Ironically, one of the teams that often gets overlooked when it comes to upskilling and reskilling is the L&D team itself! We can be so focused on ensuring everyone else has what they need to learn that we neglect our own skills. It’s like the old saying about the cobbler’s shoes – the cobbler is so busy looking after everyone else’s shoes that they don’t have time to fix their own, so they will always be the person in the battered old boots.
If this sounds familiar, please know that you’re far from alone… but perhaps 2025 is the year to do something about that. L&D teams are at their very best when they’re keeping their own skills and knowledge up to date, and that has never been more important than right now, with the explosion of AI tools and solutions.
Where better to start than the very beginning? If you haven’t had a chance to explore AI just yet, or part of you has been secretly hoping it’ll all be a passing trend, it’s time to get to grips with the very basics.
Some of the fundamentals include:
Much of the experimentation being done with AI for L&D right now focuses on AI content creation. That could mean generating elearning courses, content descriptions, visual assets, videos, voiceovers and more.
The main skill for AI content creation is knowing how to craft a great AI prompt. This will help you get high-quality content out of your AI tools for L&D – not just generic, cookie-cutter content. Creating comprehensive prompts and the ability to sufficiently edit AI outputs are crucial skills for L&D professionals looking to make the most of AI.
As with all L&D solutions, AI has its limitations. Knowing what those AI limitations are, how to overcome them and how to balance the risks and rewards are key to succeeding with your AI initiatives.
Understanding the limitations of AI is a skill in itself. That means looking out for ‘hallucinations’ (false or made-up ‘facts’) in AI-generated content, reviewing AI content for bias, analysing the content AI tools have been trained on, being able to spot inaccuracies in AI-generated images, AI videos and more.
If you’re used to simply reporting on LMS user data, course completions and time spent learning, the sheer volume of data you can get from your AI initiatives can initially seem overwhelming.
CEO Philip Huthwaite has already written about collecting data from your AI agent, and there’s lots more you can do to identify emerging trends, compare teams and spot new learning challenges. We can guarantee you’ve never had access to data like this, so learning how best to interpret and use it will be a true superpower in 2025.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the raft of new AI tools and solutions has brought with it a whole host of ethical questions. How secure is learner data? How can you eliminate bias from your AI models? How can you spot and avoid plagiarism when using generative AI tools?
Digging into the ethics of AI now will ensure you can stick to best-practice implementations in the future, meaning your AI-driven learning will be trusted by your learners and set up for success from the very beginning.
The AI-powered technology space is moving fast. Since 2020, the number of AI tool users has more than doubled, from 115.9m to 378.8m in 2025, and it’s expected to almost double again by 2030. The appetite for AI is vast, and that’s only going to continue in terms of user numbers and the range of tools available. AI is moving so quickly that it’s almost impossible to predict what might be available even next year.
Staying up to date with the latest AI developments is a must for any L&D professionals looking to keep up in 2025 and beyond. There’s no silver bullet, but signing up to newsletters, attending events, following AI experts on social media and keeping a close eye on technology news will put you in a good position to stay informed about AI, which will then help you suss out which skills you need to succeed.
If you’re brand new to AI for learning, or you have a bit of catching up to do, it could be worth investing in an AI training course to help you learn the fundamentals from a trustworthy source (and no, the self-proclaimed ‘AI gurus’ on LinkedIn don’t count!).
Examples of trusted training suppliers for AI courses include:
If one of your employee benefits is a personal L&D budget, spending it on an AI course could help you secure the AI skills you need to succeed in 2025 and beyond.
The proliferation of AI tools and solutions in the last two years has also prompted a huge amount of research reports and surveys. Some are better than others, so we’ve done the hard work for you and found the best AI reports from recent months to help you understand the state of AI today.
Despite the fact that AI tools have only hit the mainstream relatively recently, there’s already a whole host of AI events you can attend online or in-person to stay up to date, pick up tips and network with AI experts and enthusiasts.
AI World Congress is full of big-name speakers from global organisations like Oracle, Microsoft and IBM, giving you a rare opportunity to learn from the very best of the best. Agenda topics include creating impact with AI, emerging AI market trends, overcoming bias in AI models and the future of human-AI interaction, so you can expect lots of food for thought.
The AI Summit London unites the most forward-thinking technologists and business professionals to explore the real-world applications of AI. Last year’s event saw over 300 speakers from Reuters, Rolls-Royce and OpenAI take to the stage, along with networking opportunities with over 4,000 attendees, making this a must-attend event for 2025 if you’re looking to learn from your AI-focused peers.
Part of Tech Show London, Big Data & AI World is set to share the latest in AI and machine learning, dive into AI’s role in business and provide valuable insights into decision intelligence. Chris Barton, founder of Shazam, is 2025’s headline speaker, who will be sharing the obstacles he overcame to bring AI to life.
If you’re particularly interested in how AI coaches are set to transform the L&D space, this is the brilliantly niche conference for you! It’s all hosted online, so you can attend from the comfort of your desk, and you’ll find sessions on topics such as psychometrics, cybersecurity and VR coaching.
If you prefer to receive a curated collection of AI news and updates, AI newsletters are your friends! Take a look at our pick of the best AI newsletters to keep you in the loop with minimal effort.
Want something to read on your coffee break? Then The Rundown is for you. This five-minute read will land in your inbox every day, with a close focus on AI tools and solutions.
Want something to read on your second coffee break? TLDR AI is another five-minute, daily AI email, dropping the latest AI, machine learning and data science news in your lap. Expect topics such as AI’s environmental considerations and how the world’s biggest brands are implementing AI.
AI Weekly is, unsurprisingly, a weekly newsletter about… you guessed it… AI! In AI Weekly, you’ll find all the latest AI-related news, from business challenges to think pieces to the latest AI product developments, helping you keep up with what’s going on in the AI world.
Shameless plug time: our very own Take 5 newsletter is published monthly, and contains our latest AI product updates, news and thinking. So far, we’ve shared insights into our Vee AI tutor agent and our plans to bring AI content authoring to 5app in the coming months, so subscribe now to be the first to hear about what’s new in AI at 5app.
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