Udemy CEO Greg Brown on AI in Online Learning

hi I'm James Maguire and on today's e speaks we're talking about how artificial intelligence is used in online education including some of the challenges for AI and learning environments we'll also take a look the future of AI in education to discuss that I'm joined by a major industry thought leader with me is Greg Brown the CEO of udemy Greg thrilled to have you with us today James great to be with you so Ai and is education It's Kind of a Funny topic and that I think there there's almost an emotional aspect I'm sure there's some people who think about oh artificial intelligence in the classroom or in learning you know I my my favorite English teacher is Mr ribbing in high school and I think like well you know AI could never replace Mr ribbing and we really should just have humans in the classroom AI is really a step down what what what would you say to those folks yeah it's a really good question and one that I get asked quite often the our view is the integration of generative AI Into The Learning Experience delivered by the instructor really is the best of both worlds and in fact Sam wman talked about this just a little bit over a year ago with uh Reed Hoffman in a podcast and he talked about the fact that you know in the classroom what engages and enthralls all of us are the experiences and the unique points of view that instructors bring to life in a world-class learning experience and that's something that we all are endeared to I mean I I remember un uh instructors and professions in University that I couldn't wait to get to the course because of how they brought that content to life and really how they made that learning experience so rich and you know generative AI if it was you know hypothetically a uh avatard that look like me that had voice recognition that sounded like me reading off a script is not going to be able to match that experience and that's something that we feel very passionate about what we're focused on is leveraging generative Ai and developing tools and capabilities to enable our instructors we have over 70,000 instructors creators on our platform that develop worldclass learning experiences that we make available to individuals and organizations and our point of view is to you know the the our job is to enable them with the technology the AI capabilities to enriching that learning experience make their job easier make them more effective and efficient at innovating and developing those learning experiences and we believe that that is the future and that that's the path that uh that the generative AI is on to be a more integrated experience into into the overall instructor-led learning environment so really the AI in essence is is a is an assistant teacher which which makes for sense many many teachers I'm sure really want one or several assistant teachers which brings us to the question so so how how specifically can th those AI based assistant teachers help Learners well really in a number of ways and you know I'll highlight a couple of them right now you know in the corporate environment you know the shelf life of technical skills is less than two years and organizations are facing skill shortages and talent gaps of upwards of 85 million people right so in response companies are investing in skills-based talent management Talent Development capabilities around skills and experiences and gen powered features bolster these efforts by providing learning to support Saving Time unblocking learning and developing skills at the speed of innovation at the pace of change and all told this can accelerate Workforce upskilling so Enterprises can keep up with the pace of change and that's a big Focus right now for our Enterprise customers as we meet with them around the world I'm trying to drill down and see a really specific example I say you talked about the need for for new skills in the tech industry which is massive um say for example I'm a software developer I'm I'm make taking a class on software development taught by a really great coder you know individual uh what what exactly would the Gen AI tool be doing in that kind of situation that's a good question so we just released two new capabilities that we're already seeing significant impact in terms of enhancing the overall learning experience so one is uh an AI assistant uh that we just launched and effectively what this is It's a NA national language chat interface that enables Learners to discover relevant content based on Career learning aspirations provide real time guidance and personalized learning recommendations which is key right now to accelerate the pace of learning and then reduce instructor workload as I just talked about by automating responses and surfacing FAQs and making their jobs easier as they're developing learning experiences for our Learners on the individual and corporate side so you know that's something we're really excited about we're already seeing upticks and engagement return uh visitors to courses and we expect to see because we just launched this a few weeks ago uh the pace by which folks are moving through learning moving through these courses into certifications accelerating rapidly great capabil we actually launched another capability I touch on briefly please some we're equally excited about it's called skills mapping and what this is designed to pinpoint the the most important skills for success for an individual create a skills tree to guide the Development Across teams match top rated courses to the skills framework and then probably most importantly scale a personalized learning path experience to drive growth and performance at all levels uh for individuals in the organization so equally excited about skills mapping and we're in early days right now as I just mentioned we launched just a few weeks ago but we're seeing very positive signs on both uh both fronts well as you say we are in early days it's still you know emerging Tech I I guess I'm wondering what are some of the challenges that that people have encountered so far in terms of AI assistance in an educational environment is is personalization an issue or what what's still needs to be worked on well I think like any new technology one of the first issues with AI assistance is adoption or AI in general is getting folks comfortable with using the technology and our research shows that uh Learners are excited about personal personalized learning experiences and real-time assistance with generative Ai and and that type of capability but they're also concerned about accuracy we've heard a lot about that read a lot about that losing the human touch which you alluded to earlier and bias so you know there's work to do uh but Ani AI enabled learning still requires that human guidance which which I alluded to and for within organizations you know leaders have to assess that were to effectively deploy AI but it should be an integrated experience I'll just restate that uh to improve the overall learning outcomes at the same time not compromising the process through bias or inaccuracies and what have you so still work to do but that's kind of what we're seeing in terms of how individuals and organiz are working through the early days yeah I could see among other things the bias being perhaps an issue because some some of those models and the way they've been trained you never know I guess I think I think there is progress being made on that issue for sure uh you've talked a bit about how udemy is using AI assistance and online learning what else should we know in terms of how AI is is supporting an educational environment well we're seeing huge demand right now and I believe that's going to continue right we offer over 2,000 gen related courses on our platform and over the last two years they've attracted over 4 million enrollments we're seeing upwards of eight new enrollments every minute and our data shows that in 2025 the shift is going to be organizations and individuals looking to apply generative AI to more and more practical ways within the organization to drive to specific outcomes around daily operations so really up until now we've seen a lot more of and the work we've done with customers it's been a lot more about creating a baseline understanding across our organization as to what geni is how to think about it why why you shouldn't be afraid of it and a base level education and so now moving forward it's going to be a lot more specificity around how to drive organizational outcomes associated with leverage and geni across the various functions in the organization so that's that's the big shift that we're seeing uh in and as we turn the corner on 2025 and organizations asking for more support in that area see well all right what do you see when you when you look into the future of AI and online education it seems like one of the natural progressions would be there really would be less human instructors and perhaps the the you know generative AI applications really are taking over the the educational you know duties and that obviously the the geni Bots are getting more and more sentient or or sentient like I mean do you when you look into the future do you see like oh we may not need humans or humans would have a diminished role as the generative AI applications take more and more of a role that's a really good question I don't think any of us really know you know for sure how it's all going to unfold but we're working on the ability to that hybrid approach that integrated approach that we just mentioned so think in Vision a world where you know instructor does have access to technology where they can actually they're not having to right now our instructors on our platform they have to video produce publish all of their courses on our platform MH in the future we may be able to enable them with a a VR virtual reality uh type environment uh that we're actually doing some work on right now and an avatar based capability so that it's an avatar that does look like me with voice recognition that sounds like me and they can spend all of their time on the content that they want to be delivered to bring that learning experience to life a lot like what I talked about earlier with respect to instructors and how we have engaged with instructors in the classroom but to accelerate that pace because they're not going to be you know uh saddled with having to Video Edit produce and publish they can spend all their time on the learning experience and so we're really excited about that and we're piloting some of that technology right now and and there's a lot of Promise around it but look I I think it's going to be an integrated experience I think we all truly enjoy human interaction we're social creatures by Nature um I I think that's going to be with us uh you know forever I don't see that going away so you know we're right now we're all about enabling generative AI to provide a richual learning experience in combination with the instructors that are on our platform creating amazing content Greg I think you said it uh really interesting stuff it's going to be fascinating to see how the sector evolves um thanks and I hope to come back and talk with us again sometime it it's great to be with you James take care

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