Artificial intelligence (AI) is bringing both challenges and opportunities to the corporate learning space.

In this episode of The Business of Learning — recorded live, in person at the 2025 Training Industry Conference & Expo (TICE) — we sat down with Nichol Bradford, executive-in-residence, AI+HI at SHRM, futurist, and founder and chairman of Transformative Tech Lab, to explore how learning leaders can use AI to drive human potential while navigating its challenges.

Tune in now for insights on:

• What it means to responsibly implement AI in the workplace
• How generative AI can augment, not replace, human talent
• Preparing L&D teams to lead an AI-enabled future of work
• Opportunities and challenges in using AI to enhance employee well-being

More Resources:

• [Toolkit] AI in Training Toolkit
• [E-Book] The AI Revolution in L&D: Tomorrow’s Training Today
• [Article] The Human Science Behind AI Adoption: What You Need to Know

The transcript for this episode follows:

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Michelle Eggleston Schwartz: Welcome back to The Business of Learning. I’m Michelle Eggleston Schwartz, here with my co-host Sarah Gallo. Switching things up, [we’re] recording live in person. As we all know, AI is transforming the way we work and learn, but with that transformation comes a responsibility to implement its strategically and ethically. So today we’re joined by Nicol Bradford to explore how l and d leaders can leverage AI in the workplace. But before we dive in, Nicole, I’d love if you could introduce yourself and share a little bit about your background in the AI space.

Nichol Bradford: Thank you for having me. I’m excited to meet everyone at this event, and I was really excited to come too, because in the age of AI learning and development, people are really on the front-line of this. We have an entire society that has to learn how to live and work with these tools. So thank you for having me. My background and how I came to this, so I, I do a couple of things. One, I’m the executive in residence for SH rm, the Society for Human Resource Management for AI+HI and that is described that way because our CEO, Johnny C. Taylor a couple of years ago was at a meeting of a group of CEOs and everyone was talking about what was happening with ai and he said, it’s going to be AI plus HI, human intelligence, human ingenuity, that’s going to actually get to the ROI. And that has proven to be true years later. So I’m executive in residence for AI+HI at SHRM, I also am an investor. I have a… I’m a co-founder of a pre-seed, early stage venture fund. We invest in founders who are building what we call human potential technologies. And so those are things that help people heal, grow and thrive, which really also lines up to HR tech and a bit more. Okay. And then the last thing I do is that when I feel passionately about something, I gather. So in a few weeks I am organizing a conference called Human Tech Week, and it’s on human potential in the age of ai. How do we leverage these tools? It insists that AI is here to help us heal, grow, and thrive, and that there’s value in gathering. The founders, scientists, investors, enterprise and creatives to make it. So I have a personal rule that if I complain about something for three months, I do something about it. And I was getting tired of going to tech conferences where they didn’t talk about people at all. And they only talked about tools. So that’s what I do today. My background is, I’ve been working at the intersection of human potential technology for 10 years. I started in 2014. Before that, I was living in China and, uh, in video games for over a decade. And, uh, specifically in China, I’m the most known for operating all of the Blizzard entertainment properties for China World of Warcraft, StarCraft, etc.

Sarah Gallo: Very cool. Well, we’re excited to have you on the podcast today. Thanks again for joining us. To kick things off, in your view, what does it really mean to responsibly implement AI, and why is that responsibility so critical right now?

Nichol Bradford: Responsible AI is a big word that comes down to a few but very important things, especially in the context of enterprise. Uh, responsible AI means that, uh, people can know when it’s being used. They can know how it’s being used. They can know that it’s fair. They can trust that it, there isn’t a bias against them. They can have a choice [of] whether or not it’s going to be used in their performance reviews or things like that. So there’s a list. Different organizations have, some have seven, some have 12, some have only three. I think it really comes down to, is it fair? Is it safe, and do people know when it’s being used? So, and the reason why it’s important, especially in the context of enterprise, is because, employees, yeah, and let’s talk separately. It’s different about products in the market, but within an organization, especially with in the context of HR, employees want and need to know when and how it’s being used because there is a social contract that’s place between organizations and people. And so it’s, you know, just basic, you know, decency.

Michelle Eggleston Schwartz: Yeah, definitely. I think kind of surrounding AI, there’s a lot of fear that AI is going to replace jobs. So could you talk a little bit about how AI can augment talent rather than replace it?

Nichol Bradford: Yeah. There is a tremendous amount of fear out there, and I really get why people are afraid. It’s hard to see headlines where you have, you know, CEOs saying that they’re going to replace entire groups of people and to not get a bit afraid or to see other headlines where you just see how quickly the technology is moving, because it’s moving so fast. And so, you know, even if people aren’t afraid, then they’re worried about how they can catch up, keep up, stay up with it, and they get this strong sense that it’s affecting them deeply. How people on the replacement versus augmentation … we’re actually, I’m actually going to talk about that in the talk. Augmentation is basically leveraging the tools to enhance productivity. And so with that, the way that AI can really enhance productivity and where I think we’re going, is the ability for AI to do the things that kind of slowed us down in the past. And organizations focusing on using the AI for that to really free people up to do the more interesting and creative things. Sometimes people ask me, how do you know what you should use? AI for and what you shouldn’t. And I would say, you know, any of those tasks that make the light in your eyes go out. That’s a good candidate. You know, we all like, everybody, all of us sitting here, you know, we all have those tasks that are a part of our day to day. And that when you think about it, definitely the light in your eyes goes out. Just take off that way.

Michelle Eggleston Schwartz: I love looking at it like that. Yeah.

Nichol Bradford: And so that’s where we should start. And so by focusing there on things in those roles, then that helps you address the fear, because then people can really see how it can benefit them, how it can give them more time. The real question and the challenge for leaders is, and this is playing out in lots of different ways across different organizations, is how they treat that time that you free up. And that has a lot to do with culture. Is it your time? Is it the employee’s time? Do they get that time back or does the company say, okay, do 10 times of the thing that you just did. Some organizations, they do that. Okay, and I believe that can be a little bit shortsighted. A really great way to get people comfortable with AI and also to begin to see those ROI benefits is to then have people focus on their wishlist of the things that could expand and grow or improve your business that they never had time to get to. We all have those, that list of things where we’re like, oh, they could be a great customer of ours. This is a big problem for our customers, but no one has time to get to it. And so the danger is that when people take, you know, when the time gets freed up, gets freed up. Organizations and leadership that just stuff more of the same thing into that versus reorienting those people, allowing them to add to the business, grow the business and come up with ways to do that. So that’s how you address fear. And that’s how you focus on augmentation.

Sarah Gallo: Definitely. I’d love if you could touch on, Nicol, our listeners are L&D professionals, sort of across all different industries. What kind of role do they have to play in this AI-empowered future of work and how can they sort of start preparing now for that future as well?

Nichol Bradford: Well, L&D people are on the front-line of training the entire workforce. It’s a lot undertaking. [It’s] really important. I mean, I guess, you know, when you think about it like that too, L&D people are actually first responders in this AI transition. You know, they’re the ones who have the remit to, for learning and development, and they’re the ones who are going to have to train people or, or arrange for the training for people first for basic AI fluency, which is like basic AI literacy for people to be able to participate in this new economy, as well as the skills and then mindsets and culture sets that can be trained into organizations there, the ones who are going to have to steward that process so that as AI comes in and takes a lot of tasks. Because it is coming for our tasks. As it takes a lot of tasks, moving people into skills. And then, you know, the reality is that we don’t actually know the where the end of the kind of skills that AI could have is. We don’t know. It’s still early on. And so, but there’s a transition. Oh, actually this is something I want to talk about. You know, one of the things that’s really a challenge when you read all the, the headlines is that there’s, um, the future of work and what people are talking about, what’s going to happen. And then there’s the now of work. So the now of work is what we need to do over the next five years. And then there’s a future of work that’s like 10 years out where we all have like, you know, we all have 10 assistants and our assistants chat with each other. But in the meantime, we have all of these people that, that L&D leaders are the first responders on getting them ready. So getting them enough AI literacy so that AI can actually do their tasks that they don’t want to do anymore. The eyes, you know, the light goes out in the eyes tasks, then. You know, helping people transition their skills so they can move up from just tasks. And then on the other side of that, um, supporting the organization and the type of training that allows a culture of growth and what’s also called a pilot mindset to be, you know, to become the norm.

Michelle Eggleston Schwartz: Yeah. Definitely, I’d love to hear from your perspective, what are the challenges and opportunities that you’re seeing on how AI can be used to enhance employee well-being and also kind of enhancing human potential in the workplace?

Nichol Bradford: Well, let’s start with the challenges so that we can follow up with the opportunities. So, you know, one of the challenges, as you mentioned at the beginning, is fear and resistance. And you know, we, the Edelman Trust Barometer does a survey of trust around the world, and trust is at an all-time-low. And trust is really important in this process of getting people in organizations to change. So fear how it ties to trust those are big challenges. In addition, it’s really just also getting the AI fluency up. Because there’s so much that AI cannot do and people don’t know that yet. You only know what it can’t do by using it. And that can take a lot of fear out of the equation by really understanding what it can’t do. AI with the different chat GPTs and things like that, they’re very smart at very specific things. But, you know, your seven or 8-year-old is actually, a 5-year-old can is actually smarter in a way in terms of general intelligence. So you have to use them to really understand their limitations. And so a real challenge is getting AI fluency broad enough that people can be like, oh, actually it’s not that good if I’m not involved, if I don’t give a good direction. And so that’s another challenge. Another big challenge is that so many people are so shortsighted about this in terms of, you know, they think that when they come at it from a pure cost efficiency standpoint, and they’re like, oh, wow, well we can get rid of all of these people. You know, you probably saw Klarna said, we were going to get rid of a ton of people. We’re not going to hire any more people. And they just said, oh, yeah, actually we’re going to hire people, because their quality went down. Now will that be forever? No. But it’s sort of like there’s this optimization mindset. And the challenge also with that is that when people come in with that mindset, they tend to not re-envision the business and the workflow because this technology is, um, it’s AI is the most transformative when it can create connections between all of your people and all of your data and all of your businesses. So if you’re only using AI to do email faster, or to do translation faster, it’s sort of like, okay, that’s great, but it really misses the point. And, you know, people who are optimizers just only cost optimization, they tend to not do the reinvention and down the road, what that means is you’re going to have a commodified business because everybody else is doing the exact same thing, you’ll have no differentiation. You’ll have margin erosion and you know, you won’t have any people who really trust you as an organization. You won’t have employees who trust you. So I’d say those are the biggest challenges. And then on the other side, ai, you know, near term, but also long term presents a, a real opportunity to redesign work, to expand access to many things, like education and health care and, you know, there isn’t any part of society and how humans do things that won’t be touched and expanded by this. And so, you know, I’m really confident that the long term is going to be fantastic. But we have to get through the midterm, and we have to do it in a way that’s thoughtful and brings people along. So what are you the most interested in? Like, what are you the most frightened by, or what are you the most excited by?

Michelle Eggleston Schwartz: Hmm, that’s a great question. Turning the tables on us here. I just think in terms of, I think technology is just evolving so quickly and what we’ve seen over the last five or six years in terms of the pandemic and everyone switching to remote learning and now the past few years, the acceleration of AI, it’s really upending the way we work and learn, like faster than I’ve seen in decades that I’ve been working. And it’s just really exciting to see how learning and development is adapting to those changes. And so, following kind of how organizations are using and implementing new technology and tools is very exciting for me to watch. And I guess in terms of kind of fear or, what was it? The other second question, the second one was what, what keeps you up at night about it? Yeah. I think it’s what you touched on, the ethics and the responsibility that organizations hold in making sure that these tools are used responsibly.

Yeah. Um, I think it is a big part of it and it’s, I don’t think, I think we have a lot to do in terms of being clear that we don’t break trust with our employees.

Sarah Gallo: Definitely that sort of transparency. I would agree with that. I think also maybe something I’m excited about is that sort of human intelligence piece that you mentioned earlier and kind of keeping people at the forefront and sort of seeing how people can kind of lead this change forward. So I think that’s something that we try to cover through our coverage on Training Industry and through interviews like this one.

Nichol Bradford: Yeah, you know, one of the things we’ve seen is that now that we’ve gotten through the first couple of years, the first year was like, ah, AI. And then the second year was like, ah, great. And then, people are starting to get to the difficult part. Because one of the things that that happens with this is that you don’t actually get to the ROI using off-the-shelf stuff. Like, it doesn’t really change your business until you put it into your context, your culture and your customers. And so I find that very exciting because what this also represents is the whole world is learning at the same time. And all of enterprise is learning at the same time. And while there may be … certainly there’s like a AI expert who, you know, is an AI engineer and they’re an expert. But no one is the expert on your context, customers and culture, but you. And so this represents an opportunity for people who rise to it, to really take these tools and grab these tools and then apply them in their three Cs, their context cultures with their customers. And you know, and it’s like you can be the expert. Anyone can be the expert. You can be the expert, you can be the one who brings it into your company and really makes it fit and really makes it sing. You know, and you might be working with AI engineers and other people like that and, and vendors who are shaping different products, but you can be the expert and the opportunity and the challenge is that this is going to be like reading, like actually being able to read. Being able to use these tools, it’s going to be like being able to read. And so people can get by without reading, but it’s hard. It makes life hard. And so, you know, there is going to be dramatic changes. Like, one of the changes that’s going to be really dramatic is that. And we’re going to talk about agents in my talk. I’ve got a big chunk on that. You know, on the good side, everything’s going to be personalized. And your agents will go out onto the web and get you whatever you want. So you’ll no longer, you are not going to go to Google and Google and then do the work of like piecing together your vacation. You won’t do that. You’re going to send your agent out. Pretty soon your agent is going to have a wallet and your agent’s going to go and do transactions on your behalf. And you know, with that, one, there’s great personalization, but two, it completely changes all of many business models. So there’s a lot of change that’s going on. And so people just have to, you know, within your context, culture and customers, grab the tools, get them to apply, be a leader in your organization for doing that. And then you’ll be in a good position if someone chooses not to. It’s going to be hard. It’s going to be like not reading. Yeah. And at a certain point, your organization is going to only have people who read.

Michelle Eggleston Schwartz: Yeah. I just saw in a study the other day, um, I forget, um, the name of the study, but AI literacy is one of the number one skills that employees need in order to be competitive moving forward, they need to understand how to use AI, and I think it’s going to be really important moving forward.