Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming smarter and more capable every day. As it advances it is important to understand its capabilities and limitations to maximise productivity and minimise mistakes.
At TIS Training we’re all about offering the most efficient and easiest platform and are using AI where we can. However, we’re mindful that delivering quality and engaging workplace training requires careful adherence to best-practice adult learning principles.
In this article, we provide some of the latest facts and guides to help you navigate the ever-evolving AI landscape and we extend this discussion into the training delivery arena.
What is AI?
AI is artificial intelligence
focuses on creating intelligent agents capable of performing tasks that would typically require human levels of intelligence.
Currently, AI can operate in two ways. It can be rule-based and operate under a predefined set of conditions. Or, it can use machine learning algorithms to adapt to its environment and learn from input data, which makes it more versatile and capable of handling unforeseen scenarios.
There are several types of AI including:
Narrow AI or Machine Learning – which is designed and trained to perform a very specific task with a pre-defined set of conditions. For example, reactive machines. They cannot store memories or use past experiences to inform current decisions. It doesn’t understand text and data the way humans do, it simply processes the patterns it sees. For example, online product recommendations are generated by grouping customers according to their shared buying habits and to enhance the customer service experience. Another example is ChatGPT which can create written content, images, audio and code.
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) – Also known as General AI. This type of artificial intelligence would have the ability to understand, learn, and apply knowledge across different domains. It would be capable of self-awareness, reasoning, and emotional understanding. However, General AI remains largely theoretical at this point and remains a subject of ongoing research and ethical debate.
Artificial Super Intelligence – This is an advanced form of AI that would surpass human intelligence in nearly all aspects, from creativity and social intelligence to problem-solving abilities. Super AI is a concept that exists more in the realm of science fiction and future speculation than in current reality.
What AI Isn’t
There are five common misunderstandings about Artificial Intelligence.
- It’s synonymous with robots. AI is not limited to robotics; it’s a broader field that includes various technologies like search algorithms and natural language processing.
- It can surpass human intelligence anytime soon. The idea that AI will soon outsmart humans is exaggerated; Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is still theoretical and far from realisation.
- It understands content as humans do. AI doesn’t “understand” text or speech in the human sense; it processes data based on patterns, however, it lacks comprehension. AI cannot think for itself and doesn’t understand the information it’s given.
- It is unbiased. Contrary to belief, AI can inherit biases from its training data or designers, meaning it’s not inherently unbiased.
- AI can replace all human jobs. AI has the potential to replace up to 30% of human jobs. However, while AI can automate specific tasks, it cannot replace jobs that require emotional intelligence, creativity, and other human-specific skills. Humans are also needed to set up AI systems and provide the necessary information and questions.
AI’s Impact on Customer Service
Where we’re seeing a strong uptake of AI is in customer service. Although experts are predicting that the nature of customer service jobs will change, they argue that humans will not be completely replaced.
Recent research shows that:
- 57% of customers prefer to contact an organisation’s customer service team via phone
- 78% of consumers still want to speak to a human even with technology in place.
In short, a multi-faceted approach is likely the best option in that AI virtual assistants can create workflows that can transfer people to the best human customer service agent equipped to solve their queries.
AI’s Impact on Education
Artificial Intelligence is impacting and enhancing education across several areas including the development of video games, image recognition, question-and-answer scenarios, translation of text from one language into another, speech recognition and music track recognition.
It is useful in assisting trainers in preparing teaching material.
Read our article, Videos Make Workplace Safety Training Effective.
AI’s Impact on the TIS Training Platform
TIS Training benefits from AI technology in that it helps us with language translations and voiceovers. It’s made these tasks quicker and less costly which has enabled us to keep our custom-course development prices affordable for our clients.
We’re using it to help with our promotion and marketing materials. However, we’re finding the ChatGPT text suggestions in our marketing to be repetitive and lacking creativity. It still needs the human touch and a deep understanding of our products and services.
We incorporate it in our software wherever it’s appropriate to provide an improved user experience. However, we’re continuing with a hands-on software development approach and taking feedback from our client base to inform new features and functions.
That’s the extent of our use of AI at this stage.
We still develop our course content using university-qualified human expertise. This is especially important when you need to develop your induction and onboarding training or courses on critical risks. We’re also mindful that delivering quality and engaging workplace training requires careful adherence to best-practice adult learning principles that we’re not confident that AI understands.
We hand-draw the animations in our training videos to best represent the concepts and situate them in industrial environments, rather than relying on computer-generated stock images. The personal touch makes our training courses more relatable.
Our Support Team personally addresses any queries rather than asking our clients to interact with a robot. You get to talk to a human every time and are supported by the developers of the platform.
If you’d like to learn more about what we offer and see the library of over 200 courses in multiple languages on the platform, contact us here.