Why AI augmentation and up-skilling are the secrets to boosting staff productivity

It may all have been said before (and repeatedly). But it does no harm to re-iterate that simply deploying AI without putting employees at the centre and re-thinking how work is done will deliver few productivity gains.

As Dave Treat, Global Chief Technology Officer at learning solutions provider Pearson, points out:

Those that just pursue a pure automation approach are hitting a wall. They’re getting some results, but they’re not reaching the technology’s full potential…There’s been too much of a focus on developing and deploying new tools and thinking about how it affects humans afterwards. But that’s not the way to do things with this technology.

Instead, using AI to augment how people work (rather than make them redundant) and embedding learning into the change process from the outset is a much more effective tack to take, he believes.

In fact, according to the ...