AI's Potential for Impact in Workforce and Education
ImpactAlpha, an award-winning media organization focused on impact investing published an article on AI’s potential for impact, highlighting Lumos, among others, ahead of a SXSWEdu panel entitled “An Investor Talk on AI: All-In or All-Hype” which will include Lumos’s Rohan Wadhwa alongside investors from JFF Ventures and Kapor Capital.
Excerpts from the Article:
The advent of generative artificial intelligence isn’t all doom and gloom for employees. Played right, AI could open pathways to higher-skilled jobs for millions of workers who have been shut out of the middle class.
Artificial intelligence tools that augment human capacities can enable many more people to perform high-skilled jobs. With skilled workers at a premium, venture capitalists see opportunities in technologies that can upskill workers for high-demand jobs.
Instead of pursuing visions of robotic factories free of humans, these VCs are eyeing investments that can expand economic mobility through education and workforce development.
Among the opportunities are AI tools that lower the cost of education, widen access to expertise, offer personalized learning, and provide predictive wraparound services for frontline workers, incarcerated youth, people with disabilities and others with barriers to career opportunities.
Generative AI “has the potential to dramatically lower the costs of education, thereby promoting greater access to learning,” says Wadhwa. Lumos is growth-stage venture fund investing that has backed nearly a dozen ed- and workforce tech companies.
The technology “has the ability to address ethical challenges that already exist in our education and workforce development systems,” he says. “AI is personalizing learning based on individual needs, which can help address many current issues of inequity.”
Lumos led an investment round last year for Mumbai-based Disprz, a learning and development platform. The startup uses AI to customize training for diverse workforces at companies like Thrasio, Amazon and Mint Dentistry.