There’s no shortage of hype about what’s next for AI. Every week, another headline promises the “next big breakthrough.” And although that future is exciting, the real opportunity for L&D lies in cutting through the noise. 

While AI has dominated strategic conversations across the business world, those of us in L&D are no longer in a distant “what if” scenario — but instead facing an urgent “what now?”

For years, we’ve talked about being strategic partners to the business; driving performance, enabling transformation, proving impact. Yet we’re still too often being positioned and measured as learning providers, equating learning with the “stuff we make”: courses, videos, and toolkits. 

Now, AI is holding up a mirror. It’s showing us what’s really happening in our field, and here’s the truth:

If your value comes from creating topic-centric content, AI will likely replace you.
If your value comes from solving real business problems, AI will amplify you.

This is the moment to decide which side of that divide we’re on — and to start using AI not as a shiny distraction, but as a practical amplifier of our strategic impact.

Below are three immediate ways to make that shift.

 

1. Automate tedious tasks and make way for high-impact, strategic work

According to 2025 research from The Josh Bersin Company, up to 63% of L&D’s operational workload can now be automated. And that points to our profession’s central paradox: we have strategic ambitions but are buried in tactical overload.

We want to analyze performance gaps and enable transformation, but we’re stuck chasing compliance completions, scheduling sessions, and updating learning management systems.

Before we can focus on solving business problems, we need to free ourselves from this administrative quicksand. AI can do that, and it’s L&D’s most immediate, tangible win.

But let’s be clear, this isn’t just about efficiency; it’s about capacity. It’s about reclaiming the time to do the high-impact, human-centered work that truly moves the needle, like partnering with business units, shaping capability strategy, and coaching managers.

When we use AI to handle the admin, we give ourselves back the bandwidth to do the work only humans can do.

 

2. Turn internal experts into course creators to scale L&D 

The next big challenge is the content bottleneck.

As AI commoditizes generic learning content, our unique value lies in what can’t be replicated: the proprietary, experience-based knowledge within our organizations — the “secret sauce” in the heads of our best engineers, salespeople, and leaders.

Historically, that knowledge has been trapped. L&D has often struggled as the bottleneck, mediating every transfer of expertise through time-consuming interviews, storyboards, and endless review cycles.

Collaborative learning and AI changes this dynamic entirely. Our role now shifts from content creator to capability enabler.

With AI-powered authoring tools, internal experts can transform their raw ideas — a document, a process map, even a quick note — into a polished, interactive course in minutes. No instructional design background required.

This is what agility looks like in the age of AI: turning collective expertise into scalable learning that drives performance, faster than ever before.

 

3. Leverage agentic AI to drive immediate business impact

The final step, and arguably the most critical, is proving L&D’s value.

Purpose-built AI for learning and development is evolving in powerful new ways. We’re seeing intelligent systems that go far beyond automation: tools that function as an active co-pilot to L&D strategy, and engage learners in immersive experiences that boost real-world upskilling.

We’re moving from AI assistants that help us complete tasks faster, to AI agents that accomplish outcomes on our behalf.

This isn’t theoretical or futuristic; it’s the next practical evolution. Agentic AI for L&D is able to offer personalized 1:1 coaching sessions to learners, autonomously customize learning recommendations based on individual development paths, and identify capability gaps as they emerge and recommend the most relevant, impactful interventions.

And when you start linking these learning activities directly to key business metrics like sales attainment or customer satisfaction, you finally speak the language of the business and secure the visibility and credibility L&D has long been striving for.

This is where AI becomes not just an amplifier of our efficiency, but of our strategic influence.

 

Be the amplifier, not the factory

AI is revealing what’s always been true: L&D’s value doesn’t lie in the content we produce, but in the business problems we solve.

We can choose to only use AI to become a faster content factory–and risk being replaced. Or we can use AI as an amplifier to automate the busywork, to upskill at scale and make L&D renowned as performance drivers and business enablement partners - and more!

If we choose the latter, we’ll become indispensable.

And this conversation is only just beginning.

Learn more about the AI strategies that are already delivering measurable results today and get the first peek at upcoming AI tools in 360Learning’s exclusive keynote: Closing the AI Reality Gap.

 

David James 

Chief Learning Officer at 360Learning