Hi everyone, before we dive in, a quick heads up. The Podcast Learning Festival is happening on February 26th at Mary Sumner House in Westminster in London next year. It's a day for people who care about how podcasting and learning come together to make work smarter and more human. You'll join a mix of creators, learning leaders and curious practitioners, all exploring what happens when we stop talking about learning and start recording it. Tickets and details are at podcastlearningfest
.live. There is a link in the show notes. It would be great to see you there. Now, on with the episode. Hello everyone and welcome to this episode, the more content one of the Women Talking About Learning podcast. I'm Andrew Jacobs. We recorded the content one in March of this year, and our guests had felt that the time went too quickly, and they didn't cover everything they wanted to. All of them decided they wanted to
record another episode. It's been tricky to arrange a day when they're all available, but with some assistance and support from them, we've managed it. Our first guest is Gaynor Aitken. Gaynor has been working in L &D for over 25 years, specialising in systems training. Currently working as a learning solutions lead for an international shipping management company as an L &D project manager, she gets the opportunity to make a demonstrable impact on L &D and wider business. Our second
guest is Karen Curitan. After working in sales and marketing for over 20 years, Karen was an early adopter of social media. As soon as it emerged, she embraced it with open arms. Roll on to today and she has become a results -driven social media specialist. Her aim is to unpick the often complex world of algorithms and analytics and share her expertise. Our third guest is Katie
Swandell. Katie is currently working at Immediate as a Senior Learning and Development Partner and has over a decade of experience in designing and delivering strategically aligned experiential learning. She began her career in teaching before moving into apprenticeships and developing leadership and management qualifications, including collaborating with the CIPD to shape HR and L &D qualifications
at all levels. KT champions inclusive real -world learning that empowers individuals and drives organisational success moving beyond traditional models. Our final guest is Laura Giles. Laura is Head of Learning at DESC, a Sheffield -based digital learning agency who design award -winning experiences for world -leading brands. She's been on a mission to fix e -learning's bad reputation since 2009 when she took her first job as an instructional designer and came face -to -face
with the dreaded Page -Turner course. Today, she draws on the fields of cognitive and behavioural science, user experience and storytelling to create learning that truly sticks. Recorded at the end of October 2025, this is Women Talking About Learning, this is Gaynor, Karen, Katie and Laura. talking about more content. All right, well, good morning. It's brilliant to see you
all again. We spoke last in March for the original content podcast, and we had so much to talk about that we've been invited to speak again, which is great for me. I always have so much to talk about in the realm of content. How are you all? Good. Good, thanks, Zora. And I think you're absolutely right. We agreed that we could have talked and talked and talked because it's such a fascinating topic, isn't it? Yeah, and it's always changing. There's always something new
happening with content. It's never something that just stays the same. So it's really, really exciting to work with content, particularly,
I think, at this time. Yeah, and I think that with AI, obviously, rapidly developing and changing the realm of content there's no matter what even if we spoke every week there would be new stuff to talk about I imagine Yeah, I was trying to remember, Katie, if we spoke about AI at the end of the last podcast, whether it was when the podcast ended, because I do remember we kept chatting for about half an hour after the podcast stopped recording. And I think Andrew had to
kick us off of the podcasting app. So this is why we were so keen to get back together. But it is like Gayna says, I think it's a topic, even like it's such a fast moving topic. I think if we spoke again. in six months time, we would have even more different elements and layers to it. And I think that's the thing is from a learning and from the two elements of it, I think
there is so much happening now. I mean, I see it and we touched on this the other day, we were chatting and I've got clients who when we spoke six months ago, yeah, six -ish months ago, wouldn't
have touched AI. were terrified now they're almost seeing it as this is a friend that can help them yeah and i think that if you look at the mckenzie report that when we spoke i believe it was around the sort of mid 60s as um sort of ai being used inside a function or bau and now already um from going from like pilots to mainstream it's up to 71 percent wow so um my company we we have uh AI adoption, our BAU is 86%. But we've done
a lot of work since it came about. We have our Summer of Learning program that happens each year. And we've done a lot of multi -touchpoint preparation for AI. But the fact that since we spoke in March, to have gone up by 5%, 6 % into the mainstream is huge. And so... There's a lot of content around what content do we produce to support people in the best ways of adopting this and working alongside and with AI as a critical
thinking partner. But also what do we need to be aware of, of what content is out there, what's being produced and where do we actually need to put our weight and effort? Because if there's already so much mass production of X, Y and Z and content is being churned out. We don't need to add to the noise necessarily. Really? Yeah, I agree, Katie. I remember actually last time we spoke quite a lot about does learning design have a content problem? Is there too much content?
And again, we spoke about content dumping and too much information. So I think adding AI to that space is really interesting, really, when you think about, well, is this knowing that so much of AI in learning? at an L &D is being used for content creation, you think, are we adding to the problem? Are we making things better or worse? I think it'll find its equilibrium point. I think it's almost like it's become a buzzword. And if you ask the majority of people, what is
AI? Probably a lot of people wouldn't be able to tell you. It's just something that's appeared in... they'll know about ChatGTP, it's appeared in Canva, it's appeared in Rise, it's appeared in all these products that potentially they're already using. So it's almost like it's become part of the way content developers work without
them really having to think about it. Yeah, I see that a lot with, so a lot of my clients are people who are a little bit... frightened wary of social media and when they heard AI come in they were frightened and now they've actually had a complete pivot I think it's my word of the week a complete pivot a complete about turn and we've done some exercises where I've shown them how they can use AI to save them time and energy and headspace And all of a sudden, they're
totally obsessed with it now to the point of saying, you need to create a custom GPT. But for me, as somebody teaching people to use social media, what I've found is that... They almost hook into it. Oh, this is easy. This is going to be easy. But it's getting that. And it's like
you said, it's about they're not losing. I say, you know, their unique special source is what I call it, is their personality, who they are, because there's only one version of them, whereas AI is going to create multiple, multiple, multiple. And I think that's the challenge. And from a learning point of view, you know, when we're creating. new workshops. I think that then becomes another challenge, doesn't it? So, Karen, do you think we're losing, we're in danger of losing
authenticity with AI? I think there's a risk. I sort of am using AI slightly differently with my learners now. So, one of the challenges, and this comes from my sales training background forever ago when I used to do a lot of sales training, that Humans are very good at talking about facts. So back in the day, I worked for a national house builder and I taught our team to demonstrate show homes. And they would say,
and here's the kitchen. And they were very good at talking about features rather than the benefits. Now, where our AI is coming in and that's where I found it really useful for my clients. And I think that's the thing with any tool, isn't it, girls? It's finding how you can make it work for you. So I'll say, well, OK, this is what you do. What does that mean to your perfect clients, the people you want to work with you, your future
clients? Then let's put that into AI and say, change these facts into a meaningful series of benefits to my perfect client who is a busy HR director. And then the output then becomes something that they can use. And that's when you get the light bulb moments and they go, oh, yeah. It makes a big difference, I think, at that point. For my particular learners, yes, definitely.
I agree with that. And I think that this is where we need to make sure that when we're using AI and not only adopting it for ourselves in the content that we're creating, but... When we're supporting people in their skills development to keep our humanities, that critical thinking
type of prompting. So, you know, I would almost take that a step further and saying when when you put it in saying what what tweaks could I make or analyze this to show the gaps of where the benefits could be done or what tweaks could I make to create benefits and kind of bouncing around the ideas. So then when it gives it back to you. you've still got some thinking to do
or some analysis to do. There's a really big push on, well, there's a lot of buzzwords going around, but I think that talking about using AI in the centaur mentality where you are using it as part of your thinking, part of your process, it's humanity and AI collaborating together to come up with an answer rather than... it giving you the answer and it not being fact -checked because AI hallucinates so much so unless you put in a grounding prompt and a really strong
prompt it can hallucinate whatever it wants as a language model so I think what you're doing Karen is brilliant like that is that critical thinking talking to AI and bringing it into I'm trying to create something how can you help me create it I love that. I love that. And I think that for me is a big thing is as a collaborator. I think that's a great way of putting it actually. And there's also, so there's Centaur, but there's also going to, and we'll see it more as it comes
along. And I think this is what people are worried about is that cyborg element where if you embrace it, there's a really great opportunity inside it. But the cyborg element is where AI is literally
working in tandem. where you where you're not asking it to do things it's pre -empting and doing it for you so as we have um for example our like automatic uh spell correction on on our phones we're not asking it to do it each time sometimes it's just trying to do it for us sometimes it gets it right sometimes it gets it wrong but there's an opportunity inside AI for as an example if you were like a graphic designer that you're going around making little
changes and that your AI is working on something in the background so you don't have to make as many changes when you come to it so you're working in tandem to the same purpose and the same drive and it's learning your behaviors to try and support them preemptively and there's if you see it as there are risks in inside things that people might be worried about there's also opportunity inside that so I think that really understanding the prompt in the model and the more knowledge
you have of the capability can also reduce that threat risk. Because at the end of the day, our brains are always scanning for threat. And the way to reduce threat and risk in our perception is to feel that we have control. So the more knowledge we have, the more control. So I think, Karen, the way that you're building out the sort of understanding and showing people. how to use a critical thinking prompt and how to use it in the way of using it as a partner is that great
first step into building into those areas. What do you think, Laura? Yeah, I have to say I'm hearing a lot about the time and efficiency gains of AI. And as you described there, Katie, about the working in tandem with the tool and it's helping you to arrive at your product a bit quicker. Totally agree about the critical thinking skills.
I'm not concerned AI is coming for my job just yet, but I can see how I need my experience and my knowledge to select what is a good output from the AI and indeed to put the correct outputs
into it. into the ai um current to speak to your point around using ai to to uh predict your client behavior or or the clients of your clients i think that's such a phenomenal use of ai and it's a space where i've been using ai the most really is to kind of stay in the the analysis space so rather than quickly trying to produce content as quickly as possible it's really promoted me staying in the analysis space maybe a bit longer than I might have done because you know
when you have a fixed budget for a project it can be really tempting to move as quickly as possible to spend the money that you have to make this thing the best it can be and and not all Clients don't always appreciate the value of the analysis space. They might think, why are you asking me these questions? I already know what the problem is. Or why do you need to speak to my learners? I've told you what the
problem is. And what I found with AI is the more relevant input that you can give it, the more information about your learners, about their behaviors, about the business context, about the solution that you're trying, the problem that you're trying to solve. the better able
it is to help you to create that content. So what it's encouraged me to do is not skip past analysis stage, make sure I have all of those inputs, make sure I have the learner interviews, make sure I have the stakeholder interviews so that I can have something to give AI to understand the challenge that I'm working on. So yeah, that critical, I think critical thinking, as you said, Katie is so important and Karen that using your
AI to personalize your content for us. specific audience i think again is a really a really great use case how is everybody else using ai on their in their day -to -day work gainer can you speak a little bit about that i use it um in a couple of ways again i can kind of tend to use it within the tools that i have things like canva the the ai and that is is good but it's really slow i find maybe i'm just maybe i'm just really impatient but it's like it's almost like a help when they
like come on give me give me what i want but agree and it's time to even say that you'll say this is a developing technology and you go yeah but hurry up so so yeah and i think that's really it's really you can produce good things quickly with that another place that i use it again i'm also a yoga teacher so i use things like chat gpt for i'll put in i want to have a class on back bends for example and again it can give you up those in that information what it's not
so good at yet use the word yet is it's not telling me contraindications for that so if you know where the dangers are and people doing that it's not particularly good sometimes at the linking movements from one to the other so it again it's that sort of you know that sort of symbiotic relationship between it can give me the basis of what I want and I think oh that's that's quite nice but I still need to do some work to make that something that is a is going to be useful
for for me to prepare a class plan. And I think it's improving. It's definitely improving than before, but I just keep going in and that's kind of my test of it to see where we're getting to. So yeah, that's kind of what I'm using for it now. I'm actually doing some, just a course on future learn on AI. Again, it's one of those things, if you're a generalist in learning and development, there's all these different things that you need to do. We can't all specialize
in. necessarily e -learning or you know ai and stuff so again i think there's a lot of upskilling needs to be done for people in general like corporate uh for corporate learning and development people to understand it could be well be out there but if the company's not looking at it you're not using it then you're kind of going to get behind the curve very very quickly yeah i think that's the same for i'm sorry i think that's the same for um anyone in any job at the moment if you
don't start adopting and embracing the foundational ai um then you're going to get left behind so found and what i mean by foundational ai is really understanding good prompting so the the things that sometimes when people are talking about oh ai turns out you know such trash or like it just makes stuff up it's not the ai model Most of the time it is the prompt isn't detailed enough or grounded or asking it not to hallucinate.
So like to your point about the yoga bits, it's, you know, the prompts that I put in are paragraphs long. They're not it's because it's not being used as it's not the same as Google. It's it's
a detailed, deep prompt. And the the. more detail your prompt is and like you guys have said the more detail that you're giving it the the better the model will come back with because the language model is just trying to find a best fit it's not trying to base it on anything else unless you put in the control mechanisms and the wording to say i don't want a best fit i want you to cite your sources i want you to do it like this i don't want any hallucinations i want x y and
z i've actually built um And I do recommend this for anyone listening, build yourself a GPT or even a project. So I have the paid for chat GPT account and I have projects. And one of my projects where I've written the instructions and everything is to do, to help me write better prompts. So I put my prompt into there and then I say, like, analyze this of, this is what I'm, this is my goal, but analyze this prompt to see if there are anything, anything that I've missed that
could help me. have a better prompt when I put it through and it's such a quick and easy tool it's just almost like a checker I love that I think that's great I think it's great because I learned just last month to create my own I've created two different types of custom GPTs and I too have got a paid one and I think that's a question I get asked a lot is is it worth paying it and is AI using AI to help us do this stuff
worth all the fuss? And I think that it's, I think it's about, so as a, for example, we came out from holiday and I was really unwell and wasn't feeling great at all, but I had some work to do. And I actually put some of the stuff into my custom GPT and said, Give me some output and ideas around this. And I input a recent proposal that I'd written when I was well, when I was on full Karen mode. And then it then gave me
and it really helps me out. And I think that's the other thing is, it's like you can make it your friend to help you when you have, you know, when I was. When I wasn't feeling great, I was asked to design a new workshop about using Facebook personal profiles for your business. And it's something I've been physically doing, but I hadn't designed and delivered a workshop before. So I put it into my custom GPT and said, this is what I want to do. Write me an outline so I can
market this out and create a sales page. And it did it for me. And I think that's the thing is I think it's finding, you know, I don't think, you know, you don't have to use it. But I think I know that last month it paid its monthly fee more than because of how much it helped me. Yeah. I think there's that element is deciding what. I suppose it's thinking about what do you need most and where can it help you save time, energy, headspace? Yeah, I definitely think that that
is true. And I would just, oh, that when we teach it out of there are things you can do where exactly as you said, where it'll come back and be like, here's the outline, here's the da -da -da. And then that's when it saved you time by pulling up that first idea. So you're not looking at a blank sheet of paper. And we need to... remember that there's that next step of, okay, now you analyze it and take it and run with it and do
whatever you need to do. And I think that where there's maybe a bit of lag is people just taking whatever it produces and going, oh, perfect, done, copy, paste. And that's where we're going to, if we don't readily teach the steps that need to come with analyzing what's being put out and not taking it as face value. And you can even fire it back into the chat, right? You can say, okay, that's great. I can see you've done all of this. I've tweaked it down below.
Now analyze it to tell me how it's going to come across. For example, in comms. So I use it for comms writing. Like I'm dyslexic. I find it super helpful to not look at a blank sheet, to look at a kind of starting place. But I can also ask it. Like we've said about analyzing it for your audience, Karen, you can then, once you've changed it, you can ask it to look back at it and go, how will this land? Will this engage? What could
I do to better it? And I just think that there's making sure that we're really clear that AI isn't going to fact check. It isn't going to generally check whatever it produces. Even if you don't have facts in there, it's not about that. It's just it's producing whatever it thinks is roughly right. And it's to help you not start on a blank page. 100%. I'm just listening to you there, Katie, and I'm remembering my nephew who's almost 30 now. I got him using computers almost as soon
as he asked what it was. And he got a new computer game and he turned around to me and says, Gaynor, what does whatever is look like? And I'm like, what are you talking about? He says, well, I press the start button. I go to Disney Interactive. I go to start programs, Disney Interactive. What does whatever is look like? And at that point, I realized he was three and he couldn't read. But he's just in there. He's in there and he's
pressing those buttons. And there's a little part of me thinks, how many people are doing that with chat GPT? It's like they've just got this tiny little bit of knowledge. And a little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing. And a bit like my nephew, it's just that he's going into it and just, like you say, they're just pressing the first couple of buttons and almost
using it like a search engine. Again, for those of us who are old enough to remember pre -Google, all the things that you had to put into a search engine, you had to put your quotations and all your symbols and stuff like that back in the early days of search engines. Nowadays, we just Google it. I think someone here said earlier that it was, I think it came from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Yeah, Buffy. There's an entire generation of, I'm saying younger people, like I'm really
old, but they don't remember. You just put it into Google, you just do that. And I wonder whether people are using chat GPT like a search engine and kind of missing a trick. Yeah, certainly, especially if they haven't had access to sort of an education about it. I was very fortunate at the end of last year to go on Dr. Philippa Hardman's AI Learning Design Bootcamp. And the amount I learned in four weeks, I was kind of
reeling. I needed to sort of sit down in a dark room afterwards because there is so much about the input that you put in. And as you said, Katie, about constructing those, you know, I would say several paragraph prompts. You know, she talks about the CD prompt, which is context, instructions, directions and inputs. And so you're really giving.
the AI a lot of detail before it answers. And then there are additional conversational prompts that you can use to guide it into the right direction and then to validate the results that it's giving you, making sure it's not hallucinating, as we've mentioned. But I was very fortunate to be able to do that. I wonder if that's available for everybody else. And with all the hype about AI that you see, hey, we can make content quicker. Hey, you can make content even if you don't have
a video. have a background in video design or graphic design but I don't see the same kind of noise about hey this is how to prop to engineer a good prompt this is how to validate your results it's just not as shiny it's not as glamorous and I think that isn't that the risk is that we're getting sometimes that human creativity gets lost sight of a little bit because we get I'm terrible. I'm proper geeky with new things. I love new things. But then sometimes you think,
well, what's at the fundamental? What's the foundations of this? And you're absolutely right, Laura. I think there is an education piece for people to understand because people will dip in and out of it without really understanding it. Yeah. I think also you need to have a purpose for it.
It's like the other day I went and I created a... an avatar of myself one of these little cartoon things and I was like that's really great and then I thought what am I going to do with it you know it's like it's like just because you can do something doesn't necessarily mean you should and I think that personally these sort of AI avatars that you can create the ones
that are supposed to be like real life. I took a photograph of myself and AI -ified it with a press of a button, which is all well and good, but it didn't then look like a real person. It's almost good enough, but not quite. I did that too. It looked nothing like me. I actually showed it to my husband and he started laughing. He went, who the fudge is that? From that perspective,
it's like it's almost there. but not quite. And I find I'd rather have like an animation where it's quite clearly not the real me rather than something that's 98 and a half percent there. Because if I was doing layering or something and I saw someone and I see something that is clear, it's almost like the eyes aren't quite right. It really, personally, it puts me off. So I'm waiting for that point where that gets to that, you know, actually, where I can create
a video that completely looks like me. Maybe that's a dangerous thing. I think that it also depends on the tools that you're using. Some tools, they're putting their effort into producing that and some aren't. But our brains are wired to be able to, there's a certain level of detection that it will look at something and think that's slightly off, which is getting harder and harder for our brains to process and do, obviously.
But yeah, I think it's still there. as as a little bit but um it's definitely considering which tool you're using as well because they're putting more money into the production in certain tools than others so others are getting lagged behind for example this is this is a fun thing that i have done with my my nieces where we put in a photo into chat gpt and and i've got i've got all my memory and data collection all off so we put in our photo into chat gpt and turn it
into a coloring page and it's really good at doing that because it's quite a simple outlining but if i wanted it because i'm just making it into a black and white kind of cartoony outlining but if i wanted it to do a replication yeah that isn't that isn't where chat gpt shines at all and so it's for us as lnd and when we're creating content really understanding which tool we're using for different the different things that we need it for is is also a really important
aspect and i don't know if you guys have seen it but um there's that site that's uh called there's an ai tool for that that's quite good i've used that a few times when i'm trying to find different tools so you know Again, it's that critical thinking of, is this the best tool or is this the quickest tool that I have access to? And will that actually end up me taking longer to do it than if I took a little moment and found
a tool that maybe was a bit more aligned? But I think we've always done that, really, or at least I have. You never just went into one tool and used it if you were creating a course or creating an e -learning course. You're always in and out of different programs. So maybe that's just... That's just the next evolution of the
tools that we have. Yeah, definitely. I have to say one of the spaces that's really helped me in content design is writing robust assessments, being able to give the AI all of the course content and the learning objectives and the learner personas or the learner behaviours that I spoke about before and coming up with robust assessments, particularly around good... distractors good quality distractors there will be something that I would always struggle with before because they
need to be meaningful they need to be there's a reason why you might have selected this um as a wrong answer so they need to be good good wrong answers and then AI tools have been so helpful for for coming up with that I wanted to just circle back to your comment there Gaynor about just because we can doesn't mean we should and I do think that's so much about some of the AI tools that I've been asked to use there is one called Synthesia which creates talking head
videos, which I've always been dubious about
anyway. you know if uh having somebody read out content to you is probably one of the lowest forms of video use cases i can think of is people can people might prefer to read people might prefer to listen so having you're very tied to the speed of the of the delivery of this person and then to make that person an uncanny not quite human not quite robot person i i i have a i have some problems with and um i uh the way that I would encourage people to use media in learning.
Well, one of the ways I would encourage people to use media in learning is to create that personal... aspect just to create that humanity um you know distance learning online learning can be quite a lonely task you sort of just start on your own so when you see a real person in there and they're an expert in their field or they're very charismatic in a certain way you're connected to the content in some way and then to take that thing which has its use this of creating human
connection and replace it with an AI version because we can because it's cheaper because it's faster you're kind of losing the point of having a video you there in the first place so yeah just because you can doesn't mean you should do a wider realms of content karen maybe it's it's linking to your profession but the fact that we're getting kind of ai actors and um you know ai reporters and and things like that what are your what are your thoughts on that guys
i've always felt that we should be using ai to be doing the the boring tasks the difficult tasks the monotonous tasks the tasks where there's too much information for us to synthesize in one in ourselves using it as a co -pilot in that way i really don't like the idea that we're giving it the enjoyable creative tasks that we would do ourselves that we would just don't worry you do the acting i'll carry on the other night i was watching the latest episode of the morning
show And behind the scenes, they've been developing these AI hosts of the shows. And they launch it at this live event. And the AI that is the boss, that is of the boss, has been learning from the boss. And the whole thing implodes. And then repeats back things that the real person has said. And it totally went, oh, my God, no,
you don't want AI doing this sort of stuff. That to me was, and I think, Laurie, you made the perfect point, is the tasks that take up our headspace that isn't, you know, like back in the day, my first business coach said to me. Best advice I can give you is get a virtual administrator, somebody who can do the jobs that you hate to do, that isn't a good use of your time, that
will cost you a lot less. I see AI a bit like that, is that I'll use AI to do the stuff that I can sit and probably procrastinate about, but then I can look at it and say, do you know what it is? Okay, this is my idea, bring it to life. And I think that's the thing is, is that... To me, that's the biggest help it can give me is I can say, well, okay, you're going to save me some time now and some headspace. And that to me is invaluable. And that's how I get around
it. I don't want to see an AI version of Karen. That would be bloody scary. It would be bloody scary. In fact, oddly enough, I just recorded a new lead magnet and I sent it to some clients for some feedback. I didn't have myself on the screen. It was just me narrating it. And the feedback I got was we wanted to see you. And I think that's the disconnect, isn't it? When it moves more advanced. Yeah. And I think we can also get stuck into, I mean, we have it in
social media, right? We go into like a social media vacuum where it's kind of because the algorithm keeps you inside a vacuum. And I think that AI is similar. If we don't put in our humanity and
our almost disruptors. in because because of how we think and we're curious human beings that's the whole thing about the critical thinking is that we put in almost random acts that that it can't necessarily predict and that shakes up the vacuum and the ai kind of loop and that's where we can disrupt the the loop it creates where it might be hallucinating or kind of if if you stay inside like a one chat and and you're trying to do emails, for example, because it's
learning each time, your emails become more similar and more similar. Or if you're doing it for like posting, your posts would become very repetitive because it's learning that, oh, that's what you like. So I'll keep making things very similar. And so that humanity and that disruption element, and what you were saying, Karen, about being
a person behind it. people notice people notice when the pattern is becoming too repetitive it starts switching people off having you on screen and those little sort of whimsical things that you might do that's what disrupts your brain from kind of turning off and so i think that those are really really oddly and this actually aligns exactly with what we're talking about i was reading a report from linkedin about the algorithm changes and one of the ways in which
linkedin's now telling you love it or loathe it best way to disrupt the algorithm is to go live be a real person back to what we're talking about and I mean I go live every Monday anyway and have done for nearly eight years but I'm now saying to my clients don't just hear my word for it this stuff works yeah I think on the flip side of that as well and I don't know I certainly am very aware that if I am on social media facebook linkedin and i've looked at something the algorithm
is then giving me more of the same and i think there's a real danger that you get into that little you're just given what this this little world view um and i think it's really important that you look at things and again whether it's political views or whatever that you go and you look at the what other people are seeing and other views because otherwise you end up just in that little sort of bubble of this is my world and I believe this and the bots everything is
coming to your same world view whereas actually you need that and again whether that's to do with content or or anything it's like you get i may be the only person it's like when netflix suggests things based on what i've watched i deliberately go and look at something completely random so that it it screws up screws up the bot so that but it's like i don't want to just watch all of the same content all the time and i think that there's a real um you know i'm really
conscious that i don't want to be stuck in this this bubble of where it's like algorithms and ai is giving me what it thinks my worldview should be it's giving you what it what his notice is a pattern of what you engage with so it thinks it thinks on that basis of you engage with it you like it therefore that's the right thing correct move i'll do more of it you know the same as when we're a child and we learn to to please someone we try and do it again and again
and um you know if you've ever been around children have children worked with children you say one thing that you like you say you like their picture of a son and by the end of the day I've got 20 pictures of sons on my desk and I'm like oh I just liked that one but sure um so you know if you think about AI in the same way you say you'd like it once and it's like great I will give you 20 of the same sort of thing rather than
I liked that, but do something different. And even that prompt in itself, I like that, but now show it to me differently so I can see a different perspective. It'll do it, but it needs the prompt. As we sort of come to the end of our time together, I wonder, we've sort of discussed some of the challenges there of AI. And I wonder if before we leave, we want to sort of go around and say how we think that we can reconcile those challenges. I think for me, really strongly coming
out of the discussion is the humanity. I would wholeheartedly agree, Laura. I mean, I see it. And AI isn't going to do this stuff on its own. We really need to be putting the strong effort into our prompting, into reviewing the outputs, into working with AI as a co -pilot rather than letting AI do these things for us. It's going to save you a lot of time. And I think it's, It's not compulsory. You don't have to use it.
But when you have a moment where you think, what could I change or do differently for my learners that's going to make a more meaningful experience? Then actually, I often talk about the way we behave and we do things. It's like turning a cruise ship around quickly. That takes time. Whereas what AI can help us do is to... shorten that time that we make those changes. Yeah. For me, I think AI is a tool. I think it's developed
very rapidly. I believe the first time anyone mentioned AI or machine learning was in the 1940s. So that concept has been around for a long time. So it's here and it's become a tool that we can use and we should use. But again, using it with, using our heads, using our intellect with it rather than just giving it free reign to just, you know, take over the world. I completely agree with everything that you guys have said of how
to reconcile. And so I would just sort of leave us with one thing that I readily pick people up on in sort of training. And hopefully not in an annoying way, but just that sort of nudge element to psychologically change how we see AI. So instead of saying, I'll get chat GPT to do that for me, change that wording to, I'll get AI to do that with me. Yeah. Never use for me, you know, never use, I'll get something to do it for me, always with me. I love that. Brilliant.
Yeah. Well, it was lovely chatting with you guys. Yeah, always interesting, always fascinating and thought -provoking. It's always good to chat and we never run out of things to see, do we? It was really interesting how our guests referenced AI more in this episode. We can't ignore its changing L &D content and it was great to hear from our team about how it's changing work. A huge thank you to Gaina, Karen, Katie and Laura for their insight into this topic and for their
time in making this brilliant recording. I know you want to connect with them afterwards and their details are in the show notes along with information about how to connect with us here at Women Talking About Learning. Please do remember to like and subscribe to the podcast on your podcast player. It does make a real difference in helping people find and recommend us. We'll be back in a couple of weeks time and next time
it's... the Women's Network one. As always, thanks for listening and we'll see you again soon.