Can AI Teach Workers to Be More Human?

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From Day One Editors
July 22, 2026 • Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes

It started as an experiment. A little over a year ago, the chief talent and development officer at pharmaceutical firm Novartis ran a pilot. Paula Landmann, who’s responsible for making sure the company has the skills it needs, wanted to know: Can we use AI for the personal development of our workforce?

Employees already had access to internal coaches, but humans are limited by time, and so it could be weeks before a coaching session was available. They also had access to tools like Copilot and ChatGPT, which they could consult about any number of things. 

But what if the company put some real power behind it? If Novartis could roll out an AI-powered coaching program designed to interact with employees the way a personal coach might, could the workforce actually develop itself?

Apparently, the answer is yes. Last October, Novartis rolled out its AI coaching platform, called Mira, which it developed in conjunction with coaching platform BetterUp. Unlike traditional coaching programs, which are provided only to high-ranking managers and those headed for the C-suite, every employee at Novartis has access to Mira—whenever they need it. Less than a year later, 14,000 employees, or just over 18% of Novartis’s workforce, are using the tool, which remains optional, and many of them keep coming back. They’re getting better at making decisions, talking to one another, and working together.

Novartis is hardly alone. Customer-experience platform Qualfon developed its own AI-powered roleplay simulator to help employees improve communication, and media company Scripps licensed an AI coach that gives feedback to reporters on drafts and sourcing. Twenty percent of the newsroom employees use it daily, said senior L&D director Ginger Summers during a From Day One webinar. Those employees now use the tool one to two hours per day, saving roughly 20 minutes of work each time.

These are what might be considered uniquely “human” skills, like critical thinking, communication, cooperation, collaboration, and conflict resolution—things typically developed only through interaction among humans.

The interpersonal friction that begets these skills can, in theory, cost a business time and money, so companies are looking at AI and wondering if it would be faster, possibly even more effective, to develop those same skills with AI. The promise is great: AI could effectively furnish each employee with a personal coach whose sole focus is that employee’s development. 

But are these skills, when developed in collaboration with AI, as strong as they could be? And what’s lost when the experience with humans is removed from human skills?

A Closer Look at AI-Powered Skill Development

To answer those questions, AI for skill development is being heavily studied by academics and by the companies building the technology. Consulting firm BCG put its own program to the test, placing human trainers (in virtual classrooms) head to head with virtual AI coaches and found that “the gen AI tutor delivered results that were on par with the classroom session, but with significant improvements in terms of personalization and efficiency.” And not only did the BCG researchers favor AI, learners themselves said the AI was better than humans at supplying personalized notes. BCG lauds AI’s ability to tailor the learning based on individual work context in a way a human just can’t.

AI can be more succinct than humans, making for time savings, and it can also make learners less fearful of making mistakes. It’s far less embarrassing to fumble in front of a bot than a person, especially if you might sit in a meeting with them later. Landmann of Novartis said employees were “very loud and clear” about this advantage. “AI doesn’t judge me,” they told her.

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September & Beyond:

Sponsor Spotlight: HiBob

If AI has left HR leaders feeling both excited and overwhelmed, they’re far from alone. Companies see enormous potential in the technology and are racing to prepare their workforces for what comes next. The challenge is that no one agrees on the best way to get there. As Dr. Ken Matos, director of market insights at HiBob, sees it, employers are still in the early stages of adopting AI. Expectations are high, but plans are still vague. “What’s problematic is that hole in the conversation where there's a very confident ‘Yes, we’re going to do this,’ and a very panicked, ‘I don’t know what doing this really means.’” Read the full story here.

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The role of software developers has been fundamentally transformed in the agentic era. What was once a linear path from requirements to deployment has evolved into an active process of agent orchestration, in which AI agents handle the heavy lifting of coding, testing, and maintenance. This shift has forced a complete rethinking of how companies identify and hire talent that thrives. Vivek Ravinsankar, the co-founder and CEO of HackerRank, laid out a roadmap for HR and talent leaders navigating a world where AI fluency is as vital as code correctness; a world where it has become more challenging than ever to maintain integrity in the hiring process. Read the full story here.

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