If you have been in the learning and development field for a while, you have already ridden several trains. The gamification train. The project-based learning train. The active methodologies train. The personalisation train. Trains that arrived with a great deal of noise, promised to transform everything, and delivered results that were… uneven.
That is not to say those trends contributed nothing. They did, and some continue to do so. But not as much as was claimed at the peak of the hype. Gamification did not motivate every learner. Project-based learning did not fit every context. Personalisation collided with the reality of available resources. The pattern repeats itself: a genuinely valuable idea, amplified until it becomes a universal solution, and then the inevitable landing.
That track record matters. Because the current train is Artificial Intelligence, and it is arriving with more noise than any of its predecessors. It is going to transform our organisational productivity, allow us to meet every need of every learner, and solve problems we have been unable to address for years. All at once? Out of the box?
Perhaps a little ambitious.
AI does offer real value in learning and development. There are solid, evidence-backed use cases with demonstrable impact: adaptive personalisation of learning pace, content generation and curation, data analysis to detect difficulties before they become dropout, automation of administrative tasks that consume time without adding any pedagogical value. This is not smoke. But it is not magic either.
The difference between an implementation that works and one that does not lies, almost always, in the order of the questions. Most organisations go straight to the how: which tool, which platform, which provider. Before that should come the why: what specific objective am I trying to meet, what real problem do I have, what evidence do I have that AI is the most appropriate response to that problem.
Without that prior question, AI is exactly that: expensive automation with good press.
With it, it can be one of the most powerful tools the learning and development sector has seen in a long time. Not the first. Not the last. But one with real capacity for impact, in the right moment and with the right criteria.
The question is not whether your organisation is going to adopt AI. It probably already is, or will be soon. The question is whether it is doing so from analysis or from pressure.
