Many organizations have adopted AI, but far fewer have changed how people work, trained them, or made it safe to experiment. That gap is what we call the 'AI Divide'.

In this week's episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast, Ross D is joined by Dr Ana Voronkova from our Insights team and Rodrigo Bolaños, our Global AI Strategy Officer, to explore what return organizations can expect from their investment in AI, and what they need to do internally to maximize it.

We discuss:

• why the 'AI Divide' is about who can use AI well, not just who has access to it
• why at least 75% of the responsibility for building AI skills sits with employers
• what good AI training looks like, and why leaders should diagnose before they prescribe

Read the Mindtools Kineo analysis behind this episode, The AI Confidence Gap, which includes an AI Skills Readiness Calculator and the full methodology.

Ana cited KPMG's research modeling two futures for US AI adoption by 2030: Generative AI and economic growth: A new approach to measuring its potential impact.

Ross D contrasted two views of how AI will play out, including the paper AI as Normal Technology by Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor, which argues that the slow, messy spread of AI inside organizations will shape its impact.

In 'What I Learned this Week', Ross D shared the 99% Invisible episode Doktoro Esperanto, about L. L. Zamenhof, creator of Esperanto.

For more from Mindtools Kineo, visit our website mindtools-kineo.com. There, you'll find out how we can help your organization build AI skills, and how our Skills Practice scenarios help build human skills.

Connect with our speakers

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with us on LinkedIn:

• Ross Dickie
• Dr Ana Voronkova
• Rodrigo Bolaños

Is AI making you smarter or dumber? And what is the cost of offloading even the simplest of tasks?

In this week's episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast, guest host Julie Dirksen and Cammy Bean are joined by behavioral scientist Samuel Salzer to explore how to stop AI eroding our thinking.

We discuss:

• why 'cognitive surrender' is riskier than 'cognitive offloading'
• how 'automation drift' can lead to organizational rot
• how to protect your thinking

During the episode, Samuel pointed to a paper that models how reliance on AI can snowball: 'Large-Language Models as a Cognitive Virus'.

Samuel's new venture, Surprisal, is a community for people who want to understand AI and use it thoughtfully.

Julie's new book on skills development is Design for How People Build Skills. You can learn more about Julie's work at usablelearning.com.

For more from Mindtools Kineo, visit our website mindtools-kineo.com. There, you'll find out how we can help your organization build AI skills, and how our Skills Practice scenarios help build human skills.

Connect with our speakers

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with us on LinkedIn:

• Julie Dirksen
• Cammy Bean
• Samuel Salzer

Every responsible conversation about AI ends with the same advice: check the output. But being 'the human in the loop' is often hard, draining work, and it gets harder when everything AI produces looks like an end product.

In this week's episode of The Mindtools L&D Podcast, guest host Julie Dirksen and Claire are joined by Dr Markus Bernhardt of Endeavor Intelligence to explore the human behaviors behind validating AI outputs, and what organizations need to do to support them.

We discuss:

• why being the human in the loop requires psychological stamina
• how the agentic 'hamster wheel' erode our ability to validate outputs
• triaging tasks by how close they sit to your core expertise and values

Julie's new book on skills development is Design for How People Build Skills.

For more from Markus, visit endeavorintel.com. For more from Julie, visit usablelearning.com.

In 'What I Learned this Week', Claire shared a new term from a scuba-diving friend: the 'incident pit'. It describes how one small problem, like a cracked mask, escalates into a bigger one.

Julie recommended The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game by C. Thi Nguyen. It looks at how scoring systems, from climbing grades to university rankings, can quietly change what we value.

For more from Mindtools Kineo, visit mindtools-kineo.com. There, you'll find out how we can help your organization build AI skills, and how our Skills Practice scenarios help build human skills.

Connect with our speakers

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with us on LinkedIn:

• Julie Dirksen
• Claire Gibson
• Dr Markus Bernhardt