Forum Discussion
Is L&D's role expanding in the age of AI?
Hi, Katie-Jordan.
I hope your summer has gone well. Public school has started back in my neck of the woods, which means I get the chance to leave my house even earlier in the mornings to dodge as much traffic as possible driving to the office. 😂😂
Thanks for the tag and the prompt.
Context matters. For example, in my org, my team and I report to the VP of Contact Center. The learning content we create directly supports our 250+ phone agents. Thus, as our business exists today, there is no drastic shift in what we're asked to create (e.g., training on new policies & procedures, product knowledge, and system upgrades, etc.).
Regarding this question, "Where do you see the biggest opportunity, or challenge, for L&D right now?"
From my vantage point, I believe L&D is uniquely positioned to help its leaders frame AI use as a corporate imperative rather than "ad-hoc tools spun up in different departments with no real strategic weight behind it."
Companies are burning through cash because their employees are hitting token limits, but no one is steering the AI ship.
I encourage fellow learning leaders who can influence the AI conversation in their org to do so and quickly.
For me, instead of company leaders settling for incremental productivity gains, they should have folks coordinating and executing moonshots. 🚀🌘
Hi Thomas! Your point hit home.
The "ad hoc tools spun up in different departments with no real strategic weight" line is exactly what I see happening too. People are experimenting on their own, getting mixed results, and nobody's connecting the dots or setting a standard for how to choose the right tool for the right job.
That's actually what pushed me to build Ask Ada. Instead of being another ad hoc solution where everyone just wings it, I wanted something that gives people a clear, reasoned answer for which AI tool fits a given task, so the judgment isn't stuck in one person's head. It's a small example of the kind of steering you're talking about.
On a personal level, I'm using AI to build more engaging learning, faster. I genuinely love using it as a thought partner, it pushes my ideas further and lets me spend more time on the parts of design that actually need a human touch.
I love the moonshot framing too 🚀 Incremental gains are safe, but they're not going to be what separates the orgs that figure this out from the ones that stall. Appreciate you naming that so directly.
One moonshot could be, as Monika Saha calls out in the article, sitting down with company leaders to define exactly what a Capability Architect looks like in one’s organization.
It’s the kind of thing I dream about, for example, using AI to redefine how we do business. If I had my way at my employer, I would create an AI think tank and include people from all levels of the company.
The aim would be something like this:
“With AI, the sky is the limit. Let’s brainstorm (as humans) to reimagine what work gets done, how it gets done, and if we should even keep operating that way in our company. Then, let’s take that output and feed it into Perplexity, Claude, or another generative AI tool. The purpose of giving our brainstorming output to GenAI is to stress-test ideas, refine the strongest ones, and create a plan to begin testing our organizational rebirth as a human-first, AI-augmented entity.”
In an organization like the above, I can definitely see how a Capability Architect (formerly, members of the L&D team), role comes to life.
SMcNicol, thanks for your commentary. I always appreciate your thoughts.