Alexa Gets a Job: How AI Could Transform Performance Support

Imagine a future where half of our interactions with smartdevices are hands-free, primarily using voice interactions. A future wheresmart devices will be everywhere, far more ubiquitous than smartphones are today.Futurist Amy Webb anticipates that future arriving very soon, she told the “Futureof Everything” festival in May 2018.

The growth of digital assistants and othervoice-technology-based apps in everything from smart speakers to mobile apps toeveryday tools could dramatically change the way L&D teams think abouteLearning and performance support.

Digital assistants head to the office

AI and performance support are a natural pairing; in theshape of digital assistants, AI can take on mundane tasks, allowing employeesto focus on work that is more critical and improve their efficiency andproductivity.

Digital assistants are learning new “skills” that areintended to provide performance support for employees and executives. Theseinclude conventional skills that home-based digital assistants already perform,such as looking up information online, as well as tasks like schedulingmeetings, booking meeting rooms, and turning on lights and equipment ahead ofthe meeting. Those skill sets will quickly expand as developers exploit thedigital assistants’ natural language processing ability to work—watch for digitalassistants taking notes at meetings or even reminding employees to follow up onquestions or action items that came up in a meeting, for example.

As cognitivecomputing systems become integrated with eLearning and performancesupport, adding in voice technology is a logical next step. And digitalassistants are ripe for personalization. Corporations are already takingadvantage of the ability to build new skills for assistants like Amazon’s Alexato create custom tasks like accessing specific corporate programs andeLearning, requesting support from the company’s help desk, or looking upproprietary company documentation, metrics, and even an employee’s balance ofvacation hours.

As the L&D shift toward digitallearning and meeting the expectationsof digital consumers has demonstrated, employees bring theirconsumer behaviors to work with them. Consumers have become accustomed to askingtheir digital butlers to perform more and more routine and customized tasks forthem at home. As voice-activated AI apps become available in more places, ashift to voice-based digital interactions and assistance could becomeinevitable.

Repurposing consumer AI apps for performance support

Webb’s Future Today Institute cites several consumer examplesof AI-based interactive applications that could have eLearning parallels:

• Retail apps that use facial and posturerecognition systems to show customers how makeup or clothing will look on them couldalso be used to target content and guide learners through onboarding, tours ofcorporate offices, or to enable them to virtually try on their company’sproducts.
• Automated recognition and payment systemstranslate easily to automated security and access systems in corporations;these could authenticate employees for access to training and to correlatetraining with performance.
• Moving to a broader helper role, AI technologythat provides the engine for apps like Amazon’s PartFinder could be applied in dozens of ways in performance support:helping sales reps or technicians identify parts, locate items in inventory,learn about new products and more. The app uses computer vision technology,along with image recognition and code scanning, to identify parts. While Amazonthen locates a similar item for sale, performance support apps could offerinformation about what the part does, where to find it, or how to repair it,for example.

AI algorithms can learn, so as employees use the AI-poweredtools, the performance support engines can learn their strengths, weaknesses,and preferences—and offer personalizededucation and assistance.