Can AI Really Revolutionize How We Learn at Work?
Jeff Bullas 00:00:03 – 00:00:48 Hi, everyone and welcome to the Jeff Bullas Show! I have with me Luis Garcia. Now Louis is a seasoned international executive with over 25 years of experience in technology, digital media, and education. He specializes in driving new ventures and products to rapid growth by building effective teams that harness innovation, technology, and creativity to solve complex problems. He is the president of PETE, an Orlando-based tech startup that offers a suite of cost-effective and customizable solutions that enable organizations to deliver personalized workforce learning at scale. Jeff Bullas 00:00:48 – 00:01:41 The PETE team is dedicated to harnessing the power of AI to help organizations of all sizes optimize their training initiatives, spanning from onboarding to regulatory compliance, product knowledge, technical skills, and more, without hiring additional training resources. Before joining PETE, Luis made substantial contributions to Full Sail University over nearly twenty years. His tenure as VP of Full Sail Online marked a transformative era for the institution,
where he helped establish it as a pioneer in online education and significantly expanded the reach of its programs. Later, as VP of Emerging Technologies, Luis facilitated a strategic shift from students using technology as a creative tool to becoming architects and originators of new technology, ensuring the university stayed ahead of rapidly evolving industry trends. Jeff Bullas 00:02:23 – 00:03:02 Luis holds a Bachelor of Science and System Engineering from Unisa Metropolitan in Venezuela and an Associate degree in Digital Media from Full Sail University, and an MBA from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, one of the top 10 business schools in the United States.. And we’re gonna dive into how to use A I for online learning creating courses. And I am very, very curious. So, welcome to the show.
Luis Garcia 00:03:04 – 00:03:55 Thank you so much, Jeff and I really appreciate being here and I can’t wait to tell you more. So, uh before I tell you how you speed, I’d like to give you a little context and uh for you and your audience about the evolution of digital education. So, if we move from traditional education, where people come into a classroom, everyone sitting at the same time with an instructor and uh that owns the information and, and, and, and teaches and uh and evaluate uh uh their students. Uh that is education as most of you uh of us knew it 20 plus years ago. And um uh one of the obvious problems of that model is that it is synchronous. And uh so people
needed to be in this particular space in front of this particular person at this particular time. Luis Garcia 00:03:56 – 00:04:46 So, uh digital education solved that problem and uh by uh breaking the, the timing of which you need to be in front of the structure. And um and uh and that marked a significant departure from traditional education and uh whereas now the education was accessible at any point, so it solved the accessibility problem really, really well, but it created a couple of new problems that didn’t exist before. And uh and that one was that in,
in the traditional education, if you had a very engaging uh instructor in front of you, the materials, the education materials almost don’t matter. And I, people feel connected to that person and that person is a good performer and I, and he can transmit those ideas. Luis Garcia 00:04:46 – 00:05:34 You feel that you’re getting a really good education. And um when you break that connection, now the educational materials themselves become really, really important because they are the ones doing the teaching and the instructor is more like a curator and a facilitator and uh and a mentor in that scenario. Yep. So, um and I think a lot of people learn this during the pandemic,
if you are not really adept at making that transformation on how do you reach learning outcomes without this person talking to you or in front of you? And uh but you have to have this offline materials doing the, doing the teaching, then the, the um the learning experience can be uh very deficient. So that’s, that’s one problem that was introduced Luis Garcia 00:05:34 – 00:06:00 and the other problem that was introduced. So I would say enhanced because it was already a problem on the other side of the learning equation, which is the evaluation of learning. And so how do I know my students actually learn? Right. So historically,
uh at some point, somebody invented a test, you know, pieces of paper where people answer questions and they’re very efficient for the structure because it’s easy for them too Luis Garcia 00:06:00 – 00:06:43 to do the qualifications. But the, it’s not a very effective tool to actually, uh evaluate learning because it’s a very, you know, uh, artificial situation. We don’t go through life with, you know, not asking people about how to solve a problem and the problems are not fully framed. And, um, and, uh, and, you know, only have two hours to solve it And that’s a very artificial situation. And, um,
uh, when we came online, uh, that problem wasn’t really solved. It actually got worse because, uh, the ratios of instructor to students are much, much larger and now we can automate this test. And, uh, so now the instructor doesn’t even have to put any effort into it. I just put a
bunch of questions in there, multiple choice that people choose and the computer can compute that, Luis Garcia 00:06:44 – 00:07:28 uh, very easily. So those are the two problems that I wanted to focus on when it came to peak. So how do we solve the problem creating and, um, training ready materials that people can learn from? And, uh, the distribution problem is already solved and you have a learning management system, you can put the courses in there and people can take it from there. And then how do we evaluate learning? And, uh, and how do we apply this to the places where people are expecting? Training? That is corporations or companies, but it’s really hard to do. And uh and uh so what we did is that this process of translating expertise into training materials, it is called instructional design. And um Luis Garcia 00:07:28 – 00:08:13 and uh and people hire people to do that to talk to sub genetic experts and try to, to absorb their, their, their knowledge and trying to, to turn them into training materials. We use
generative fa ia I to do that. And I’m sure companies can provide, you know, any training materials they already had or any processes that they already had, any knowledge that they already had. And our, our software will turn that into courses automatically. And uh now, um it’s very, very important in this, in this process, we capture the point of view of the instructor of the expert. Uh because we’re in a world now where
anybody can generate a course with a lot of, with some effort because of generative A I. Luis Garcia 00:08:13 – 00:08:47 So in a world where everybody can generate a course, what really matters is the point of view of the expert. So trying to capture that point of view is very, very important in the process of training the A I to create courses. But we also like to capture the actual physical voice
of the person. And uh because it’s better when you can read and listen. And uh so we clone that voice of the structure as well and use it as part of the materials, right? Then all those courses land in our platform and then, and then you know, employees can go get, get the, get the courses from there and track their, their learning. Luis Garcia 00:08:47 – 00:09:13 But the third portion of the, the, the second part of the question of the learning equation is what I get most excited about, which is evaluation of learning, we call that assessment and education. So now we have an engine that can take that knowledge that we use, that we vectorize to create in the courses. And now I can have an engaging conversation one on one which is the learner asking the questions about the materials and re asking questions based on what they answer. Luis Garcia 00:09:13 – 00:09:34 And uh like a teacher could be able to do it in a classroom, but it will be very hard to have deep conversations with every single student.
We can use generative A I and conversational A I to do that. And uh we also can take that same technology and then create situations. And uh so the engine can ask the student Luis Garcia 00:09:34 – 00:10:04 and um if we are in a, in a training environment for a call center for instance, OK. There’s a customer that is calling with this problem. And then what do you say? How do you answer? And uh and the learner can answer and they can continue that conversation and then give an assessment of, you know, uh how they did. And, uh, so, those are the three components that we try to address:
the creation of content, the distribution of content and the evaluation of learning. Jeff Bullas 00:10:04 – 00:10:48 Right. That’s awesome because I think, um, we’ve moved from, I, I grew up as well. My first career was as a secondary teacher. I stood in front of a class, um, I presented to, you know, high school students, uh, across a range of, sometimes you’re thrown in to teach, you know, uh a, a part of an area that, you know, like geography that maybe you’d, you’d done years ago. But then you suddenly were thrown into the classroom how to teach that um, textbooks, you know, that were offline analog. Uh Then you had to do assessments. I remember spending
time at night ticking, going through essays, making qualitative judgments about an essay. Um Jeff Bullas 00:10:48 – 00:11:30 And it’s tough. And uh as a teacher, I, I lasted about five or six years in the classroom and decided that I really didn’t want to do this anymore because I was teaching number one people that don’t wanna learn generally and don’t want to be there except they wanna have fun, they’re called teenagers. Um But then you’re talking more about corporate training, which is another thing. And also, um when I started the website blog and I started writing about social media,
digital marketing. Back in 2009, I found a very engaged audience which was people that wanted to learn. Ok. Having to learn and wanting to learn are two different things that raises the question. Jeff Bullas 00:11:32 – 00:12:02 You’re sort of maybe in between both of those, that tension, wouldn’t you? So, like I’ve joined this company, they’re gonna give me this course. Oh God, I’ve just gotta do it. I just go, gee, I’m really interested in digital marketing. How do I do a better job as a digital marketing head of digital marketing at a company? So how do you handle that with the courses? And how do you make courses, not just informational and educational, but actually make them entertaining. So people are motivated, how do you do that?
Luis Garcia 00:12:05 – 00:12:56 Well, learning motivation is a really important aspect of the learning of the learning process. And you’re absolutely right. People have different motivations to pursue uh learning and sometimes it’s not because they want to, it’s because they have to and sometimes it’s because they uh it’s for enrichment, sometimes it’s for just general general knowledge. And um um
so changing the motivation of a learning is a very hard thing. I, I couldn’t even fathom thinking about how to do that, but what we can do and uh it started to engage that learner, what aid them when they are. And I’m so uh with our technology, we can start experimenting with hyper personalization. So even if a company has a, let’s say a onboarding course that they Luis Garcia 00:12:56 – 00:13:32 uh uh prepared with our technology, um that course has certain learning outcomes that some people have to, that the learners have to meet like, you know, knowing the history of the company, who’s the management, you know, what are the goals? Let’s say those are normal uh takeaways from uh uh on boarding course, we have the capability then to say, ok, if the person coming to take the course is, let’s say an engineer and then the language and example that I may use may be different than the person taking the course is from the finance department. Luis Garcia 00:13:32 – 00:13:54 And um and, and then be able to transform the course in a way to meet that learner and uh uh where they can be more engaged. Um So, uh in traditional education, even in normal digital education, you wouldn’t be able to do that. Uh Because that basically
means I got to create two different courses, even if I had only two profiles coming in Luis Garcia 00:13:54 – 00:14:27 um uh with technology like ours, you can, you can design one course for one learning outcome and actually um uh deliver it uh differently. And um uh so that’s one way to do it. Uh, another way to do it, which we are not there yet, but it’s somewhere I really want to be is when, when you do an evaluation of learning and um there are going to be learning gaps, there are certain things that you’re gonna learn and assimilate better than others. And um and uh and those learning gaps have to be addressed Luis Garcia 00:14:28 – 00:14:59 Very few times you have the capabilities to address individual learning gaps. Uh, I do think that the future is not too far in which I’m gonna be able to use technology to identify the learning gaps and then create micro modules that address them immediately. And uh and uh based on that, uh on the profile of that learner and how much they know. And uh that is still, I don’t think we will
change the motivation of a learner, but for sure, it’s gonna make sure that they maximize that time. Jeff Bullas 00:15:00 – 00:15:31 Yeah. Yeah. So, because I noticed in uh your out of view of, you know, paid that you mentioned things like regulated compliance. In other words, if as a corporation, you’re going to have to meet certain requirements as part of government, you know, regulations. So obviously, uh no-one’s gonna be that excited about that really? So, uh motivation from doing regulatory compliance is a bit like poking your eyes with a sharp stick, but that’s OK. It’s just part of the game. But uh
Jeff Bullas 00:15:32 – 00:16:18 take us, can you take us through, uh what is the process to create a course using your platform? Cos I’m intrigued by that because um we have a little project which is on pause at the moment, which is, I’ve got a framework. That’s something I’m really motivated about. It’s called the Freedom Code. It’s got five pillars. Um then we’ve got a whole lot of things like email, marketing, digital marketing, social media, marketing, content, marketing, a whole bunch of different things that I’m, you know, which is great. What is, so where do you start when you go to create a course and how does Pete enable that process and make it? Um and then produce uh a, a fantastic course out of that. Can you take us through the steps? Luis Garcia 00:16:19 – 00:16:51 Yeah, absolutely. Um First of all, let’s take the regulation example because that is not fun for the learner or the creator. And uh and uh so no one really wants to do that. And that’s
a perfect example to have a machine help you do it. And uh uh because it’s so it’s, it’s so dry. Um But the advantage of the regulation course is that most of the material somebody wrote. And um and uh if it’s a government requirement,
there’s probably already a regulation that exists that you can use as a starting point. Luis Garcia 00:16:51 – 00:17:20 So everything in generative A I is and that’s not different in our platform is about input and refinement, right? And uh so that’s what the, the, the bulk of the work is gonna go into finding the right inputs and spending the right time and refinement, which at the end is less time uh uh in the process that you would through traditional process. Now, if I was gonna do AAA course about a particular regulation Luis Garcia 00:17:20 – 00:18:06 and uh uh uh for a particular company, then I will have to learn that regulation. Then uh do research into the best and worst cases of that regulation. I spend a lot of time in research
trying to find all that. And then I will have to, and then I will have to somehow synthesize the whole thing into an outline that will reflect the learning outcomes that I wanna read. And um and I’ve, I’ve been involved in hundreds of courses uh creation uh over my years in education in that process for people that are really good at it. It can take a few weeks and um and uh and they do a lot of refinement because that’s the most, that’s the hardest part go on doing the research, finding the materials, synthesizing the information, get into an outline Luis Garcia 00:18:06 – 00:18:50 uh with speed, you still have to go and find those materials, but then you just give it to our platform and then you push a button and 30 seconds later, you have an hour. And um and that now is the first draft of the outline. So I did the input portion and now I
have to work on the refinement. Is that the right outline? So the right, the right modules are in the right order and things like that? So you can generate and keep generating until you get uh the, the right uh outline that involves one of the modules. What are gonna be lessons, what are gonna be the assessments, what are gonna be the learning outcomes? So he’s one of those. Then when you’re, when you’re happy with that, then you will push another button and then it will create uh uh Luis Garcia 00:18:50 – 00:19:18 the outline of every single one of those lessons first. And uh what is the title? What is the order? And uh and then, and then you want to go and generate each one of those individually. Now, the order in which you develop those is important because uh in education, we have something called scaffolding. Sometimes you need a piece of knowledge
first before you can ask for another piece of knowledge on top of that. And there’s prerequisites for knowledge. So we call that a scaffolding. Luis Garcia 00:19:18 – 00:19:53 So making sure you’re doing the right order is important. So uh we can do it either one by one and then inside of those lessons, you can even add more input of, of additional materials and context just about that lesson or you can push a button and let it do it all all at once. And uh when you do it all at once, then it starts with the first lesson. And then after you finish the first lesson, use that as an input for the second lesson and, and so on and so forth. Um Depending on the, the number of modules that you have, it’ll take a few seconds or a few minutes Luis Garcia 00:19:54 – 00:20:24 and then, and then you go into refinement of each one of those lessons. And uh is that the right topic? Do we do? I have some other materials that I want to bring in for more context? Maybe I already have a video that is playing something really well. Uh Or,
and then I’ll bring it in and put it in there. Some images I can uh also uh set up a particular template. So, it looks like the branding of my company, things like that. And um and then I can, you can either use a default voice that we have or you can Luis Garcia 00:20:24 – 00:20:47 in another part of the tool. Uh It will also take an input of your voice and then it will generate
all those lessons. It will generate every single slide with the images. It will create graphs. If there is data in there that requires graphs, it will require the notes of each one of those lights that are great and then it will take the voice and make them speak those notes. And um Luis Garcia 00:20:48 – 00:21:16 uh so once you have all your lessons, then you start working with the tool in creating the assessments. And uh now the assessment can be traditional uh a knowledge check when you ask a
question and give them some options. And uh or it can be a simulation, you can say, OK, now I want to speak to the learner and ask him questions about this general topic. And, uh, and I want you to evaluate these answers and, uh, before you show him the next lesson. And, um, so all in all Luis Garcia 00:21:16 – 00:21:53 the first course take can take a few weeks, uh, because there’s a lot of heavy lifting to train in the A I and, uh, but for our customers that have been with us for a few months, they get into a good CAD if they had a large uh library of content that they want to do and they can be as fast as a course every couple of weeks, which is in my experience uh uh pretty damn good. And uh you’re happy if you have a course every couple of months in traditional methods. And uh and uh of course, every co every other week or every 10 days is pretty good for you, but it requires that you go through this heavy lifting at the beginning.
Jeff Bullas 00:21:54 – 00:22:37 Yeah. Yeah, that’s fascinating because the challenge is uh like A I which you’re obviously using generated A I to actually create, can create outlines and summaries and distill that noise into uh outline. And then the next question is, can you provide, then you’ve got each module, then you within each module then is an outline for each module. Um The other part I rather like is OK once you’ve done that and this is where we get the human and the machine working together, isn’t it? So there’s this intersection of the machine and human, which is uh something that fascinates me. Um So, and what I’d rather like to,
as you mentioned, is the fact that it turns it into a presentation, doesn’t it? Luis Garcia 00:22:38 – 00:22:44 Yes, it does. And uh and is, and is um uh mobile friendly elsewhere. OK, Jeff Bullas 00:22:44 – 00:23:01 great. So the other thing part of that is then the other, the using an avatar, you actually then clone the voice of the presenter. OK. Do you clone the visual video of the presenter as well? Is that part of what you do as well or is it just Luis Garcia 00:23:01 – 00:23:33 it can be part? And uh we don’t use it a lot. I find it very distracting even when I was, even when I had a production team with actual cameras, you know, a talking, a talking head probably good for a few seconds on camera. And then yeah, and that, so the experiments we’ve been doing and nobody has asked for it will be more talking hands comes in introduction, I’m going to talk about you and then take it away and I use the voice and get, get into the content. And um
Jeff Bullas 00:23:34 – 00:24:25 OK, the other question I have is is uh training, you know, training or using the software tech, your platform to actually go and get the information is that essentially number one is that done just using internal resources of a company, for example, like uh quite often a company has a lot of information on people’s heads and brains, but it’s never been written down. Ok. So, and on the other hand, there’s a lot of information out there. So, for example, my blog website I think has about 4000 articles. Now, it’s got about 67 million words. We’ve got, uh, I’ve got, you know, 225 podcast interviews and videos and audio that’ll go along with that and transcripts. So, um so
Jeff Bullas 00:24:27 – 00:24:34 Where do you get the information from? Is it all internal or do you go out on the web and do some scraping and collating and distilling of that as well? Luis Garcia 00:24:35 – 00:25:10 Right. So that’s a great question. So, uh as I said before, everything is about input and refinement. So for certain, we want as much proprietary input as humanly possible. Now, you’re right, some companies have very well described, you know, procedures and policies and things like that, that we can just uh grab and ingest and some others have nothing. And um and uh so we get sometimes very um um creative with that. And uh and I say, well, have you delivered this training via Zoom
Luis Garcia 00:25:10 – 00:25:38 and you happen to have recorded it? And uh and many times they have actually done that, even if they didn’t have uh materials to support it, if they have materials to support it would definitely take those. If they don’t, then we’ll take that, that uh that recording and uh I use tools to turn them into a transcript and use it as input. And, uh, because again, the point of view of the expert is super important. Now, there are topics that are,
Luis Garcia 00:25:38 – 00:26:16 There’s plenty of information out there that you don’t need to have a point of view. And, uh for instance, uh a sexual harassment course, and, uh in that case, we probably don’t need a lot of input. There’s plenty out there on regulation and materials and uh and uh if you don’t give the tool any input, then it will go and try to get uh to get the information added in the public web uh for you to build the important thing there is that the, the creator is in control, you still need to read that content and uh and approve it and make sure that it’s accurate and it’s transmitting what you want to transmit before and you put it in front of a learner, Jeff Bullas 00:26:16 – 00:26:34 right? Cool. So uh essentially using a combination of internal information as well as and content as well as external information where required um that leads to, you know, some issues like copyright. So how do you deal with that?
Luis Garcia 00:26:35 – 00:27:25 I’m so glad you asked. And um uh so while we decided as a company, uh a couple of things, number one that will isolate the data of every customer uh to only their instance. And uh and uh so that means we don’t send uh uh data out to training uh public uh large language models. And uh and we also don’t use it to train our own and uh it’s only being used to generate content. Uh uh So that the information is protected because we’re talking about companies that want the information to be proprietary. Number two, that we were
not gonna own any of the content whatsoever. Uh We obviously don’t own the inputs because that comes from the customer. But we also made the decision that we will not own the output as well. Luis Garcia 00:27:25 – 00:27:42 And uh so at no point, we own any of the content that is being produced and used or input it into our uh platform. So if a customer leaves, then we export everything, give it to them, destroy it on our end, we never own it.
Jeff Bullas 00:27:43 – 00:28:28 OK. Um The other, OK. So the other question then is um do you can use video content to actually train as well or does? And is that done through one using some technology to actually create a transcript or do you use the audio off that? Because for example, right here, right now we’re having this conversation, this has been recorded, it will be uploaded to youtube. We’d also use a tech to actually do a transcript. And also, of course, it’s turned into audio. So we’ve got three different types of media. So it’s a multimedia um you know, recording effectively.
So how do you guys operate with that multimedia approach? Can you do, can you use video? Luis Garcia 00:28:30 – 00:29:11 Um Yes. So we have uh a used video and uh as an example that I gave before, when, when there’s not a lot of documenta written documentation, then we do a process similar to what you were talking about the transcript. We use the audio of that particular video uh to generate a transcript and that transcript ends up being an input. Um There are um other
technologies that we analyze the video and uh and try to figure out what your emotional levels were and things like that. We’re not using any of that. And uh we just basically turn it into a transcript. Um Now there’s also a, a couple of other uses of video, Luis Garcia 00:29:11 – 00:30:00 not in the input but in the output. And um one is that people, sometimes some customers said, well, um let’s say we are doing, creating a training uh for training people in a particular software platform. And uh so right now, our platform is not really good
at figuring out the interface and creating a lesson on how to use a particular interface. And uh I’m sure we’ll get there. But right now the customer is better served, you know, using a tool like loom or something like that, explaining that creating a video and then adding it to an already generated lesson. So we certainly support that uh or maybe they have a particular video of, of the CEO speaking already addressing people that want to open with that. So that can be like the opening slide of, of an onboarding uh program. Luis Garcia 00:30:01 – 00:30:42 But the other side is in turning those lessons into videos because they are short and they want to work as microlearning modules. So for that, we do have a tool where, where in, instead of the output being a slideshow, so to speak, uh with uh with no and and and audio, we can turn those slides into a full frame and then use the use the the audio and uh use the transcript for closed caption and output a video and uh because because sometimes they don’t want to post it as a learning management system, they want to use it for marketing and um and post it somewhere else. So um those are like the three uses of video.
Jeff Bullas 00:30:42 – 00:31:25 Alright, cool. What you mentioned too is rather interesting about software training, for example, and there’s a lot of companies around the world that will implement, you know, sales force. For example, if we use that uh and that and that um is then that particular software is then customized to meet customer requirements. Um Also you have people coming and going like for example, I had an editor for seven years and he had to document what he did to actually share with my senior editor with the next uh he moved on to, he’d been with me for seven years, moved on to a start up. And so he actually documented what he did and then shared that and just like I said, he used bloom and, you know, screen capture and everything else to show what the process was.
Jeff Bullas 00:31:26 – 00:32:08 Um And one thing I have learned as an entrepreneur is that it’s important to have processes and document the processes. So how do you approach you? I think you’ve mentioned it a little bit and just what we’ve just been talking about, but how do you document pro internal processes um for companies is that part of what your education is for? In other words, a new employee joins and they wanna be, you know, how do I do my job? What are the internal things I need to do? Who do I talk to? What are my tasks? Because in the past, we were just in everyone’s brain. Um Whereas today we’ve got the ability to do that and then it becomes, as you mentioned at the beginning was in the past, it was synchronous just one way.
Jeff Bullas 00:32:09 – 00:32:32 Now we are creating content because asynchronous can be watched on demand when you like um without, you know, you know, it’s like live TV versus streaming. Really? That’s the best way to describe it, isn’t it in one sense? So how do we describe uh how do you do that, you know, with onboarding new employees, for example, is that part of what you do or is that something? Luis Garcia 00:32:33 – 00:33:18 Yes, certainly on boarding, on boarding courses is a, is a, is, is a very common uh use case for our, for uh for our platform. Uh uh Another reason why is that is because uh trading departments uh usually, uh if you are, don’t have a training department, but if you venture to create one, the very first thing they’re gonna try to create is, is an onboarding program because you don’t want to create a course that affects everybody. And um and uh so the typical use cases of a training
department are on boarding and self training. And uh those are the first two use cases. So a lot of people do uh uh uh do that if in um um but, but also to do, as you say to document processes, Luis Garcia 00:33:19 – 00:34:01 Here’s the interesting thing about processes is uh one part, one person is the, is the creation of that documentation. The other one is the activation of that, of that documentation. And uh and uh and a good example of it is an employee manual, right? Companies have these employee manuals and tell you, you know, the things that are the benefits that you have and, and, and uh uh things are important to the employee. But those things are really on a day to day basis, not, not important to you until the one day that they are important to you because you want to know how to take vacations and uh and you don’t know how to do that and you didn’t even find the file and things like that. So what some companies have done is just our simulation engine Luis Garcia 00:34:01 – 00:34:29 and uh in, just in, in just the employee manual and have it as a, as a seat agent in the, in the platform, some folks can go ask a, ask a direct questions uh to that trade to that uh employee manual. What are the holidays
that we observe? How do you ask for vacation? And uh and then they, they give you that. So, um so it’s a two part problem. The first is how do I document the process? And uh Luis Garcia 00:34:29 – 00:34:56 and, and sometimes we got folks like your editor that went through the process of documenting what, what uh what they did and, and sometimes they don’t and uh and it’s really hard to create something out of nothing. So, um uh that’s when we start to get creative if there was a one on one session and it was, it was recorded. Can we get a transfer for it? But the second part of the, of, of that uh of that knowledge is how do you activate it? You can turn it into a course that people, Luis Garcia 00:34:56 – 00:35:33 you can learn it in a course instead of reading a manual. But also can you ask a question when it’s pertinent? We have a, uh, I’ll give you an example, a different example. We just recently signed our first credit union uh here in our state
and the credit union is a bank and uh and that, that’s really highly regulated and uh but banks don’t have much of a way to differentiate each other and uh and the result kind of do the same thing and uh at least commercial banks or consumer banks. Um So this bank is really, really focused on training because they wanna make a difference through customer service. Luis Garcia 00:35:34 – 00:36:05 So they approached us because they wanted to make sure that the bank tellers and not only get the training that they have, but they will also be able to answer questions that are more rare. And so that bank teller will have, you know, certain activities that they always do, but sometimes somebody will come, come in with a check from Australia. And uh for example, and then there’s like, well, I don’t know exactly how to deal with this. They have to pick up the phone call,
another department and kind of get instructions over how to do those more unusual processes. Luis Garcia 00:36:05 – 00:36:24 So they want to use our platform because those documents are processed, ingest them, create courses for them, but also have an activation process to the simulation engine. So that the bank teller can just ask a question uh to the engine and ask uh when that case shows up and be able to serve the customer fast. Jeff Bullas 00:36:25 – 00:37:10 Right. Yeah, it’s um it’s basically enhancing our humanity really in terms of. Yeah, but to the machine um is a facilitator, uh Microsoft calls it the copilot is the A I assistant. So let’s go back to the, the, the general question is uh what is the role of generative A I in the workforce learning? And I think I know what the answer is gonna be because we already talked about it. Um So
you see that role as uh 5050 is it um uh where do you see the role? And what is the future of A I, I suppose in workforce learning and, and in business, big question, the last one. Luis Garcia 00:37:11 – 00:37:47 No, I, I tell you, I, I like it a lot in, um you know, in, in our, in what we found was that since training is so expensive and, and um and customized training is even more expensive. Uh For ex for example, if you were to create a, a dedicated a course that is just about your company, hire a team to do that, it will cost you, you know, $20,000 for that one course, in the low end, some cases could be a seen as, as high as $100,000. This is very special and
there’s no platform there. That’s just the course, that’s just the content. And uh so Luis Garcia 00:37:48 – 00:38:09 what we thought is like companies that are large in the thousands of employees, they spend the money to do that. They will have training departments, they call it, you know, learning and development departments now. But they’re still training departments and they have their, they have instructional designers and they have trainers and they, and they, you know, license a learning management system Luis Garcia 00:38:10 – 00:38:56 and uh, to distribute those, those courses. And, uh, and they will hire companies to create courses for them and they will license all the courses from Coursera whatever and they do that, you know, and that will run them half a million dollars all the way to $2 million a year if they have the staff for that. Yeah, in the, if the company is small, less than 10 people, less than 50 people,
the training is very uh organic people, just train each other. Yeah, face to face, and so on. But what we found is that if you were a company with 5500 employees and you have a certain velocity of hiring and a certain velocity of training that you don’t have the means to create that learning and development department and, and you’re too big to do the organic training.
Luis Garcia 00:38:56 – 00:39:44 So, that’s where we actually focus right now is in those smaller organizations. And I think to answer your question about our role is that we become the learning solution for those smaller organizations that require some sort of scalability of training. But not, you know, without having to go hire a training department, right? So, so in overall to your, to your bigger question of what is the role of, of a platform like this in overall of workforce learning, I think is, is that even in those bigger companies, um you will never talk to a training or learning and development department and say, is everybody, ok, have you addressed everything you need to address? Luis Garcia 00:39:44 – 00:40:08 The answer will always be no, they’re always overwhelmed. They’re always,
you know, certain areas, organizations are training that they’re not at present. I think that a platform like us can help any organization have customized training that is relevant to their employees, customized to their company, to their, to their industry at a uh at a fraction of the cost ma making it accessible for everybody, Jeff Bullas 00:40:08 – 00:40:38 right? So could you use, in other words, you’ve got a lot of I quite often within an organization, it starts off as you know, um an organization does X but what it does is along the way, it develops expertise internally that becomes valuable to the outside market. OK? Is that something you do as well? In other words, you can, you can distill the expertise of an organization or a department of an organization that you can then create external courses that you could charge for. Do you do that sort of thing or not?
Luis Garcia 00:40:39 – 00:41:17 No, I um and the reason why not is because I’ve been in that, in that business and it’s a, that’s a brutal business and the business of, of educational content and of low cost, um, uh, non credentialed and what that means without a degree, uh, uh, uh, education is, is, is really a very difficult business and, uh, is, and, and we just saw there’s one of the major, uh, digital corporate, digital education, uh, providers just filed for bankruptcy and, uh, uh, last week, that’s a very tough business Jeff Bullas 00:41:18 – 00:41:38 because it’s just so freewheeling and unstructured, isn’t it really? In terms of how do you actually encapsulate, you know, cos it, it, it’s a lot of, it’s actually quite philosophical or quite a different approach to things. So uh and uh that’s hard to structure, doesn’t it? And also it takes a lot of time to structure or put together Luis Garcia 00:41:39 – 00:41:46 and, and no matter what you do, there’s somebody else somewhere in the world with a similar level of expertise that will do it cheaper. Jeff Bullas 00:41:46 – 00:41:47 Yeah, cool.
Luis Garcia 00:41:47 – 00:41:49 All for free. Jeff Bullas 00:41:49 – 00:42:33 All for free. I know. So we, we’re heading, it’s always content, wants to be free. So, all right. So where do you see it obviously, I think the answer lies within the role of generative A is it’s essentially, it’s a hybrid between the human and the machine to create the course. So in other words, it is our assistant effectively or co-pilot. So how do you see the future of generative A I uh within organizations because you’re, you’re seeing it being used to create content, obviously create courses. Where do you think
the future of a generative A I is going, I’d be intrigued by your insights and thoughts. Luis Garcia 00:42:35 – 00:43:22 I mean, uh you know, be, be before we started recording, we have a little bit of this conversation about how this is such a powerful technology and uh um the impact of which is hard to determine right now. And um but II, I think that there are a few places that are very evident that it is going to have a very big, big, big impact. Uh One is, is, is customer service. Uh Usually you layer your customer service in, in tiers,
you say tier one is like 80% of your questions. And uh and uh but they are usually just a handful of things and uh and it’s your most expensive uh customer support because of the volume coming in. Luis Garcia 00:43:22 – 00:44:04 And then if you, as you escalate those groups of people that serve those customers become smaller and become more expert, they are individually more expensive. But, because there are fewer of them, they’re not as much. Um I think tier one support will, will, is gonna be replaced by A I. And we’re
gonna get to a point where somebody can just call a phone number, talk to a machine that, that sounds like a human, be OK with that. And uh just like today, we, we, we speak with a lot of bots in text and, and we know it’s a bot and we’re OK with that and it’s as long as it’s helping us. So that’s a, that’s a place that is very evident that there’s going to be displacement. Um Luis Garcia 00:44:05 – 00:44:45 I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think that’s gonna be a displacement in programming uh as well. And um we have lived in a world for the past almost 30
years where no one ever has said they have enough programmers. And um and everybody was always hungry for more programmers everywhere. And um um and I, when I talk to our engineers, even, even the way they are approaching programming has changed and uh because of these new tools and now they don’t think about the algorithm, they have to write, they think about the prompt, they have to write. So the machine writes the algorithm for them. Yep. Luis Garcia 00:44:45 – 00:45:17 And uh and then they just curate it. So it’s making a programmer three times, five times more effective. And uh so I can see a world in which people say, well, I may not need a programmer and or not need 10 or 15 programmers. Maybe I can get away with seven.
And um and, and if you can replace something so specialized, then I think that there’s a lot of all the things that are not so specialized that you’d be able to uh replace as well. Now Luis Garcia 00:45:18 – 00:45:57 II I don’t subscribe to the world in which you know, uh X amount of the workers will lose their job and they have nothing else to do because we have been historically there before when technologies have displaced work, it always happens. So what is exciting is where are these people going to go? What are the other things that today we cannot even address because we don’t have enough people that know those things that these people can help. I think that uh we all can help. I mean, and uh I think that’s gonna be uh very interesting when I talk to innovative CEO S, they’re all asking the question Luis Garcia 00:45:57 – 00:46:20 uh where does A I fit in my organization? And uh I’m being very active about challenging the leaders about how uh A I is going to affect their business in terms of the demand for the product, but also affect their supply in terms of how they produce their services. Jeff Bullas 00:46:21 – 00:46:31 Yeah. Yeah. So that’s effectively um a lot of discussions happening around replacement.
Whereas it’s, the discussion should be more about enhancement, shouldn’t it? Luis Garcia 00:46:32 – 00:47:19 Absolutely. Um uh Today, there isn’t a day that I don’t use it and I, I, I’ve always been very productive, but now I can be even more productive. I can produce a lot more volume of work, not uh not bad volume of work and uh uh but effective uh I do believe the power is in the combination. And, uh, but now I think there are also places where technology has made things worse. And, uh, and, uh, um, I think hiring today in the digital age technology ruins hiring and, and the process of hiring doesn’t serve anybody. It doesn’t serve the employer and doesn’t serve them, it doesn’t serve the applicant. And,
um, uh, I, I think I’ll be ready to go backwards on, in, in that particular area. Jeff Bullas 00:47:19 – 00:47:49 Yeah. Yeah. I think the thing that’s really interesting is that I can’t do soft skills, in other words, nuanced things very, very well. In other words, humans, uh it doesn’t mean that a, I can’t facilitate insights that then the human can apply. But I think the, the challenges and in hiring quite often it’s, it’s the quiet, skilled, experienced Jeff Bullas 00:47:51 – 00:48:40 the communication skills of the person that’s doing the interview are going, there’s something wrong going on here. I can’t pick it but it’s, or the background doesn’t add, it’s just,
uh so there’s a lot of soft skills and um one area that fascinates me and has for a long time since my father, I grew up with a father that talked a lot, but he, he didn’t listen very well. I think one of the uh most powerful communication skills you can have is actually listening and listening is not a singularity. It is actually a very nuanced um skill Um And uh so where do you see training soft skills with machines or A I versus harder skills? Where do you see that sitting? Luis Garcia 00:48:43 – 00:49:11 I actually think that I can help with soft skills and uh by being an empathetic and nonjudgmental uh trainer for soft skills. And uh um we have seen examples of that already
ex uh experiments uh that have uh surfaced where um they, they, they do uh uh doctors uh uh talking to patients and then machines talking to patients. And they find that the, Luis Garcia 00:49:11 – 00:49:44 that the A I is quite more empathetic than the, than the doctor. And uh so if that’s true, it means that also I can, you probably do the reverse. I can probably try to train
somebody in the soft skills and uh uh without uh with consistency uh with building empathy and without no judgment. So, II I do think there, there, there, there’s a place there. Um uh I think the places where we have to be careful is in the, in the abuse of, of, of the uh of the oo of the tool we have Luis Garcia 00:49:45 – 00:50:24 In history, we have proven that removing friction from content development has brought very good things, but also brought a bad thing. So
uh we always thought that email was a great thing when it came out and we were able to communicate faster and, and get those ideas there quicker. And uh and today we don’t know what to do with so much email. So now I have a AAA tool that can write even more emails and get out. I don’t think that’s gonna help anyway. I don’t think we need more communication. What I do think is that we can use it to address things that we cannot address. And, um, the problem that we’re tackling A, a at PETE is a problem that small organizations just live with, Luis Garcia 00:50:25 – 00:50:42 They just stumble and live with it and until then, they either don’t survive or they grow enough to be able to afford the AAA training department. And, uh and, and I think that’s, that’s a
perfect use of technology that’s addressing a problem that before you couldn’t even address. Jeff Bullas 00:50:44 – 00:51:44 OK. So there’s another question I have regarding, um and it’s a bit about engagement, I suppose and learning, learning is not just about facts and information. In fact, one of the most powerful ways to teach is to involve stories. Um I watched an interview recently between Yuval Harari, the author of SAPIEN, the Israeli historian with Mustafa Suleiman and they were having a discussion and uh Yuval Harari’s really worried about that if A I can start making up stories because stories are at the core of being human like, and you only have to look at, you know, the legends that are told the stories that are shared that happen around campfires over millennia. How do you guys use or use stories within your training processes? Where do stories sit in terms of um, Jeff Bullas 00:51:44 – 00:52:29 training in education because quite often the best way for people to remember is through a story because it’s emotional, it touches a soul. Uh, a machine hasn’t lived or has suffered pain
or had joy. It can get rid of cognitive bias as we’ve been talking about. In other words, a bedside, uh doctors can be really shit at actually bedside manner because um, they actually are crap at listening whereas, or they’ve got, they like white people instead of black people or, you know, whatever green people versus yellow people like, you know, they do, they don’t like old people, they like young people. So, and you know, they’re brought up in certain schools. So we’ve got all these cognitive biases that machine
can just either heighten or amplify. So let’s go back to the original question. Jeff Bullas 00:52:30 – 00:52:35 How do you use stories with generative A I and education? I’d be interested, Luis Garcia 00:52:36 – 00:53:11 You know, that is such a cool idea. And uh um and the answer is we don’t use it today, but you just gave me a very cool idea. And, uh, because I have used the generative A I
to create stories and he’s pretty, quite good at it. And um, uh we, we like to think of stories of, of something very um uh unique like, but uh the people that there’s a lot of people that, that uh uh studies uh stories. And uh and we found that there are only so many archetypes and there’s so many artists and uh we talk about the, the hero’s journey before is a, is a very specific formula and that is quite successful. And
Luis Garcia 00:53:11 – 00:53:35 there’s, and there’s architects that, that you can do there and, and all of that is trainable and then, and then, and I have used it to create stories just for, for my own amusement. So it’s not very far fetched to have a setting in which you could uh uh tell our, our, our platform that this particular um learning outcome to be achieved through story. Jeff Bullas 00:53:36 – 00:53:36 Yeah. Luis Garcia 00:53:37 – 00:53:39 Yeah, that would be super cool.
Jeff Bullas 00:53:39 – 00:54:14 Yeah. Well, i it’s for me uh when I was, you know, starting to learn to actually stand on stage and speak, I, I stood up there and I had charts and graphs behind me and information and you know, data and, and then I realized uh but the engagement with the audience really wasn’t happening. I wasn’t touching their souls. Um So I realized that I needed to start, especially with the story and one traditional way of education now and, and learning is make a story, sorry, present a story, make a point, present a story, create a point.
Jeff Bullas 00:54:15 – 00:54:33 And, and this is a much more powerful way because people remember the story though, because the reality is in education and also presentation which is what you guys are all about is that people forget what you told them, but they won’t forget how you made them feel. So, the other, the other, Luis Garcia 00:54:33 – 00:54:44 I mean, that’s, that’s the coolest idea I heard in a long time. II, I was kind of mad at myself that I didn’t have the day before. And, um, and, uh, it’s, it’s totally plausible. Jeff Bullas 00:54:44 – 00:55:28 Yeah. Well, it is because I, I’m in the middle of writing about is a I um uh a tech bubble waiting to happen, right? Is uh but then you go look back. OK. So the thing about stories, they also, and
then we have history and you know uh that Yuval Harari is very much about stories and history because history is people’s recollection of what happened. In other words, out of that come stories, which are not necessarily what we call truth, but it’s an emotional capture and a recall of what they thought they were seeing or hearing, right? So if you go and look at, OK, what were the bubbles of history? In other words, you go back in history and out of history comes stories. Jeff Bullas 00:55:30 – 00:56:15 So and then they become powerful because then you go, well, where’s the pattern in this noise that I can then apply to this new rise? And we as humans are pattern recognition machines. The other challenge we have here is that there is so much information now that trying to see the signal in the noise is almost impossible sometimes. And I believe generative A, I can help us see the
signal and noise better, but then the humans got to make more sense of it. So we go from information to wisdom and that’s what intrigues me as well is how can A, I make us wiser? Luis Garcia 00:56:17 – 00:56:27 I love that idea. I, I think it can. And, um, um, how do we get there is, is, is, is gonna be fussy and enduring. Yep.
Jeff Bullas 00:56:27 – 00:56:49 Well, I’m, I’m just in the middle of trying to write a, well, I’m going to, I’m writing a blog post. Can I make us wiser? And I’m just uh really looking forward to uh what I unearth because you end up with a draft, an outline and you start diving into here and there, the other part OK. This is the other part I want to raise which I’m, I’ll be intrigued by what your thoughts are on this in that Jeff Bullas 00:56:53 – 00:57:38 We have this sort of productivity pandemic. In other words, how efficient was I today? In other
words, did I get 10 things done? In other words, we’re treating humans like machines, right? No, that’s just another industrial revolution where we put Children into factories and you know, make sure that they don’t take a break. Amazon, you know, distribution centers are against modern slavery, right? They measure how many times they go to the bloody toilet, right? So really creativity is not about productivity creativity is actually about enjoying the journey and creating something that’s different. I’m interested in your thoughts. Um Jeff Bullas 00:57:41 – 00:57:58 um Well, I, I’ve just been raving and ranting really, but it’s just a thought but, but really is being human all about being more productive or is it actually more about actually enjoying the journey of production and creation? Luis Garcia 00:58:01 – 00:58:27 I, I will have to agree with you that being human is not about being more productive. And uh it’s about enjoying the journey. And uh but sometimes that journey is being more productive. I enjoy being more productive and I like to work and uh and I have uh really um enjoyed having more productivity at my, at my fingertips and I’ll be able to uh deliver more work. Luis Garcia 00:58:28 – 00:59:10 But at the same time, I have been trying uh to work fewer hours and uh step out of my, of, of, of my station and take breaks during the day and uh which is in an office environment, it is harder to do because you feel like, you know, you have to be always on because people are watching.
And um so I, I think it allows me to work fewer hours and not lose productivity so that I can be more Cuban and uh so that I can take a break and, you know, watch a show or, or play the guitar or, or have a longer lunch with my wife. And uh I spend more time with my Children. So Luis Garcia 00:59:11 – 00:59:53 it’s, it’s, it’s a hard, uh, it’s very personal decision and I think that is, it’s very, especially here in America, which we are so obsessed with work and, uh, it’s very easy to then, uh, work even farther. You know, we, we, we have these phones and, uh, that’s supposed to open other windows into our life and what they do is make us work harder and, and be connected all the time. So I, I think all humans will have to be a lot more conscious about how we use our time and uh and use this, these these powerful tools so that we can have more time and then not so that, so that we can create so that we can work harder. Jeff Bullas 00:59:54 – 01:00:43 I think the tension rises between what I call quality and quantity. In other words, I want to produce, you know, seven widgets, right? Um Or I wanna create seven paintings. Um or I’m going
to create a movie series, for example, right? Um, I think one of America’s famous Hollywood directors said, I can’t remember his name off the top of my head. Um He said that as humans, you know, I think doing something you really enjoy, in other words, leaning into your curiosity is actually uh much better than actually doing something you hate every day. That’s not being human, right? So what was really interesting? You said that not only you need to fall in love with what you do, you need to fall in love with a process of what you do Jeff Bullas 01:00:44 – 01:01:06 and that can be a meandering journey. Ok? A little bit like the, you know,
the King Arthur’s Knights, the knights of the, you know, the holy grail. In other words, they stepped into a forest where there was no path and that path is never gonna be straight yet as humans, we’re trying to get certainty and create freeways instead of byways. Luis Garcia 01:01:08 – 01:01:11 It’s so beautiful. Mhm.
Jeff Bullas 01:01:12 – 01:01:45 And I
2024-08-14 17:59
