Is SME involvement essential when using AI?
Subject experts have deep domain expertise gained through observation and practical experience. Their insights are essential to design relevant, customized learning solutions that truly meet the needs of learners. Below is a time to combine SME insights with content generated by AI for best results with five key guidelines that will help you decide that SME engagement is essential.
ai vs. small and medium-sized enterprises: 5 important guidelines
1. Shah, it’s unique
ai <--------------------- | -------------------->Small and Medium Enterprises
(Public data) (Private)
Every organization has tools, technology and best practices to succeed. Can you find that secret source through AI? The answer is “not likely” because organizations need to closely protect this information for competitive purposes.
For example, create onboarding content to show how your organization can use its own technology to meet the needs of its various customers. Find articles about technology, including case studies published in trade magazines through AI search. That’s good, but these articles don’t cover what new recruits need to learn.
These nuances can usually be drawn only from subject experts who have extensive knowledge of technology and the ability to apply this complex knowledge to a variety of situations.
2. Human expertise is important when there are high interests
ai <--------------------- | -------------------->Small and Medium Enterprises
(Low Stakes) (High Stakes)
A recent Los Angeles Times article highlighted the controversy over replacing small businesses with AI. Barr in California admitted that he used AI to develop exam questions, causing new outrage. Mary Bassick, assistant dean of academic skills at UC Irvine Law School, told The Times.
This case study raises multiple issues that will affect future AI use.
Transparency
Using AI to generate exam questions without notifying test takers is a nuisance, especially when results have a significant impact on your career. ethics
Using AI is not ethical when it misleads others about how the question was generated. Academic integrity
Using AI to create exam questions will undermine the reliability of the exam, examiner, and its governing body. Accuracy
AI-generated content is not always correct. We are familiar with the tendency to hallucinate with AI answers. In high-stakes scenarios, correct questions cannot be negotiated, such as bar exams.
Clearly, AI is not the solution when there is a high stake (e.g., authentication) and academic integrity is the most important thing. There may also be an issue of answer contamination, which could be “sycophantic” (AI agrees to you) or “sandbag” (AI will provide answers based on the clues of the question).
3. Knowledge Type: General vs. General Customization
ai <--------------------- | -------------------->Small and Medium Enterprises
(General) (Customize)
Learning experts are already using AI to learn about new topics and create content. AI provides access to multiple sources of general knowledge, including real-world industry practices, case studies, trends, leadership behaviors, and industry best practices, to help beginners achieve basic level capabilities on topics. Collaboration with SMEs is essential to developing learning content tailored to a particular organization, process or tool.
Let’s take an example. You are tasked with improving collaboration between two business functions at a critical point of interaction. Employee research shows a lack of understanding beyond the roles associated with current quality of interaction.
Use AI to generate best practices and case studies for effective collaboration from industry leaders. However, this knowledge is too extensive to ensure practical and authentic learning for your audience. Now you will need to drill down to discover how to customize this general knowledge to a specific role or domain.
Both functions work closely with small businesses to derive real-world scenarios with sensual pain points. Design workshops for face-to-face or virtual delivery. While workshopping these scenarios and selecting the best answer, learners will look back on mistakes and best practices to avoid.
4. Learner Results: Understand vs. Understanding
ai <--------------------- | -------------------->Small and Medium Enterprises
(Understanding) (Apply)
The above collaboration example demonstrates how to customize knowledge for a particular domain. This example also illustrates the difference between understanding a topic and applying it to a new situation.
Considering Bloom’s goal taxonomy, AI is best suited to gather content into “memory” and “understanding.” SMEs are suitable for real-world scenarios, guidance on grey areas, and best practices when you need to extract content to “apply” your knowledge.
Here are some examples of how these can work together. Companies are adopting new methods of quality control, total quality control. To investigate new solutions, we leverage AI to find easy digestible information about frameworks, define the terms used in documents provided by business units, and define research examples of how frameworks are applied across different industries.
It also explores the benefits of frameworks and the trends surrounding them. These are introduced in the “Why” and “What’s in for me” (wiifm) section of the short eLearning introduction, along with important concepts.
The true complexity of this topic is in its hands-on application, so gaps remain and collecting content from small businesses is essential to addressing this. Small businesses can help with real-life examples, non-experiments, stories, case studies and scenarios.
Provides the necessary context to apply the framework. Addresses gray areas with a focus on applying “rules of thumb” to your work. Leading beginners through complex situations. I emphasize mistakes to avoid. Make abstract concepts reality. Provide guidance on tackling new situations.
Once this information is collected, it can be incorporated into application-based workshops tailored to different roles across your organization. Another advantage: subject experts can answer questions and support the change process.
5. Let humans do their best
ai <--------------------- | -------------------->Small and Medium Enterprises
(Machine) (Human)
According to the World Economic Forum: Future of Jobs Report 2025, the following are one of the top 10 most in-demand skills in the coming years:
Analytical thinking and problem solving. Creativity and innovation. Emotional intelligence and empathy. Resilience, flexibility, agility. Leadership and social impact.
What do all of these skills have in common? They are unique human strengths! AI may simulate thoughts, but it cannot be felt. The human touch remains out of reach. AI does not understand subjective experiences or context. Additionally, a clear structure is required to generate solid output and cannot respond in a meaningful way when encountering situations other than training.
This is why small businesses are needed to create meaningful learning when it comes to soft skills. Imagine that AI existed before 2020 and the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Do you think you provided the solutions you needed to provide answers to the unexpected and tragic effects of the pandemic? In situations where high levels of uncertainty, nuance, and empathy are necessary, and still require human expertise.
summary
As AI continues to move forward, the question of when to rely on AI and small businesses becomes increasingly important. Currently, the most effective approach to achieving learner outcomes is to combine AI (for remembering and understanding general data-driven knowledge) with the implicit knowledge of small and medium-sized businesses with unique customized, complex, applied content.
