Learning & Development in the Age of AI: Q&A with Atana Chairman and CEO John Hansen

In a recent episode of Elevate Your AIQ, Atana Chairman and CEO John Hansen and podcast host Bob Pulver discussed a variety of topics, including John's passion to create more inclusive workplaces, insights on the latest advancements in AI, challenges and opportunities presented by modern technology (particularly in the context of learning and development), and the need to integrate new technology tools responsibly.

This post features a few insightful highlights from the conversation.

John Hansen
Atana Chairman and CEO

Q:  John, you've founded eight companies and had many experiences in tech. Please tell us a bit about your background.

JH: Yes. Atana is my eighth company. I'm a computer science person at heart—one of those geeky guys who became CEO. I started out in the wireless industry back in the early 90s. People, including my mom, had a hard time understanding what I did. I would just pull out my cell phone and say, "I make this work."

My move to learning and development with Atana was driven by a desire to use technology to address some of the company culture issues I witnessed in tech. I was frustrated by how homogeneous the space was. I guess I was ahead of my time because I always had women as Senior Executives in my company. I was able to pick very competent high-powered women because nobody else would hire them in the hard tech space and that always bothered me. I bought the company passionate about what we could do to change that.

So now with Atana it's pretty cool. When I tell people we're helping transform the workplace they understand that point of view. Doing this work of making the workplace fairer and more inclusive is what I want my legacy to be...my "swan song."

Q: Along the way, what have been your AI experiences and observations?

JH: I went to high school here in the Seattle area back in the 70s when there was a bit of a buzz going on about computers. Nobody knew who Bill Gates was at that time, but there was a lot of work going on at the Lakewood school where he was a student. I attended a public high school where, in my senior year, I had an amazing teacher who taught a special Advanced Science and Math class. As a class, we built a computer, and it was such a novel thing—but at the same time Gates was over at Lakewood building a computer himself. So, there we all were in school studying computer science in the late 70s early 80s and AI was a big thing back then. I chuckle now that we are here in 2024 thinking "Wow, AI is a big thing."

Those of us who are technologists study and watch the space and see that this version of AI is a slightly different color of rose, but it's still got the thorns on the side.

Today we're seeing like the fifth wave of AI, but this one's a little bit different because it's generative AI. Still, it has all the problems that AI has had from the beginning. Each AI wave brings questions about what it will transform. We've all seen Terminator with Skynet where AI takes over, so there's a lot of fear about it. But there's also a lack of appreciation for its limitations and there's a lot of hype. Those of us who are technologists study and watch the space and see that this version of AI is a slightly different color of rose, but it's still got the thorns on the side.

Host:  Yes...generative AI is the latest wave and it's the one that people are becoming most familiar with because they actually get to interact with it as opposed to previous waves where you didn't really experience it unless you were a data scientist or were deep in the trenches of a computer lab.

JH: Yeah, people started playing with ChatGPT and saw that they could type in a prompt or question and get an answer—interacting with it like they were talking to a neighbor. But it's like you said, prior to that AI was in the lab—companies were using it in the back end, especially machine learning and neural networks. Now all of a sudden what ChatGPT did was push it to the front so that people could interact and that was the major breakthrough.

Computers are excellent at processing massive amounts of data and being able to predict how this sentence should end, etc. but sometimes it goes off track and doesn't have authenticity. People worry that, at some point, they're going to be talking to somebody and not even know that it's an AI bot. But I believe that we humans have a gift of being able to detect inauthenticity—an uncanny ability to detect that something is a little weird here.

Q: How is Atana using AI in its corporate learning and development offerings?

JH: We have a philosophy at Atana to be human first and AI support second. We create great learning content and design our courses to ask questions at relevant learning moments to collect behavioral and attitudinal information. Are we using AI? Of course. For example, we can run a piece of created content through AI and, in about a half hour, translate the course into different languages. It can also take video, refine it and remove things to make the picture clearer. We're using all that in the back end.

At Atana, we believe that AI's best role is as a thoughtful support of human endeavors, doing things that we don't need to waste our time on.

We continue to have human beings doing the actual script writing and acting in the video vignettes. You know, AI can do a lot of amazing things, but there's still a human element that I think is going to be around for a long time.  So, I don't panic or get upset about what's coming.

At Atana, we believe that AI's best role is as a thoughtful support of human endeavors, doing things that we don't need to waste our time on.

Q: In the context of learning and development, do you find there are still people who feel they learn better in an instructor-led classroom? What do you think about advancements in L&D in this age of AI?

JH: So, every modality of learning has advantages and disadvantages, and I don't think there's a winner or loser. I believe that it has to do with what modality is best served by the content or topic you're trying to address. For instance, when it comes to leadership development, the most significant insights I've gained over my career have been delivered by great mentors through one-on-one relationships. I've also taken a number of leadership courses led by some amazing people who were willing to entertain impromptu questions. As humans, we still like to get that personal attention, especially on very critical topics. However, if I'm trying to learn Python language, I don't need a professor to tell me that.

Over the years, I've taught at the University of Washington both full-time and part-time. It's interesting that my delivery has changed. I'm one of those instructors who welcomes technology into the room. I figure, why not? They're going to do it anyway—they'll just hide it underneath the desk.

This is a big debate at all universities—especially now with AI coming in. To me, it's hilarious that professors are using AI to detect fake AI-generated student work. So, it becomes the battle of the AIs to see who's cheating.

I am a professor who assigns case studies, and generative AI is perfect for writing cases...to a limit. I'll flag those I sense may have used a lot of AI and call on those students in class. We have a very interactive class, so I can ask a student to talk more on a certain point they've made or defend their position.  

I see technology as a way to help people come to class prepared. In the past, students would often have an in-person instructor who just showed up to spew their knowledge—and it was simply a dump of information. Now, we do something called flipping the classroom, which allows students to get all that knowledge outside on their own, at their convenience, using whatever technology they want to use. What we do in the classroom then is elevate that knowledge and have some deep conversations about what you learn from it.

Knowledge enhancement is also what we're doing here at Atana with our training solutions. We incorporate into our eLearning behavioral and attitudinal questions asked in the context of relatable video scenarios. This captures in-the-moment behavioral data that is aggregated and shared with the company. Basically, we are able to tell our clients, "Here are some issues that your company has with behaviors and attitudes and cultural mismatches…now let's have a higher level conversation about what can be done to cover that."

What's also great about this offering is that companies get these valuable insights without doing after-the-fact assessments or poll surveys.

Host: I think that's fantastic. We've got to really think about what is best for people to actually learn and gain the skills that are going to be needed in the future—the innately human skills, the durable skills...As a leader in the L&D space, you've got two things going—the efficiency gains of intelligent automation as well as augmentation on how to help people actually learn the things they need to learn to be more effective.

JH: Yes, what behaviors and attitudes they really need to work on, and how can we build civility and respect in the workplace. Those are issues that can impact a company's bottom line and are areas we feel enable us to make an impact on helping companies grow and be more productive and more successful.