s company is focused on AI Marketing.
• Marilyn's company is focused on using AI to impact the way we Educate
• Matt’s company is focused on AI Education.
• Mike's company is focused on Business Valuation and Advice
• Robert's company is focused on AI and Leadership

What is missing? AI Selling? AI Product Development? AI Product Consumption?

Who else do you recommend be included in this conversation?

Here are the details for this conversation:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89895585667?pwd=nSM3X2YA87Cj5CbPl0N3SCZvR...

• Meeting ID: 898 9558 5667
• Passcode: 086728

 

[Bill Crose]

Hi Paul (All)!

I'm Baaack! LOL! 10 weeks, 3 continents, 5 countries, 7 flights, countless trains, to numerous UNESCO sites in Valencia, Sevilla, Segovia, Sajunto, Cadaques, Granada, Istanbul, Cairo, Aswan, Luxor, Rome, Florence, Milan, and Amsterdam. I want to return to Western Spain to dig deeper into Islam art and the Spanish Renaissance, Valencia during Las Fallas, every part of Italy, and Istanbul. Now back to seeing what else I can do with my time on this planet.

This session looks interesting to me. I've spent much of the last year working to define what an AI-driven Needs Analysis System would be like. The thesis if I can call it one is that if the promise of AI is to enable computers to make better, faster, cheaper decisions than humans, then it's just a matter of time until AI replaces most business managers/leaders/decision makers. The rest of the paper/article/book explains how an AI-driven Needs Analysis System would work with emphasis on the workflow and data requirements. This is my conference presentation topic for 2025.

I've been saying innovation is accelerating for years and it is going from 3 million patents granted by the USPTO in the 40 years after 1979 and is trending toward granting 11 million in the coming 40 years. With accelerating innovation comes less time to perform needs analysis, which means the needs analysis process we all know we should perform before developing any training content will continue as the hit/miss, "skinnied down," pseudo-assessments as usual that rely on S.W.A.G. from managers/leaders, or it will be automated and never missed. There already isn't enough time or will to perform needs analysis. So, what would an automated AI system look like? How would it work? What data would it need? What questions would it need to answer? What algorithms would need to be written? What's the financial value of a system that can replace managers/leaders and their compensation? What does the organization/business lose/gain? How can the model be improved? What are the next steps? How would a business transition to implementing an AI-driven needs assessment system?

The added value to automating needs analysis includes: 1) Removing human bias, greed, and self-serving from business decisions, 2) Better business decisions made in less time, 3) A full needs analysis is always performed, unlike the current state, 4) Workers get honest, valid, unbiased, reliable, performance-related feedback, 5) Workers get evaluated and compensated based on valid, unbiased, reliable, ratio data... 

Here's what the workflow looks like. Note that it's based on the premise that businesses only have 1 goal, which is to rapidly grow sustainable profit. All business activities should be tied to that goal. There are only 3 objectives for every business. They are to enable, assure, and continuously improve performance whereby performance includes every cog and switch in a business, not just worker performance.

So, I'd like to join the leadership sessions and would be happy to present what I have on AI-driven needs analysis if you'd like me to do that.   

[Paul Terlemezian]

Thank you to Bob Norton for making me aware of this video.

Please consider investing the 13:17 to watch it.

https://youtu.be/Ia3CPhVkUtg?feature=shared 

Your comments are welcome.

[Bill Crose]

Thanks Bob and Paul for posting this. I saw it on YouTube but didn't watch it until seeing it here.

My undergrad degree is in education, my first professional job was grade 4-6 teacher, I got a master's degree in instructional design and spent 30+ years implementing and building learning technologies for adults. Fair warning, I love and have a bias toward learning tech. Surprise! LOL!!

Khanmigo is a learning technology that's designed for instructional designers and children. I would have LOVED this when I was a 4-6 grade teacher. It could probably be adapted for adult education.

To be clear, most K-12 teachers aren't instructional designers. They're teachers, coaches, babysitters, role models, and 1,000 other things, but it would be a mistake to assume they're willing and able to design content for their classroom regardless of whether they use AI or not. When I was a 4-6 grade teacher I had ZERO peers who would have put a minute of extra work into their teacher jobs, which means I would have been the only one in the school using Khanmigo if it had been available. Side note: I loved being a teacher but I made $11,400 my first year as a teacher as did every other teacher. Regardless of how much extra effort I put into my job, the do-nothing teachers made the same amount of money as me. I left teaching because I did stand out work that was never respected or rewarded. As so many people have advised, when the job isn't right, don't expect the job to change -get a new job. High Ho.

There are big differences between teaching children and training adults. Making Khanmigo work in an an adult training environment would be a big challenge. Remember, it's designed for K-12 education. Education/schools and training/businesses have separate values, goals, responsibilities & accountabilities, and success measures. The only goal of every business worldwide is to grow sustainable profit. Every business worldwide has just 3 objectives, to enable, assure and continuously improve performance. Businesses have 2 metrics that matter, time saved and profit growth.

Khanmigo is designed for K-12 education. Educators value education and their goal is infinite/continuous learning. Education's objectives are to enable memorization/learning. It's metrics are test scores, trainee satisfaction, number of workers trained, number of programs created/updated/delivered, etc. To adapt Khanmigo for business environments, the values, goals objectives, and metrics would all need to change.

If Khanmigo had been natively developed for adults, then it would fit perfectly into my learning tech. wheelhouse. Would I pitch this to any former employer or client? Yes, but only if it provided what my business clients needed, which it currently does not. My clients need performance enablement, not learning, and this would be a poor performance enabler because workers would forget 60% of the delivered content within 60 minutes. Workers would forget up to 90% of the content within a week if there spaced practice opportunities were offered and usded. It could not assure workers perform their assigned SOPs perfectly every time. It also would not be able to continuously improve performance without the ability to capture, manipulate, and report valid, unbiased, reliable, performance ratio data. It would need to be able to accurately calculate break-even dates and ROI on business initiatives.

To recap, education and learning go together as do training and performance. If you want learning, then learning is your goal and you measure learning. If you want performance, then you profit is your goal and you measure performance profit.

[Paul Terlemezian]

Thank you Bill - I wonder if and when we can shift some accountability for learning to the learner?

[Bill Crose]

My perspective is that training is the process of people systematically and deliberately placing information and skills into their short-term memories. Learning is the process of a person moving their existing knowledge or skill from their short-term to long-term memory, systematically, deliberately, or otherwise. Training doesn't require practice. Learning does.

Educators/schools use knowledge and skill tests to determine the degree to which someone has learned something. Neither trainers or educators measure the application of knowledge or skill. Businesses/performance organizations do.

In business, the degree to which someone has learned is demonstrated by their ability to recall and perfect perform every step of an assigned SOP, while on-the-job without support or aid of any kind. Demonstrating and measuring learning are different things. Businesses/performance organizations measure the application of learning via cycle time and error reduction and profit growth.  

The benchmark for measuring learning in an education environment is a test score's proximity to the mean score. Performance is not required for educators to evaluate learning. Trainers/educators are not evaluated by the application of what was trained or learned, they're evaluated by their training and teaching activities.

Measurement requires benchmarks. The benchmark for training is a mean test score, a zero score, or a 100/perfect test score. Perfect performance is the only performance benchmark in business.

Can we shift some learning accountability to the learner? We already have. Businesses and schools can't move a person's knowledge or skill from short to long-term memory, people have to do that for themselves. We can't shift the responsibility and accountability for providing spaced practice and coaching to the learners.

We give much of the responsibility and accountability for providing practice and coaching opportunities to employers and front-line supervisors in part because learners can't be expected to know what to practice or to coach themselves and training organizations don't take responsibility or accountability for post-training practice or coaching.  

The business purpose of learning is to grow sustainable profit. Learning can grow sustainable profit when it enables workers to perform an SOP faster and with fewer errors from memory alone, without support of any kind.

What now? I think we need to,

1) Align our values, goals, and objectives with those of our clients/business

2) Reorganize training organizations into "performance organizations"

3) Stop training and start enabling performance via any means including training when it's appropriate

4) Start capturing valid, unbiased, reliable, performance ratio data, VURPRD, and share it freely with the rest of the company

5) Acknowledge that all initiatives businesses launch are intended to rapidly grow profit and use VURPRD to calculate the ROI and break-even dates.   

7) Use AI to perform business-wide needs analysis

[Paul Terlemezian]

Thank you.