How That Announcement Impacts L&D Tech

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Today’s Thoughts ☠️

Ahoy there 👋,

A quick check-in out of my ‘usual cycle’ before the week is out.

Since we’ve had quite a few tech announcements that impact the way we work and how we deliver in our profession this week. I wanted to share some thoughts outside the circus of social media.

If you don’t know what I’m referring to, I envy you!

The past week has hosted the tech world’s version of what can only be considered a Taylor Swift-esque size event of updates from OpenAI (creator of ChatGPT) and Google.

They both released some very interesting features to their AI products.

These features could very well reshape the way we nurture both learning and performance across workforces. So, I think we should talk about that, don’t you?

Why should you care about this?

Usually, I wouldn’t dedicate an email to new tech releases, yet the nature of the new features and their effect on each of us and our industry has prompted me to do so.

For those of you not in the cult of AI, let me summarise some of the interesting things OpenAI (ChatGPTs maker) released this week.

Firstly, you can now get almost 95% of ChatGPT features for free. This is a huge win for all users and makes high-performing tech more accessible.

Free users now get:

• Access to the latest model 4o

• Get responses from both the model and the web

• Analyse data and create charts

• Chat about photos you take

• Upload files for assistance summarising, writing or analysing

• Discover and use GPTs and the GPT Store (only paid users can create)

• Build a more helpful experience with Memory

🖥️ For Mac users, a native app is coming to use across any desktop application over the next few days.

Plus, ChatGPT can now see the world through your phone camera in real time to engage with everything alongside you. If you've ever seen the film 'Her' with Joaquin Phoenix, this is it (video demo below).

The biggest win in this event is that you can now use industry-leading tech for free.

Vision: AI can see you

Yes, you read that correctly.

AI now has the vision to engage with the world around you and navigate it together.

What's interesting about the latest model is the increased ability to work with vision and also use the Mac app (a Windows app coming soon) across your device with any of your applications.

This fulfils the promise of a supportive assistant everywhere you work.

I‘m a fan of this. If you've seen the Marvel films with Iron Man and Tony Stark, you know he engages with his own personal AI to support his day-to-day tasks. It works across all his devices. This is moving a step closer to that in the demo below.

Not so long ago (like 5 months) I was impressed that I could take images and share them with CGPT for advice. My garden has CGPT to thank for not being overwatered.

Now vision can process and interact with real-time video.

Lots of opportunities to explore in L&D with this. Imagine using this in a workshop.

The always-on assistant

We’re now getting an official app for Mac first, windows later.

This is not just the same web version we currently use. It comes with vision and voice to connect with your work no matter the app.

It can see diagrams, text and video all at the same time while you talk to it. It made me think, if we all have this, will we ever bother accessing an LMS or LXP again?

Those days could be numbered.

The OpenAI team treated us to a demo of how this works as a coding assistant across multiple apps on a user’s screen. This screams performance support to me.

Voice: Conversing with machines

I remember watching the Joaquin Phoenix-led film ‘Her’ about a man falling in love with an AI assistant in 2015.

I also remember thinking that it was crazy and could happen, but I’d be dead before it did. Turns out I was wrong. I watched a pretty convincing conversation between a man and an AI that closely resembled that film.

ChatGPT has had voice capabilities for some time, but not like this.

To demonstrate how powerful the multi-modal combo of vision and voice is for daily learning and performance practices. Check out the video with the CEO of Khan Academy and his son below.

Here we see them working on a math problem together on an iPad. They were stuck and wanted help with the problem. So, they brought the ChatGPT app into the flow to help them solve it.

It was able to explain the content to his son and how he could tackle the problem. It’s basically like a live tutor or skills coach. So from a learning perspective, a corporate L&D perspective and from an education perspective, I see a lot of applications for us.

It leads me to dubiously speculate even further on a potential re-shift of how we access and seek performance support.

Ask yourself, after seeing these videos, what would you choose?

1. The always-on AI assistant on your screen, or

2. The LXP/LMS you can never remember the link for and rarely find what you need?

I’ll let you ponder the answer.

What does this mean for the world of L&D?

It can mean many things or nothing at all. That depends on your context.

The capabilities have improved, which is great.

As I always say, tech is good, but you must have use cases. You must use it intelligently. The secret ingredient to all of this is your human capabilities.

You can enhance your human capabilities with AI, but it won't do everything for you.

Don’t chug down on all that AI Kool-Aid just yet.

More new features like this will hit the market over the summer. Google held their own event where they shared similar features coming to their workspace.

It’s wise to keep yourself in the loop to capitalise on new features to enhance your L&D work.

I’ve covered in-depth how AI assistants can reshape how we experience in-the-moment learning and performance, along with, these being the true learning in the flow of work digital solution.

Experiment and explore, always.

In other news

• Check out what I shared with members of the Learning and Development Institute on cutting through the AI hype.

• See how I’m building AI apps to enhance L&D experiences

• We have to stop ignoring Gen AI’s hallucination problem

Enjoy your weekend and we’ll talk on Tuesday.

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