In today’s volatile environment, leveraging a company’s proprietary knowledge is essential for competition and innovation. Organizational success hinges on effective and agile management, application, and deployment of knowledge assets. However, with knowledge dispersed across various sources, organizing and deploying it efficiently becomes a challenge. This article explores how generative AI can transform online learning and performance support by harnessing a company’s proprietary knowledge.
Enhancing Personalized Learning
Generative AI offers new opportunities for online learning and performance support. By leveraging large language models, organizations can deliver personalized learning experiences to customers and employees. For instance, let’s consider a multinational software company that utilized a generative AI-based system for customer support. This resulted in increased productivity, improved customer satisfaction, and accelerated skill development for their support agents.
Unleashing Knowledge Management Potential
Today, more organizations are leveraging the language processing skills and reasoning abilities of large language models to access their intellectual capital. Imagine informing customer-facing employees about company policies or utilizing chatbots to capture departing employees’ knowledge. Generative AI is rekindling the possibility of capturing and disseminating critical knowledge throughout organizations.
Leveraging Generative AI in Online Learning
Organizations can incorporate their proprietary content into generative AI models using different approaches. One method involves fine-tuning an existing model to add domain-specific content. For example, a financial institution fine-tuned OpenAI’s GPT-4 to provide financial advisors with accurate knowledge and recommendations. Prompt-tuning is another approach where the original model remains frozen, and prompts are used to customize the content. This computationally efficient method enables companies to train models on new content domains.
Content Curation and Governance
High-quality content is crucial for successful generative AI applications. Companies need to curate and govern knowledge content to ensure accuracy, timeliness, and avoid duplication. Additionally, a content governance approach helps maintain effective digital content management. Training content creators on creating suitable content and utilizing content management systems optimizes the generative AI system’s performance.
Quality Assurance and Evaluation
Maintaining quality is essential in managing generative AI content. While hallucinations can occur, fine-tuned models have shown fewer issues compared to out-of-the-box models. Evaluation strategies involving known questions or criteria ensure accuracy and precision. Rigorous evaluation processes, similar to those used by financial institutions, help validate the answers provided by the generative AI system.
Legal and Governance Considerations
Deploying generative AI systems requires addressing legal and governance issues, such as intellectual property, data privacy, security, and bias. Involving legal representatives during the creation and governance process is recommended. Confidentiality concerns can be addressed by using private instances of models or implementing safety features such as erasing user prompts.
Shaping User Behavior and Cultivating Transparency
Companies must foster a culture of transparency and accountability regarding generative AI usage. Educating users on safely and effectively incorporating generative AI capabilities is crucial. Providing training on effective use of prompts, content creation, and understanding the system’s limitations helps users maximize performance and productivity.
Looking Ahead
The generative AI landscape is evolving rapidly, with new models and approaches emerging regularly. Companies embarking on embedding their knowledge into generative AI systems should be prepared to adapt to this dynamic environment. Despite the challenges, the potential to enable easy access to knowledge for employees and customers, fostering productivity and innovation, makes generative AI a compelling technology.
Conclusion
By leveraging a company’s proprietary knowledge through generative AI, online learning and performance support can be revolutionized. Personalized learning experiences, enhanced knowledge management, and efficient content deployment empower organizations to excel in today’s competitive landscape. As generative AI continues to evolve, the benefits of unleashing proprietary knowledge will shape the future of online learning and performance support.
