I think there are four attacks on training, all of which will pass. But then I’m an optimist. What do YOU think?
Attack one: courses written by A.I.
Already we are getting bored with these – they are bland and formulaic. As people get more familiar with spotting A.I. these will be increasingly discredited and courses made by Reap People (like me) will become premium.
Attack two: courses presented by A.I.
Whether they are written by A.I. or just presented by A.I. we are getting increasingly fed up with those horrible flat voices. Yes it’s cheap, and you can edit it easily, and you have have a great looking A.I. person as well as the voice, but audiences aren’t stupid and we want a real person. This will grow, and of course the A.I. faces and voices will improve, but in the end there will be a demand for the premium courses where you get a real person, because learners want to feel that there is a relationship.
Attack three: people don’t need training because they can just A.I. for the answers.
True to a limited extent, but in the end it does help to actually understand things. For example, negotiating or project management – by all means use A.I. to help with your plans, but it’s going to be best if you understand the subject – to know if the AI advice is good, to add a human touch, to add some subtlety and intuition, and to interact personally with your customers and suppliers. So there always be a need to be trained in a subject as well as using A.I. for quick answers or summaries. Especially when people realise that at job interviews they can’t just say “I know nothing about that but I just use A.I. to tell me what to do”.
Attack four: taking away the jobs that people need to be trained for
Will people need to be trained in negotiating when A.I. bots do all our negotiating for us?
There will be a reduction in white collar staff, yes, (although, when computers came along in the 1980s there were widespread fears of job annihilation and in the end it just created more, different, new types of jobs) – and initially employers will plan to use A.I. to do everything for them and to replace every skill, but it will soon become apparent that it can’t do all of the soft-skill activities.
At the moment there is a feeling that “OK it can’t do these things YET but soon it WILL be able to” but once the fuss dies down we’ll see. I think there will always be a need for soft skills, for example it will become quite good at negotiating but it won’t be able to beat me – but maybe I’ll regret writing this in a few years’ time! The same for music – it will be able to write great elevator music (it already can!) but will it ever be as good at Bruce or Van or Bob?? I doubt it. So people will be doing less repetitive white collar wokr but they will still be doing something, either physical work or people-skill-based work, and for that they will still need training.
Conclusion
We will have a period where people will use A.I. for everything in management, and just get a one page summary rather than taking a course. And video course platforms will be diluted by lots of A.I. slop. There won’t be a sudden backlash but there will be a gradual move back to human relationships. How do you know if anything is true, if anything is real, if it’s all on line?
So people will want to meet, ideally face to face but certainly over zoom or by phone, and interpersonal skills will regain the emphasis that they deserve. And real training from a real person will become the premium choice, rising above the sea of A.I. slop, especially if it’s from a person with a reputation or a company/site/platform with a good reputation. Many people will be happy with the slop, but a large enough market will always want good quality training from a real person.
PS … and music will be the same!
