Investigating whether AI can replace human trainers
Artificial intelligence, AI, is making inroads everywhere in society. One example is KTH student Malin Jauad Almeida Marques, who in her degree project at Scania is studying whether AI-generated moving material can replace traditionally filmed training films. The tentative answer is yes.
What role can AI play in education? Are real people needed in recorded lessons for best results? These are questions that Malin Jauad Almeida Marques, who is studying for a Master of Science in Information Technology at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, is investigating.
She is doing her thesis at Scania's R&D department and says that the truck company has a lot of information about its products that is updated frequently and continuously. This means that the information in training videos sometimes becomes outdated before the work is finished. The production time of AI videos takes much less time and is much easier to update when needed.
"Videos produced with AI can meet the very short deadlines that Scania has right now. Of course, it also saves money as it only takes one person instead of a whole film crew to produce these videos," Jauad Almeida Marques says.
Building on the traditional
Through AI-based video production, Scania also avoids having to re-shoot many videos if a particular employee leaves the company.
This is how Malin Jauad Almeida Marques goes about it. To compare the two different types of videos, she starts with the traditionally filmed training video, which will also be the control video in the study. She then recreates the video using AI to get the most accurate comparison possible.
"I have done this by using AI avatars generated using the Synthesia tool, as well as AI-generated background music and backgrounds. I then showed half of the users the AI-generated video and the other half the control video," Jauad Almeida Marques says.
Memory makes the difference
She then focussed on the ease of remembering the content, as this is one of the most important aspects of educational videos. Remembering and learning what is shown. For a month, Malin Jauad Almeida Marques has been collecting quantitative and qualitative data from users, through both online questionnaires and interviews to capture as many nuances as possible.
"This gives me both information about users' experiences of the videos, and how much they actually remember," Jauad Almeida Marques says.
Just as well
And the result? Malin Jauad Almeida Marques has collected data from 50 different users. They all work at Scania, so they have a common information base, but they work in different parts of the company. This means that Malin Jauad Almeida Marques believes that her conclusions will be applicable to more companies and industries.
"I'm still analysing the data, but my preliminary results indicate that AI videos are as easy to remember as traditional videos. I won't be able to objectively say which is better or worse, but I will be able to say which one seems to be easier to remember and what the users' experience of the videos is," Jauad Almeida Marques says.
Text: Peter Asplund