Multiverse assembles AI Advisory Board to guide workforce transformation efforts

Press Release by Multiverse Fri 18 Oct 2024

Businessperson touching a digital AI brain.

The British EdTech focused on skills diagnostics and applied learning, Multiverse, has announced the formation of its Artificial Intelligence (AI) Advisory Board.

The Board, composed of luminaries from academia and industry, will help provide strategic guidance on Multiverse’s use of AI to identify skills gaps, enable career mobility, and deliver high-quality, personalised learning at scale.

The rapid advancement of generative AI (GenAI) has radically reshaped the world of work, necessitating an entirely new set of in-demand skills. However, Multiver said the current education-to-employment system has struggled to keep pace, resulting in a transition that is both economically inefficient and socially inequitable.

Founder and CEO at Multiverse, Euan Blair, said ‘AI is creating profound change in the skills that both companies and societies need to be successful’.

“We believe this shift has AI as both the provocation and the solution, new educational tools built on gen AI are opening access to personalised training at scale, and done right we can use the benefits of AI to drive large-scale reskilling programs and mitigate the job losses the technology otherwise might bring,” said Blair.

Blair added Multiverse’s AI Advisory Board ‘massively expands the range of expertise we can rely on, and will be instrumental in ensuring we stay at the forefront of this transformation’.

The Multiverse AI Advisory Board will meet quarterly, with additional ad hoc sessions as needed. Its initial priorities include developing governance principles for the ethical development and deployment of AI, identifying opportunities for product innovation and enhancement, the content of Multiverse’s AI offering, and showcasing Multiverse’s industry leadership and thought partnership on AI’s workforce implications.

Multiverse Introduces Board Members

The board brings together recognised experts in AI, computer science, workforce development, and education. It includes:

Professor Mehran Sahami, Professor and Chair of the Computer Science department at Stanford University
Kersti Kaljulaid, former President of Estonia (2016 – 2021)
Professor Michael Wooldridge, Head of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford
Derrick Hastie, Chief Technology Officer at Legal & General Investment Management
Anne Devlin, former Global Head of Learning for JPMorgan Chase AWM
Dame Wendy Hall, Regius Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton
Doug Gurr, Chair of the Alan Turing Institute and former Country Manager of Amazon UK

Former President of Estonia and global technology leader, Kersti Kaljulaid, said ‘AI is profoundly transforming education’.

“Multiverse is leading the way down one of the promising paths. As we explore the application of AI to increasingly complex tasks, it’s thrilling to have a front seat on this journey,” said Kaljulaid.

Multiverse’s platform identifies, solves, and prevents skills gaps, helping to enable people to develop at all career stages by equipping them with in-demand skills in AI, data science, software engineering and more.

Through its acquisition of Searchlight earlier this year, Multiverse gained the ability to diagnose organisational skills gaps at scale, recommend targeted interventions, and deliver them through applied learning programs like apprenticeships. To date, the company has trained over 16,000 professional apprentices and generated more than £1.5 billion ($2 billion) in ROI for its clients.

Multiverse Launches AI Coach

The formation of the AI Advisory Board comes on the heels of the successful launch of Multiverse Atlas in February. Atlas is an AI-powered coach offering personalised, on-demand support to Multiverse apprentices. Mutilverse said early analysis showed Atlas has achieved adoption rates of over 40% and usefulness ratings exceeding 91% across all demographics.

“Our early results with Atlas demonstrate that when designed thoughtfully, AI can meaningfully expand access to world-class education in an equitable way,” said Ujjwal Singh, Chief Technology Officer at Multiverse.

Singh expressed confidence that with the of Multiverse’s AI Advisory Board, the company will ‘double down on [its] efforts to harness this powerful technology to drive economic opportunity for individuals and workforce transformation for organisations’.

Former Global Head of Learning at JP Morgan AWM, Annie Devlin, said ‘we are at a critical inflection point in the world of work’.

“We became obsessed with ‘where’ our people were working but we should be much more curious about ‘how’ people work, which tools they use to augment what they can produce on their own. Imagine having the best manager you have ever had next to you, nudging you and guiding you when you are stuck or bored and need a boost. That is the potential AI brings to the knowledge worker of tomorrow. And it requires a whole other level of skills training than most employers offer today,” added Devlin.