AI can improve performance, but did anyone learn? — from chieflearningofficer.com by Alexandre Rodrigues
Better AI-assisted performance does not always mean better learning. Here’s what L&D leaders can do about it.
A randomized field experiment involving thousands of knowledge workers found measurable productivity benefits from generative AI, including faster document completion. But productivity and learning are not the same outcome.
As organizations integrate AI more deeply into everyday work, L&D may need to confront an uncomfortable possibility: Employees can become better at producing results without becoming proportionally better at producing those results independently. Performance is visible. Learning is harder to see.
L&D researchers have long distinguished between performance during practice and learning that persists after practice. As Nicholas Soderstrom and Robert Bjork observed, what people do successfully while training is not always a reliable indicator of what they will retain or transfer later.
That distinction becomes particularly consequential in AI-enabled workplaces.