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It's About Making Better Decisions, Not Replacing People: Generative AI Insights from Dr. Jules White of Vanderbilt University

Written by 糖心vlog官网观看 鈥 Updated on

Through expert-led insights from AI leader and 糖心vlog官网观看 instructor Dr. Jules White, discover the most beneficial use cases of GenAI and how to roll out company-wide learning initiatives.

By Trena Minudri, VP & Chief Learning Officer, 糖心vlog官网观看


It鈥檚 rare to live through major technological advances that will be talked about for decades to come鈥攂ut that鈥檚 what we鈥檙e experiencing right now with Generative AI (GenAI).

Even a computer science professor and GenAI enthusiast has to pinch himself: 鈥淚f you had asked me about ChatGPT鈥檚 current capabilities two years ago, I would have told you that I don鈥檛 believe I鈥檒l see that in my lifetime,鈥 emphasizes Dr. Jules White, the Director of the Initiative on the Future of Learning & GenAI at Vanderbilt University. 鈥淭he capabilities of GenAI are groundbreaking and game-changing.鈥

I recently had the privilege of collaborating with Dr. White, an early GenAI adopter, on a white paper about GenAI and productivity. Recognized as a leading authority in the field, Dr. White has authored multiple courses on 糖心vlog官网观看, including Prompt Engineering for ChatGPT, which attracted more than 200,000 enrollments in 2023 alone.

What I鈥檝e learned from Dr. White has made one thing abundantly clear: GenAI isn't just a learning initiative. It's a company and culture initiative that can supercharge talent and productivity鈥攁nd business leaders who are responsible for training need to speak up and recommend to executives the ways they should be optimizing both talent and tech agility within their organization.聽

Executives are eager to get started anyway. In 2024, named AI or GenAI as one of their top three tech priorities for the year鈥攁nd expect the adoption of new AI tech to deliver cost savings within months. Dr. White's insights about GenAI, coupled with stats like these, have upended the way that I view GenAI鈥檚 ability to revolutionize business as we know it.

That鈥檚 why I鈥檓 sharing my main takeaways with the broader learning community in 糖心vlog官网观看鈥檚 network. Here you鈥檒l find an expert-led perspective on what GenAI is (and isn鈥檛) from Dr. White, and walk away with several tactics for starting successful GenAI adoption at your organization.

What can GenAI do, really?

鈥淕enAI is going to change what we spend our time on when it鈥檚 baked into the tools we use,鈥 Dr. White shares. 鈥淚t will give us the ability to spend more time thinking, interacting with other human beings, and being creative, as opposed to dealing with computing interfaces.鈥

The hype around GenAI is real. But to use it well, it鈥檚 critical to define GenAI and understand what it is, and what it is not.

GenAI, defined

GenAI is an aspect of artificial intelligence that leverages LLMs to create outputs鈥攚ords, images, videos鈥攊n response to user-generated prompts.聽

Some of the GenAI tools you might be familiar with include , , and .

What people think GenAI is

As organizations and the general public adopted GenAI, Dr. White noticed a negative narrative starting to dominate the conversation: 鈥淕enAI has been presented as something people use to 鈥榗heat.鈥 From there, people talked about it taking over the world and the human race, pointing out all the mistakes it makes.鈥

But, according to Dr. White, that鈥檚 not what GenAI is about at all. Organizations that successfully use GenAI actually experience:

  • Heightened productivity: Stanford University data found that employees using a conversational assistant tool were .

  • Stronger performance: Proper GenAI use can improve job performance .

  • Better employee retention: see AI鈥檚 value at work, believing it will make them more efficient (82%), more productive (81%), and able to focus on higher-value work (81%), despite their reservations.

Dr. White鈥檚 take: GenAI as 鈥渁ugmented intelligence鈥

Dr. White invites us to go beyond the base benefits of GenAI when considering what it can do for organizations. GenAI is 鈥渁ugmented intelligence鈥 for our minds, a technological exoskeleton. Employees and leaders alike can solve bigger problems and flex their creative muscles鈥攍eading to a more substantial impact.

The real value of GenAI is when companies start thinking about how many business decisions we make every day. We鈥檝e never had anything like this in computing that could help leaders make better decisions, faster.

With this in mind, it can be limiting to think of GenAI for just one use case or job discipline. Leaders need to dive into the full range of tasks and roles that GenAI could enhance to make the most of it.

Dr. White encourages organizations to prize AI for these better decisions鈥攏ot as a tool to eliminate roles.

鈥淭hinking through the ramifications of every decision and alternative approach is more valuable in the long run than automating,鈥 he says.聽

While aspects of automation have touched job functions before, this is the first time the technology has seamlessly empowered leaders to review strategies, understand the customer鈥檚 perspective, and overcome their very human biases.聽

But before you bring GenAI into your organization, this is what you need to know.聽

Hear how learning experts at Dow, Microsoft, and Vanderbilt University are planning for GenAI.

Watch the webinar

Three beginning steps toward GenAI adoption

It鈥檚 not enough to introduce GenAI across an organization and hope for the best. Leaders should take small, yet confident steps toward broader GenAI education.聽

All learning should be tailored to the department each employee is a part of so that lessons connect directly back to practice. Even the most well-designed, comprehensive training won鈥檛 motivate your workforce unless it answers the question, 鈥榃hy does this matter to me?鈥

Here鈥檚 where you can start today. (And if you鈥檇 like to keep learning, our recent white paper shares in-depth strategies for planning L&D initiatives and getting GenAI buy-in.)

1. Use a top-down and bottom-up approach

鈥淲hen the C-suite makes better decisions, it affects everything throughout the organization,鈥 he notes. 鈥淟eaders can get the most value out of using GenAI for decision-making.鈥

While GenAI promotes stronger decision-making, adoption will only work if leaders understand and communicate its value. The C-suite should:

  • Inspire the workforce to learn GenAI basics

  • Use large language models (LLMs) as they鈥檙e integrated into the company tech stack

  • Understand how to use these tools ethically

According to Dr. White, leaders can encourage experimentation and usage even as they stand up a more cohesive GenAI strategy and policy: 鈥淚t takes time to get the legality and operability of GenAI set up, but leaders can鈥檛 wait for that to be in place before they help the workforce learn about it.鈥澛

To complement this top-down approach, GenAI adoption needs to come from the bottom up within teams, too. A CEO likely won鈥檛 know how an HR associate could use GenAI for their daily tasks, for example. Each job function should tap an employee who is passionate about GenAI on the shoulder; as they experiment, they鈥檒l discover how GenAI can provide value to roles within their team.

2. Start with the basics, then build

Telling an employee to use GenAI to increase productivity in their work isn鈥檛 effective. But by showing an employee useful GenAI prompts鈥攁 pattern of language made up of basic building blocks鈥攖hey can relate this technology directly to their work.

鈥淎 pattern is considering how you structure your language,鈥 he explains. 鈥淪tart by considering a problem you can solve with a prompt, and architect your language to solve that problem.鈥澛

The 鈥減ersona pattern鈥 will become critical. To understand why, think of a non-technology example of problem-solving. When we have a question, we look to the subject matter expert. A persona pattern is the digital version of this idea. An LLM prompt acts as a certain persona鈥攁nd shares outputs that correspond with their needs. Ask more and more questions as this persona, and the LLM will evolve and adjust its reasoning to act like it.聽

For example, a recent study of at a Fortune 500 company assessed how GenAI could improve their support chats. Real-time suggestions made it easier for these agents to respond to customers based on their unique needs, faster.

鈥淵ou can solve problems by knowing if you need to analyze something from a particular perspective,鈥 he shares. 鈥淲ho is the expert, and how can you express their persona to the LLM to get the output you need?鈥

3. Get people using GenAI (instead of just talking about 颈迟)听

Generative AI is top conversation fodder these days. But it鈥檚 much harder to get people to use it vs. stand on the sidelines and discuss it.

鈥淲e need everybody to just start interacting with LLMs. We don鈥檛 need to teach them deep theory or obscure information,鈥 Dr. White shares.聽

To get your employees to use GenAI, share concrete, relevant use cases for their role and present them with opportunities to learn more. Then ask them to experiment with prompts that are relevant to their interests, so they decrease their hesitation before applying it to their work.

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How to start setting up GenAI training

have adopted GenAI鈥攜et most of them don鈥檛 really know what to use AI 蹿辞谤.听

What this tells us is that GenAI training needs tangible outcomes, incentives, and modalities that are tailored to different learners.

As a leader overseeing GenAI transformation at Vanderbilt University and speaking to pioneers in the field, here鈥檚 Dr. White鈥檚 advice:聽

Start by teaching the most basic prompt engineering

A lot of people claim to be GenAI training experts, yet they teach extremely complicated lessons, per Dr. White: 鈥淵our workforce needs simple instruction鈥攍ike getting in front of an LLM for basic prompt engineering.鈥

Above all, leaders and early adopters alike need to prioritize using GenAI technology effectively and safely. Practice with basic GenAI use cases that help individuals review data or identify their assumptions鈥攍ike Dr. White鈥檚 example for Vanderbilt Medical Center.聽

鈥淲e鈥檙e not going to let someone ask an LLM, 鈥榃hat鈥檚 my blood pressure?鈥 because there鈥檚 a lot of risk. On the other hand, you could allow somebody to type, 鈥榃hat鈥檚 my blood pressure?鈥 and train the LLM to navigate you to the app containing this information. People need to start thinking through problems while structuring mistake-friendly training.鈥

This practice ground helps employees consider how they can use the tool appropriately moving forward.聽

Keep metrics simple

When my colleagues surveyed L&D leaders in 2023, 58% shared that having too many initiatives to measure was their top barrier to meaningfully assessing their learning programs.

Thankfully, measuring the early adoption of GenAI is simple. Start by surveying your employees regularly to learn how often they log in and use GenAI tools. From there, you can work backward by deciding on the business outcome you want to achieve with the incorporation of GenAI, and set goals and KPIs that will lead to the accomplishment of that outcome.

If your workforce isn鈥檛 using GenAI regularly, you probably haven鈥檛 effectively trained them on it because they don鈥檛 know what to do, how to use it, or how to make it valuable to them.

If you鈥檙e looking to measure productivity, remember this: There are many different ways to be productive. Dr. White recommends that employees who are new to GenAI start by generating a draft for an email or presentation to get started. If this is successful, employees will get creative and come up with other prompts to create even more materials.聽

鈥淕enAI allows people to generate a starting draft to get them moving; you can iterate to the next draft even faster. The goal is to produce drafts that get you 80% of the way there, faster. Productivity measurement is that boost from zero to 80%.鈥

Prioritize training and recruiting GenAI-ready talent

While GenAI might feel intimidating at first, understand the importance of reskilling. They鈥檙e aware that their role will be impacted and they need to commit to training to successfully use GenAI.

GenAI鈥檚 value is available to your organization right here, right now. People who know how to solve problems using GenAI don鈥檛 have to be data scientists鈥攖hey need to be creative, strategic thinkers. And they just need to learn how to use GenAI for their individual roles.

When recruiting new talent, Dr. White thinks companies should prize candidates鈥 critical thinking and problem-solving skills over their educational background.

鈥淩ight now, companies are looking for people with certain credentials. You have to rethink which candidates could be successful using GenAI and how they鈥檙e going to solve problems.鈥

GenAI is a golden opportunity, not a threat

Dr. White believes AI tools are going to change everything. The initial hype we saw in 2022 is only the beginning.

This new technological advancement will empower employees to handle sophisticated tasks, make stronger decisions, and challenge their assumptions鈥攁nd nothing like this has existed before.

We have this whole new world of artistic expression as people discover GenAI. We鈥檙e just beginning to see all the interesting things people can do. That鈥檚 what gets me excited鈥攚hat amazing things are humans going to think up with this new medium?

In the coming years, GenAI will be an essential skill, much like math or writing. It鈥檚 going to be vital knowledge across every single discipline鈥攁nd this leaves business leaders with a major opportunity.

Learn more about how you can use GenAI to boost productivity throughout your organization and design impactful training in one of three ways:

  1. Browse our recent white paper, Unlocking Productivity: The Business Leader鈥檚 Playbook to Generative AI Skills Training, featuring Dr. White, a senior AI leader at Microsoft, and some lessons I've learned from managing the GenAI training initiative at 糖心vlog官网观看.

  2. Watch Dr. Jules White speak alongside learning experts from Dow and Microsoft in the upcoming Bridging the Generative AI Talent Gap webinar.

  3. Start learning today with 糖心vlog官网观看鈥檚 Generative AI Academy. It includes more than 35+ courses that鈥檒l introduce employees across disciplines to the possibilities of GenAI in their role.

Learn how to increase productivity with generative AI skills training.

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Written by 糖心vlog官网观看 鈥 Updated on

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