Recent data from The TalentLMS 2026 L&D Benchmark Report reveals a 19-point perception gap on AI learning support. 83% of HR leaders believe they actively support AI learning, but only 64% of employees agree. This extremely polarized viewpoint raises an uncomfortable question: If leaders are this far off on AI skills support, what else might they be misreading about their teams' capabilities?
Before you can even get the opportunity to impress a human interviewer, you will first need to impress the algorithm! More recently, AI has also been used to assist current employees in doing their jobs and then to help their employers evaluate how well employees are performing in those jobs.
An unfortunate side effect of reading philosopher C. Thi Nguyen's latest book, The Score, is noticing how much sway metrics hold over you. I say "unfortunate" not because the realization is unwelcome, quite the opposite, but because you'll find yourself taking account of the numerical scrum in your life. And that exercise gets unnerving fast. KPIs, BMIs, OKRs, credit scores, savings rates, social media likes, screen time, steps walked, hours worked, hours slept,
Traffic. Focusing on traffic obscures the purpose of AI answers: to satisfy a need on-site, not to generate clicks. AI-generated solutions do not typically include links to branded websites. Google's AI Overviews, for example, sometimes links product names to organic search listings. Thus visibility does not equate to traffic. A merchant's products could appear in an AI answer and receive no clicks.
Imagine you're selecting an influencer to work with on your new campaign. You've narrowed it down to two, both in the right area, both creating the right sort of content. One has 24.6 million subscribers, the other 1.4 million. Which do you choose? Now imagine you could find out the first had 8.7 million unique viewers last month, while the second had 9.9 million. Do you want to change your mind?
They were trying to get to the bottom of how to diminish catalogue distribution without having a negative impact on store and online sales. They were also keen to define the geographic areas where digital content would work best and how to profile those areas to classify digital purchase behaviour. Together with Analytic Partners they were able to uncover opportunities to eliminate 22% of catalogues with negligible sales impact and increasing digital support in high-performing topologies, preserving€ 294 million in sales.