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How to use Loom for screen and video recording

Working from home is an important part of many people’s everyday lives. To help them stay in touch with colleagues, video conferencing and recording software are a must. There’s a wide selection of free video recording applications, but one of the most popular is Loom, and with good reason. You can even get the professional version for free if you’re a teacher or student. The interface is very straightforward and can be mastered with minimal effort.

How to sign up and use Loom

How to use the loom desktop client, how to record videos with the loom google chrome extension, how to record videos in loom desktop client.

Here’s how to use Loom. If you run into any problems with Loom or are looking to learn more tips and tricks for advanced users, we have you covered, too.

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While the best laptops come with a built-in microphone and webcam, it’s not always easy for people to overcome their tech anxiety when creating a video recording . Rather than having to search through your computer and enable video mode or purchase an expensive recording program, the Loom client makes recording online videos simple and pain-free.

The basic version of Loom is available on their homepage, comes free for anyone to use, and offers users a couple of different options to best match their personal preferences. You can use Loom to record the content on your computer screen, and you can also incorporate footage of yourself narrating or lecturing along with the content.

You can download Loom on both Windows and Mac and devices running iOS, but the two main ways of using Loom involve either the Desktop Client or the Google Chrome Extension. There are no real disadvantages in one version or the other; it primarily comes down to personal taste. In either case, you can record videos with ease.

To open the Loom Desktop Client, you will need to search for Loom in the Windows search bar or click the red pinwheel Loom logo. Once the client is open, you will select the type of video recording that you want to create.

The three available options for the basic Loom version are Cam Only, Screen Only, and Screen + Cam . As the names of the options imply, Cam Only and Screen Only allow you to record either the content on your screen or yourself via a webcam. Screen + Cam will enable you to tape both yourself and the content so others can see your reactions to the material being recorded in real time.

If you want to record your screen, you will have three settings to help you define your video’s parameters. The three options are Full Screen, Window, and Custom Size, and they allow you to tailor your video neatly.

Full Screen records everything on your monitor or display so people can see every mouse click and follow along on their own computers. If you are trying to create a more limited tutorial that cuts out any distractions, you can make use of the Window option to make a recording of a single computer application. Custom Size is only available to users who have upgraded to a Pro account, and it allows them to create custom windows to record specific portions of their computer screen.

You can choose to make use of your device’s built-in webcam and microphone to record your Loom videos, or you can select external devices as needed or desired. Loom recommends that users should make use of high-quality microphones to improve the audio quality of their videos.

To use the Loom Google Chrome Extension, you have to download it from the Chrome Web Store and install it. Once you do so, you can activate the extension by clicking on the red pinwheel Loom logo in the browser’s upper right corner and load its user interface.

Much like the desktop client, you can select between Cam Only , Screen Only , and Screen + Cam . Sadly, users of the Google Chrome Extension are limited to either recording their whole screen or a single tab’s contents.

The Video Control menu is also organized differently from the desktop extension, appearing in the browser window’s bottom left. Users are also only limited to three buttons: Start/End Recording , Pause Recording , and Delete Recording from right to left.

Each mode allows you to use Loom’s camera bubble, which allows you to view and record yourself and a video. There is no upper limit on the video’s length, but you will receive prompts from Loom to ensure you didn’t accidentally keep recording.

Once you have finished finalizing your options, you can direct your attention to the four-button Video Control menu on the left side of your screen. To begin recording your video, press the Recording  button at the top of the menu. This button serves two functions: It lets you know that you are recording videos when the button is red, and when clicked for a second time, it stops the recording.

The button underneath the Recording button is the Pause button , which pauses your video, though you can also use Alt + Shift + P or Option + Shift + P , depending on your computer. A garbage can icon represents the Delete button, which not only stops the recording but also deletes the video entirely after you confirm your decision via a dialog box.

Finally, we come to the Drawing tool, represented by a pen icon, and requires a Pro subscription. This icon allows the user to create drawings for your video that help focus on particular facts and figures. By clicking the icon and selecting a preset color, you can draw your viewer’s attention to all the important details.

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How To Create Engaging Training Videos

Communications Manager

Did you know that our brain retains 80% of what it sees and only 20% of what it reads? This is why using training videos for employee upskilling, product demos, customer training, etc., is much more effective than written documents and manuals.

What’s more, producing training videos isn’t as complicated as it used to be a few years ago. With the right tools and processes, you can create highly engaging video training content without spending a fortune.

In this article, we’ll show you how to easily create professional training videos using Loom. Then, we’ll share different training video types along with proven tips to help you create world-class training videos for your business.

Let’s get started.

Create A Training Video in 3.5 Minutes

Before anything else, let’s start with the easiest and most convenient way to create a training video for any business goal.

Yes, I’m talking about using Loom.

Here’s how you can create a professional training video using Loom from your desktop or mobile device.

Step 1: Sign Up For a Free Account

Go to Loom.com and sign up for a free account using your email address or Google, Apple, or Slack account. The signup process is pretty straightforward and takes less than a minute.

Step 2: Installation

Now download and install Loom’s Chrome extension or desktop/mobile app to your system.

Loom Desktop App: Offers the full range of Loom features, including screen recording, camera + screen, and cam-only recording modes with high-definition video quality and video drawing and annotation tools.

Loom Chrome Extension: Cam + screen, cam only, or screen only recording to capture everything happening in your Chrome browser.

Loom Mobile Apps: Cam + screen, cam only, or screen only recordings on the go.

Step 3: Check Your Settings

Whether you’re using Loom’s Chrome extension or desktop app, the recording process is almost the same. Let’s focus on the desktop app for now. 

Before recording, choose your recording mode from the app’s main screen: 

Camera + Screen

Screen Only

Camera Only

Also, check the Recording Settings to ensure that the right camera and audio source are selected (visible in the app’s dashboard).

Step 4: Start Recording Your Training Video

If you’re all set to go, click on the Start Recording button in your Loom dashboard. Loom runs a counter before starting a new recording to help you get ready.

Once the recording starts, cover your topic in detail and demonstrate the features or training content on your device. Add explanations in the background using your computer while Loom silently records everything.

When you reach the end of your training, click the Stop button on the side of your screen to finish the recording session.

Step 5: Edit Your Loom Training Video

Before sharing the video training with your audience, use Loom’s editing features to give it a polished look. Loom automatically takes you to its browser-based editing tool when you stop a recording. No video editing software required! 

Here, you can trim your video, add a thumbnail, insert calls to action, add a transcript, and configure several other video settings to determine how your audience interacts with your content.

Step 6: Share Your Training Video

Finally, you’re ready to share your training video with your audience. Loom allows you to create a public link to your video or grant access to specific users via email invitations. In addition, you can share content directly to any popular social network or embed it on your website or landing page.

That’s it! You’ve just created a high-quality training video using Loom for free. You’re allowed 5 minutes per recording session as a free Loom user. But for longer duration and more advanced features, try one of our premium plans.

Let’s now discuss training videos in more detail.

What Is A Training Video?

Online training videos are videos created specifically to describe a process or teach something to your employees, customers, or business partners.

A typical training video has a presenter who comprehensively covers a well-defined problem and helps the audience gain new skills or knowledge by the end of the video. But there are several other training video types that we’ll discuss later in this article. 

Since video content is more engaging than plain text or audio, organizations prefer using training videos whenever they need to teach new skills or create product tutorials.

But using training videos isn’t limited to corporate organizations. People from all walks of life use them to teach and learn new skills.

For example, a training video could be as simple as a 1-minute tutorial on “How to boil an egg” or “How to change a car tire”. Or it could be an hour-long session on “How to prepare for an on-stage presentation”. You’ll find numerous examples of such training videos on YouTube. In fact, according to Google, 86% of US consumers use YouTube to learn new skills.

However, this article will mainly discuss corporate videos since they’re more formal and follow a well-defined structure.

Benefits Of Training Videos

Online training videos offer numerous benefits over conventional offline learning and text-based documentation. Here are some of the main benefits of online training videos:

Highly Engaging

Online training videos are highly engaging and make learning enjoyable. The combination of video, background audio, and constantly changing visuals in training videos ensure that our brains never get bored and stay fresh while learning. In addition, modern-day online training videos use different audience engagement techniques such as emojis, interactive quizzes, exercises, and viewer feedback to ensure that the audience remains hooked to the content all the time. 

Save Time And Resources

Online training videos save hundreds of thousands of dollars in the long run. They allow you to free up resources and use them more creatively by recording repetitive content and serving it whenever needed. 

As you create more training videos, your organizational knowledge base grows and significantly improves the knowledge flow in your company resulting in more informed and competent employees.

Provide On-Demand Learning

Online instructional videos are on-demand learning resources your employees, partners, or customers can access whenever they want. They don’t need to wait for a trainer’s appointment or attend a live lecture to get their answers through e-learning. Plus, they don’t need to watch the full video if they’re looking for a specific piece of information. Instead, they can simply jump to that part of the video to get their answers.

Easily Shareable

Once you’ve created an online training video, you can easily share it with anyone anywhere in the world. For example, every Loom video has a public link you can share with your team, customers, and partners. This turns your videos into knowledge resources that you can quickly use to answer questions and solve problems.

Increase Brand Credibility

Besides improving employee productivity and skillset, creating online training videos can be an excellent way to strengthen your brand image. When you regularly make online training videos covering and answering your audience’s most common questions, you become their go-to resource for everything related to your industry. This improves your branding, drives word of mouth, and increases brand influence.

Drive Organic Search Traffic

Publishing online training videos on your website, YouTube, and other public platforms is an excellent way to drive traffic from search engines. If you optimize your video’s title and description for the right keywords, Google’s search algorithms start ranking you for relevant search queries sending you loads of free traffic.

Increase Customer Satisfaction

Creating video tutorials on your features and the frequently asked questions of your audience is a proven way to increase customer satisfaction. It allows you to provide timely support and help your customers get answers to their questions instantly. It also saves your support team’s time by reducing the number of open tickets. And even if a customer reaches out with a query, your support team can simply share the link to the relevant training video on your website to resolve their problem. This helps your customers use your product to its full potential and get more value. As a result, it drives word-of-mouth marketing and enables you to attract referral customers. 

Close More Sales

Online training videos are an excellent sales tool. Your sales teams can use them to explain product features and show prospects how they can get value from your product. As a result, it makes your sales arguments more persuasive and helps you close more deals.

When Should You Make A Training Video?

So, what are the best times to use training videos for your employees, customers, or business partners? Let’s discuss the most common scenarios.

When Onboarding New Hires

Most organizations send new hires to different departments and schedule training sessions as a part of the onboarding process. You can easily replace this repetitive and unproductive process with employee training videos covering various organizational functions.

Every department can create its set of instructional videos explaining its functions and role in the overall business structure. Then, when new hires get onboard, they can watch those videos before visiting a department for personalized introductions.

This simple solution can help organizations save hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars annually.

When You Leave A Company

Creating training videos covering your most critical projects and job functions is an excellent way to hand over your job to a new person when you’re leaving a company or moving to another position.

The conventional handing over/taking over process requires employees to brief the new person in charge on all the projects and responsibilities. However, by creating training videos, you can provide the new employees with a permanent resource they can refer to whenever they need guidance or clarification on any related to your work.

When You Need To Document A Process

Documenting processes is critical for large organizations, so everyone knows how something is supposed to be done. But most employees never read process documents since they’re often quite long and usually not very engaging.

So, in addition to the conventional documentation process, create instructional videos explaining a process more engagingly. 

This approach also comes in handy when you develop a new process or launch a new product because only you know the optimized method for using it.

Communicating With Remote Employees 

With the rise in remote employment worldwide, online training videos have become critical to every organization’s in-house communication strategy. If you have multiple remote team members in different time zones, you can create training videos on various work-related topics to timely communicate any updates or processes.

For example, a manager can send a tutorial video to remote and in-house team members explaining their new promotion policy or feedback process.

Running Employee Skill Development Programs

Employee skill development is critical for an organization’s long-term growth and employee satisfaction. Online training videos can play a pivotal role in helping organizations build effective employee upskilling programs.

You can identify the essential skills and topics to help your employees perform their jobs more effectively. Then, you can work with your in-house training & development team or hire corporate learning consultants to build relevant and engaging online training programs for your employees.

Types Of Training Videos

Let’s discuss the different types of training videos you can create for your business.

Screencasts

Screencasts are the most convenient and effective training video type because they give viewers a direct and unfiltered view of your computer screen. In addition, you can record your screen activity while narrating the process in the background so that the viewer knows exactly what you’re doing. 

You can easily create engaging screencasts with Loom, allowing for a more visual and personalized communication experience.

Presentation Videos

You can also use PowerPoint presentations to create online training videos. Your content slides contain the most important highlights of your training, while you describe the process in detail in the background.

Alternatively, you can create presentation videos in the “talking head” style where a person explains a process or product on screen.

Live Training

Live training videos are helpful for sales demos, product tutorials, or in-house training programs. These instructional videos can be done through a webinar or live broadcasting tool. Live training videos are more engaging because viewers can directly ask questions. However, they’re only suitable for urgent training sessions or in-house communication.

Async Videos

Asynchronous training videos allow you to record and share a training process with as many users as possible. These videos become a part of your organization’s knowledge base and can be used whenever needed. 

Animated training videos use whiteboard animation and are more engaging than other video types. They’re primarily used for explaining different processes making it easier for the viewers to remember critical information.

Interview-style training videos use questions to help the viewers understand a product or process. Such videos include two or more participants, one of whom asks questions and the others respond in detail.

What Makes A Training Video Effective?

Anyone with a smartphone or camera can make a training video. But to make videos that stand out and impact your audience, they must have the following qualities.

Short(<5 minutes) and to the point

The best online training videos are short and focused on a specific sub-topic. They’re not hour-long lectures that cover a topic from A to Z. Instead, they’re actionable pieces of content with a clear outcome for learners. 

The best way to create such videos is by breaking down your main topic into short, bite-sized lectures of less than 5 minutes. For example, if you’re making a training program about your email marketing tool, don’t cover everything from signing up for an account to setting up an automated email sequence in one video.

Instead, you can break down the topic like this:

Video 1: How to sign up for an account

Video 2: Setting up your profile

Video 3: How to create an email

Video 4: How to create an autoresponder

Video 5: How to create an automation

Video 6: How to track emails

Each of those videos is a particular topic with a clear outcome for learners, and can be easily covered in less than five minutes. Doing this ensures that your audience can easily find the most relevant information in the least possible time.

Step-by-step walkthrough

The best online training videos are highly actionable and consist of step-by-step guidelines. They’re not lectures or sales videos praising your product. Instead, they’re laser-focused on helping your audience understand the topic and take action. Think of them as walkthroughs that hold the viewer’s hand and help them execute on the go.

Clear and direct instructions

This is an extension of the previous point because step-by-step guidelines are only effective when they’re clear and direct. A compelling online training video is not about lengthy introductions or unnecessary details. Instead, it jumps right into the problem and starts sharing instructions for the viewer to follow.

For example, a training video about “Creating an automation sequence” doesn’t need to include why automated emails are important, what are their benefits, why they’re better than regular email campaigns, etc.

Instead, it needs to directly start with instructions like:

Step 1: Sign in to your account

Step 2: Click on the Automation icon

Step 3: Click “Create New Automation”

Step 4: Choose an automation template

Step 5: Click customize from the top right menu

Do you see where this is going? Simple, direct, and clear instructions make your training videos more effective. Engaging your audience is essential, but don’t forget your video's primary purpose, which is to help viewers take action.

High-Quality Video And Audio

Nobody likes watching 360p videos with unclear audio. The effectiveness of your training video relies heavily on its production quality. So make sure to use HD video quality with easy-to-hear and crisp audio instructions. 

In addition, since a training video aims to clearly communicate a process and help your audience take action, it’s better not to add background music or unnecessary sound effects that distract the viewer.

7 Steps To Producing Training Videos

Producing online training videos isn’t as complicated as before. But you still need to follow a well-defined process. 

Let’s quickly discuss the main steps in creating a training video.

Step 1: Decide Your Topic And Goal

What do you want to teach in your video? What’s the topic? Can you break it down into a sub-topic to make it more specific? What’s your goal? What skill will the viewer learn by watching your video? Can you cover the topic in under five minutes? If not, can you compress it?

Answering these questions is critical before creating a training video because they’d help you determine your video's exact scope, type, format, and other details.

Step 2: Choose Your Video Format

Choose a video format based on your business goal. For example, screencasts are usually the best option if it's a product tutorial, or you’re running through a powerpoint deck. Animated whiteboards are ideal for explaining processes, while talking head videos are more suited to elaborating internal team procedures and operations.

Whichever format you choose, it should align with your video’s goal. Otherwise, it won’t impact your audience the way you want.

Step 3: Create A Storyboard

A storyboard is simply a timeline of events in a video that helps you and your team understand the content’s flow. It outlines the different phases of your video and determines how it progresses.

For example, you can start your video with a talking head introduction for the first 15 seconds. Then switch to screencast mode and explain the relevant feature and how it works for 2 minutes. Then you’ll take thirty seconds to conclude the video.

This is a basic timeline, but you can create something more sophisticated based on your content’s length and complexity.

Step 4: Write The Script

Online training video scripts work differently from advertisements or explainer videos. For example, if you’re creating a training video for your colleagues and employees, you don’t need to write every word you’ll speak during your video. Instead, you can write down the main points you want to cover in each section of your video and talk naturally in between. 

But if your video is for your customers and will be shared on your website or social media platforms, it’s always better to have a script before creating your video.

You can divert from the script when you’re in the flow. But having it by your side ensures you’re always on track.

Step 5: Produce The Video

Your training video’s production process depends on its type, format, and goal. For example, if it’s a screencast or camera+screen video, you can record it using Loom. 

But if you’re doing an animated video or a talking head presentation, you’ll need to arrange proper lighting, cameras, and surroundings before shooting your content.

Irrespective o your video format, you’ll need a proper recording mic to ensure your voice is audible and free of noise.

Step 6: Edit The Video

Trim your video, remove any unwanted frames, add annotations, insert overlays, or include a CTA during your video’s editing process. 

Step 7: Share The Video

Finally, when you’re ready to share your video, save it to a cloud platform where everyone can access it. For screencasts, Loom is the best option since it provides you user access rights to determine who can watch your content.

YouTube is another reliable video hosting platform where you can publish your videos for public access or unlisted videos only your team members can watch.

Use Loom to Make Your Next Training Video

As you’ve seen in this article, creating online training videos isn’t as complicated as before but comes with numerous benefits. If you’ve never created training videos before, we’d recommend using Loom.

Why? Because it’s the fastest and most convenient way to create high-quality screencasts and on-camera videos without spending a dime on expensive video editing software.  

If you already have help content on your website, simply convert it into a video by creating a Loom screencast. For example, if your help content shares step-by-step guidelines on creating a new account for your platform, execute this process and record it via Loom to create a screencast.

Do this with any content you already have, and you’ll quickly have an extensive library of training videos.

For customer support, find your customer’s most frequently asked questions and answer them by creating Loom videos so that you never have to explain them to another customer.

There’s just so much you can do with Loom.

Sign up today for a free account and try it yourself.

Aug 31, 2022

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A generative AI reset: Rewiring to turn potential into value in 2024

It’s time for a generative AI (gen AI) reset. The initial enthusiasm and flurry of activity in 2023 is giving way to second thoughts and recalibrations as companies realize that capturing gen AI’s enormous potential value is harder than expected .

With 2024 shaping up to be the year for gen AI to prove its value, companies should keep in mind the hard lessons learned with digital and AI transformations: competitive advantage comes from building organizational and technological capabilities to broadly innovate, deploy, and improve solutions at scale—in effect, rewiring the business  for distributed digital and AI innovation.

About QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey

QuantumBlack, McKinsey’s AI arm, helps companies transform using the power of technology, technical expertise, and industry experts. With thousands of practitioners at QuantumBlack (data engineers, data scientists, product managers, designers, and software engineers) and McKinsey (industry and domain experts), we are working to solve the world’s most important AI challenges. QuantumBlack Labs is our center of technology development and client innovation, which has been driving cutting-edge advancements and developments in AI through locations across the globe.

Companies looking to score early wins with gen AI should move quickly. But those hoping that gen AI offers a shortcut past the tough—and necessary—organizational surgery are likely to meet with disappointing results. Launching pilots is (relatively) easy; getting pilots to scale and create meaningful value is hard because they require a broad set of changes to the way work actually gets done.

Let’s briefly look at what this has meant for one Pacific region telecommunications company. The company hired a chief data and AI officer with a mandate to “enable the organization to create value with data and AI.” The chief data and AI officer worked with the business to develop the strategic vision and implement the road map for the use cases. After a scan of domains (that is, customer journeys or functions) and use case opportunities across the enterprise, leadership prioritized the home-servicing/maintenance domain to pilot and then scale as part of a larger sequencing of initiatives. They targeted, in particular, the development of a gen AI tool to help dispatchers and service operators better predict the types of calls and parts needed when servicing homes.

Leadership put in place cross-functional product teams with shared objectives and incentives to build the gen AI tool. As part of an effort to upskill the entire enterprise to better work with data and gen AI tools, they also set up a data and AI academy, which the dispatchers and service operators enrolled in as part of their training. To provide the technology and data underpinnings for gen AI, the chief data and AI officer also selected a large language model (LLM) and cloud provider that could meet the needs of the domain as well as serve other parts of the enterprise. The chief data and AI officer also oversaw the implementation of a data architecture so that the clean and reliable data (including service histories and inventory databases) needed to build the gen AI tool could be delivered quickly and responsibly.

Creating value beyond the hype

Let’s deliver on the promise of technology from strategy to scale.

Our book Rewired: The McKinsey Guide to Outcompeting in the Age of Digital and AI (Wiley, June 2023) provides a detailed manual on the six capabilities needed to deliver the kind of broad change that harnesses digital and AI technology. In this article, we will explore how to extend each of those capabilities to implement a successful gen AI program at scale. While recognizing that these are still early days and that there is much more to learn, our experience has shown that breaking open the gen AI opportunity requires companies to rewire how they work in the following ways.

Figure out where gen AI copilots can give you a real competitive advantage

The broad excitement around gen AI and its relative ease of use has led to a burst of experimentation across organizations. Most of these initiatives, however, won’t generate a competitive advantage. One bank, for example, bought tens of thousands of GitHub Copilot licenses, but since it didn’t have a clear sense of how to work with the technology, progress was slow. Another unfocused effort we often see is when companies move to incorporate gen AI into their customer service capabilities. Customer service is a commodity capability, not part of the core business, for most companies. While gen AI might help with productivity in such cases, it won’t create a competitive advantage.

To create competitive advantage, companies should first understand the difference between being a “taker” (a user of available tools, often via APIs and subscription services), a “shaper” (an integrator of available models with proprietary data), and a “maker” (a builder of LLMs). For now, the maker approach is too expensive for most companies, so the sweet spot for businesses is implementing a taker model for productivity improvements while building shaper applications for competitive advantage.

Much of gen AI’s near-term value is closely tied to its ability to help people do their current jobs better. In this way, gen AI tools act as copilots that work side by side with an employee, creating an initial block of code that a developer can adapt, for example, or drafting a requisition order for a new part that a maintenance worker in the field can review and submit (see sidebar “Copilot examples across three generative AI archetypes”). This means companies should be focusing on where copilot technology can have the biggest impact on their priority programs.

Copilot examples across three generative AI archetypes

• “Taker” copilots help real estate customers sift through property options and find the most promising one, write code for a developer, and summarize investor transcripts.
• “Shaper” copilots provide recommendations to sales reps for upselling customers by connecting generative AI tools to customer relationship management systems, financial systems, and customer behavior histories; create virtual assistants to personalize treatments for patients; and recommend solutions for maintenance workers based on historical data.
• “Maker” copilots are foundation models that lab scientists at pharmaceutical companies can use to find and test new and better drugs more quickly.

Some industrial companies, for example, have identified maintenance as a critical domain for their business. Reviewing maintenance reports and spending time with workers on the front lines can help determine where a gen AI copilot could make a big difference, such as in identifying issues with equipment failures quickly and early on. A gen AI copilot can also help identify root causes of truck breakdowns and recommend resolutions much more quickly than usual, as well as act as an ongoing source for best practices or standard operating procedures.

The challenge with copilots is figuring out how to generate revenue from increased productivity. In the case of customer service centers, for example, companies can stop recruiting new agents and use attrition to potentially achieve real financial gains. Defining the plans for how to generate revenue from the increased productivity up front, therefore, is crucial to capturing the value.

Upskill the talent you have but be clear about the gen-AI-specific skills you need

By now, most companies have a decent understanding of the technical gen AI skills they need, such as model fine-tuning, vector database administration, prompt engineering, and context engineering. In many cases, these are skills that you can train your existing workforce to develop. Those with existing AI and machine learning (ML) capabilities have a strong head start. Data engineers, for example, can learn multimodal processing and vector database management, MLOps (ML operations) engineers can extend their skills to LLMOps (LLM operations), and data scientists can develop prompt engineering, bias detection, and fine-tuning skills.

A sample of new generative AI skills needed

The following are examples of new skills needed for the successful deployment of generative AI tools:

• data scientist:
• prompt engineering
• in-context learning
• bias detection
• pattern identification
• reinforcement learning from human feedback
• hyperparameter/large language model fine-tuning; transfer learning
• data engineer:
• data wrangling and data warehousing
• data pipeline construction
• multimodal processing
• vector database management

The learning process can take two to three months to get to a decent level of competence because of the complexities in learning what various LLMs can and can’t do and how best to use them. The coders need to gain experience building software, testing, and validating answers, for example. It took one financial-services company three months to train its best data scientists to a high level of competence. While courses and documentation are available—many LLM providers have boot camps for developers—we have found that the most effective way to build capabilities at scale is through apprenticeship, training people to then train others, and building communities of practitioners. Rotating experts through teams to train others, scheduling regular sessions for people to share learnings, and hosting biweekly documentation review sessions are practices that have proven successful in building communities of practitioners (see sidebar “A sample of new generative AI skills needed”).

It’s important to bear in mind that successful gen AI skills are about more than coding proficiency. Our experience in developing our own gen AI platform, Lilli , showed us that the best gen AI technical talent has design skills to uncover where to focus solutions, contextual understanding to ensure the most relevant and high-quality answers are generated, collaboration skills to work well with knowledge experts (to test and validate answers and develop an appropriate curation approach), strong forensic skills to figure out causes of breakdowns (is the issue the data, the interpretation of the user’s intent, the quality of metadata on embeddings, or something else?), and anticipation skills to conceive of and plan for possible outcomes and to put the right kind of tracking into their code. A pure coder who doesn’t intrinsically have these skills may not be as useful a team member.

While current upskilling is largely based on a “learn on the job” approach, we see a rapid market emerging for people who have learned these skills over the past year. That skill growth is moving quickly. GitHub reported that developers were working on gen AI projects “in big numbers,” and that 65,000 public gen AI projects were created on its platform in 2023—a jump of almost 250 percent over the previous year. If your company is just starting its gen AI journey, you could consider hiring two or three senior engineers who have built a gen AI shaper product for their companies. This could greatly accelerate your efforts.

Form a centralized team to establish standards that enable responsible scaling

To ensure that all parts of the business can scale gen AI capabilities, centralizing competencies is a natural first move. The critical focus for this central team will be to develop and put in place protocols and standards to support scale, ensuring that teams can access models while also minimizing risk and containing costs. The team’s work could include, for example, procuring models and prescribing ways to access them, developing standards for data readiness, setting up approved prompt libraries, and allocating resources.

While developing Lilli, our team had its mind on scale when it created an open plug-in architecture and setting standards for how APIs should function and be built.  They developed standardized tooling and infrastructure where teams could securely experiment and access a GPT LLM , a gateway with preapproved APIs that teams could access, and a self-serve developer portal. Our goal is that this approach, over time, can help shift “Lilli as a product” (that a handful of teams use to build specific solutions) to “Lilli as a platform” (that teams across the enterprise can access to build other products).

For teams developing gen AI solutions, squad composition will be similar to AI teams but with data engineers and data scientists with gen AI experience and more contributors from risk management, compliance, and legal functions. The general idea of staffing squads with resources that are federated from the different expertise areas will not change, but the skill composition of a gen-AI-intensive squad will.

Set up the technology architecture to scale

Building a gen AI model is often relatively straightforward, but making it fully operational at scale is a different matter entirely. We’ve seen engineers build a basic chatbot in a week, but releasing a stable, accurate, and compliant version that scales can take four months. That’s why, our experience shows, the actual model costs may be less than 10 to 15 percent of the total costs of the solution.

Building for scale doesn’t mean building a new technology architecture. But it does mean focusing on a few core decisions that simplify and speed up processes without breaking the bank. Three such decisions stand out:

• Focus on reusing your technology. Reusing code can increase the development speed of gen AI use cases by 30 to 50 percent. One good approach is simply creating a source for approved tools, code, and components. A financial-services company, for example, created a library of production-grade tools, which had been approved by both the security and legal teams, and made them available in a library for teams to use. More important is taking the time to identify and build those capabilities that are common across the most priority use cases. The same financial-services company, for example, identified three components that could be reused for more than 100 identified use cases. By building those first, they were able to generate a significant portion of the code base for all the identified use cases—essentially giving every application a big head start.
• Focus the architecture on enabling efficient connections between gen AI models and internal systems. For gen AI models to work effectively in the shaper archetype, they need access to a business’s data and applications. Advances in integration and orchestration frameworks have significantly reduced the effort required to make those connections. But laying out what those integrations are and how to enable them is critical to ensure these models work efficiently and to avoid the complexity that creates technical debt  (the “tax” a company pays in terms of time and resources needed to redress existing technology issues). Chief information officers and chief technology officers can define reference architectures and integration standards for their organizations. Key elements should include a model hub, which contains trained and approved models that can be provisioned on demand; standard APIs that act as bridges connecting gen AI models to applications or data; and context management and caching, which speed up processing by providing models with relevant information from enterprise data sources.
• Build up your testing and quality assurance capabilities. Our own experience building Lilli taught us to prioritize testing over development. Our team invested in not only developing testing protocols for each stage of development but also aligning the entire team so that, for example, it was clear who specifically needed to sign off on each stage of the process. This slowed down initial development but sped up the overall delivery pace and quality by cutting back on errors and the time needed to fix mistakes.

Ensure data quality and focus on unstructured data to fuel your models

The ability of a business to generate and scale value from gen AI models will depend on how well it takes advantage of its own data. As with technology, targeted upgrades to existing data architecture  are needed to maximize the future strategic benefits of gen AI:

• Be targeted in ramping up your data quality and data augmentation efforts. While data quality has always been an important issue, the scale and scope of data that gen AI models can use—especially unstructured data—has made this issue much more consequential. For this reason, it’s critical to get the data foundations right, from clarifying decision rights to defining clear data processes to establishing taxonomies so models can access the data they need. The companies that do this well tie their data quality and augmentation efforts to the specific AI/gen AI application and use case—you don’t need this data foundation to extend to every corner of the enterprise. This could mean, for example, developing a new data repository for all equipment specifications and reported issues to better support maintenance copilot applications.
• Understand what value is locked into your unstructured data. Most organizations have traditionally focused their data efforts on structured data (values that can be organized in tables, such as prices and features). But the real value from LLMs comes from their ability to work with unstructured data (for example, PowerPoint slides, videos, and text). Companies can map out which unstructured data sources are most valuable and establish metadata tagging standards so models can process the data and teams can find what they need (tagging is particularly important to help companies remove data from models as well, if necessary). Be creative in thinking about data opportunities. Some companies, for example, are interviewing senior employees as they retire and feeding that captured institutional knowledge into an LLM to help improve their copilot performance.
• Optimize to lower costs at scale. There is often as much as a tenfold difference between what companies pay for data and what they could be paying if they optimized their data infrastructure and underlying costs. This issue often stems from companies scaling their proofs of concept without optimizing their data approach. Two costs generally stand out. One is storage costs arising from companies uploading terabytes of data into the cloud and wanting that data available 24/7. In practice, companies rarely need more than 10 percent of their data to have that level of availability, and accessing the rest over a 24- or 48-hour period is a much cheaper option. The other costs relate to computation with models that require on-call access to thousands of processors to run. This is especially the case when companies are building their own models (the maker archetype) but also when they are using pretrained models and running them with their own data and use cases (the shaper archetype). Companies could take a close look at how they can optimize computation costs on cloud platforms—for instance, putting some models in a queue to run when processors aren’t being used (such as when Americans go to bed and consumption of computing services like Netflix decreases) is a much cheaper option.

Build trust and reusability to drive adoption and scale

Because many people have concerns about gen AI, the bar on explaining how these tools work is much higher than for most solutions. People who use the tools want to know how they work, not just what they do. So it’s important to invest extra time and money to build trust by ensuring model accuracy and making it easy to check answers.

One insurance company, for example, created a gen AI tool to help manage claims. As part of the tool, it listed all the guardrails that had been put in place, and for each answer provided a link to the sentence or page of the relevant policy documents. The company also used an LLM to generate many variations of the same question to ensure answer consistency. These steps, among others, were critical to helping end users build trust in the tool.

Part of the training for maintenance teams using a gen AI tool should be to help them understand the limitations of models and how best to get the right answers. That includes teaching workers strategies to get to the best answer as fast as possible by starting with broad questions then narrowing them down. This provides the model with more context, and it also helps remove any bias of the people who might think they know the answer already. Having model interfaces that look and feel the same as existing tools also helps users feel less pressured to learn something new each time a new application is introduced.

Getting to scale means that businesses will need to stop building one-off solutions that are hard to use for other similar use cases. One global energy and materials company, for example, has established ease of reuse as a key requirement for all gen AI models, and has found in early iterations that 50 to 60 percent of its components can be reused. This means setting standards for developing gen AI assets (for example, prompts and context) that can be easily reused for other cases.

While many of the risk issues relating to gen AI are evolutions of discussions that were already brewing—for instance, data privacy, security, bias risk, job displacement, and intellectual property protection—gen AI has greatly expanded that risk landscape. Just 21 percent of companies reporting AI adoption say they have established policies governing employees’ use of gen AI technologies.

Similarly, a set of tests for AI/gen AI solutions should be established to demonstrate that data privacy, debiasing, and intellectual property protection are respected. Some organizations, in fact, are proposing to release models accompanied with documentation that details their performance characteristics. Documenting your decisions and rationales can be particularly helpful in conversations with regulators.

In some ways, this article is premature—so much is changing that we’ll likely have a profoundly different understanding of gen AI and its capabilities in a year’s time. But the core truths of finding value and driving change will still apply. How well companies have learned those lessons may largely determine how successful they’ll be in capturing that value.

The authors wish to thank Michael Chui, Juan Couto, Ben Ellencweig, Josh Gartner, Bryce Hall, Holger Harreis, Phil Hudelson, Suzana Iacob, Sid Kamath, Neerav Kingsland, Kitti Lakner, Robert Levin, Matej Macak, Lapo Mori, Alex Peluffo, Aldo Rosales, Erik Roth, Abdul Wahab Shaikh, and Stephen Xu for their contributions to this article.

This article was edited by Barr Seitz, an editorial director in the New York office.

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• International

March 17, 2024 Israel-Hamas war

By Heather Chen , Andrew Raine , Antoinette Radford, Maureen Chowdhury and Matt Meyer , CNN

Our live coverage of Israel's war in Gaza has moved here.

Israeli military says it is carrying out operation in the area of Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital

From CNN staff

The Israel Defense Forces said early on Monday that it is carrying out a military operation in the area of Gaza City’s Al Shifa hospital. 

The IDF said in a statement that the operation is based on intelligence that the hospital is being used by “senior Hamas terrorists to conduct and promote terrorist activity.”

CNN cannot independently verify this claim.

The Israeli military has frequently targeted Gaza’s hospitals since October 7, prompting global condemnation and calls to protect healthcare workers, infrastructure, and patients from fighting.

The Israeli military raided Al-Shifa, the largest medical complex in Gaza, in November .

Israeli military announces death of soldier abducted by Hamas on October 7

From CNN's Amir Tal

The Israel Defense Forces announced Sunday the death of Daniel Perez, who was abducted by Hamas on October 7.

Perez, 22, had served as a platoon commander, according to the IDF.

The Hostage and Missing Families Forum said that Perez had immigrated to Israel 10 years ago. 

According to CNN's count, 33 of the 130 people still held captive in Gaza after being taken hostage on October 7 are now believed to be dead.

Irish leader remarks on shared history with Palestinians during St. Patrick's Day visit to White House

From CNN's Sam Fossum

The ongoing war in Gaza was top of mind for both US President Joe Biden and Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar as the two men celebrated St. Patrick’s Day at the White House on Sunday.

Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has loomed large while the taoiseach, Ireland's prime minister, visits Washington. Ireland’s leaders face domestic pressure to make a strong case for a ceasefire in meetings with their US counterparts.

A shared history: Support for the Palestinian cause runs deep in Ireland, with many pointing to what they believe is a shared history — one the taoiseach addressed directly Sunday.

He added later: “Mr. President, we also see Israel’s history reflected in our eyes. A diaspora whose heart never left home no matter how many generations passed. A nation state that was reborn. And a language revived. I believe it’s possible be for Israel and for Palestine. And I believe you do, too.”

Biden's comments: “The Taoiseach and I agree about the urgent need to increase humanitarian aid in Gaza, and get this ceasefire deal that brings the hostages home and moves toward a two-state solution — which is the only path, the only path — to lasting peace and security,” Biden told guests on Sunday.

Tensions over Israel-Hamas war loom over Irish Taoiseach's usually jovial annual visit to White House | CNN Politics

Concern grows for 1.4 million palestinians in rafah as israeli offensive looms. here's the latest.

The World Health Organization chief said he is "gravely concerned" after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved plans for the country's offensive in Rafah , the southernmost city in Gaza.

Netanyahu's office said the military is preparing to evacuate the estimated 1.4 million Palestinians stuck there — many after being displaced from other parts of the enclave. Aid agencies warn civilians have nowhere left to go.

The White House said Sunday that it still has not seen a "credible" plan from the Israeli government on how it would protect the civilians. CNN has  previously reported  on Gazans who heeded evacuation warnings being killed by Israeli strikes in areas deemed safe by the Israel Defense Forces.

Here are the latest headlines:

• Reaction to Schumer's speech: US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s warning that Israel risks becoming a “pariah” for its war in Gaza, and his call for new elections in the country,  sent shockwaves from Washington to Jerusalem . Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the address as  "totally inappropriate"  in an interview with CNN this morning. That has been echoed by Republican critics, while prominent Democrats defended Schumer today.
• Death toll in Gaza rises: At least 92 people have been killed in Gaza since Saturday, bringing the death toll since October 7 to 31,645 , according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza. CNN cannot independently verify these numbers due to the challenges of reporting from the war zone.
• Hostage and ceasefire negotiations: Netanyahu told CNN that Israel will keep trying to secure a deal that would see the release of 100 hostages in exchange for a six-week pause in fighting — despite what he called "outlandish" Hamas demands. Mossad Director David Barnea is expected to travel to Doha for further ceasefire talks with mediators beginning as early as Monday, according to a diplomat familiar with the talks. Meanwhile, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz warned Sunday that a Rafah offensive could hinder the peace deal negotiations .
• Humanitarian aid in Gaza: The first aid ship to Gaza  carrying 200 tons of much-needed food has been fully offloaded as part of new efforts to ease a dire humanitarian crisis. A second boat with some 240 tons of humanitarian food aid is being prepared, according to nonprofit World Central Kitchen. But maritime shipments and airdops, like the US made again Sunday , cannot on their own stop what aid agencies warn is a looming famine in Gaza . Israel's siege has kept ground deliveries from reaching starving Gazans.
• In the occupied West Bank: At least 25 Palestinians were detained in the  occupied West Bank  between Saturday evening and Sunday morning, according to the Palestinian Prisoner Society. Those arrested included a woman originally   from Gaza, a child, and a wounded person, in addition to former prisoners, the group said Sunday. The IDF denied claims by the group that the prisoners were beaten and otherwise mistreated, and claimed only six people were arrested.

Senior Hamas official says the group's latest proposal for a ceasefire is "logical"

From CNN’s Eyad Kourdi in Gaziantep and Mostafa Salem in Doha

Hamas official Ghazi Hamad said the latest proposal submitted for a ceasefire by the group to mediators is "logical."

"Our demands have become clear. We have spent a long time in talks and meetings with our brothers in Qatar and Egypt, and proposed our vision in a detailed and written way, and I think the mediators are convinced that Hamas has proposed a logical proposal that can achieve a reasonable agreement," Hamad, who is a senior figure in the political bureau of Hamas, told Al-Arabiya channel on Sunday.

He added that the proposal could bring about a "breakthrough" in the negotiations, but blamed Israel for "insisting" on continuing the war. 

"We know (Israeli Prime Minister) Benjamin Netanyahu would say our demands are unrealistic. The judges on this are the mediators, and we believe the mediators are convinced that Hamas offered a proposal that can make a breakthrough and achieve an agreement," Hamad said.

Some background: Ceasefire talks have progressed slowly.

Netanyahu told CNN on Sunday that Israel will keep trying to secure a deal that would see the release of 100 hostages in exchange for a six-week pause in fighting, despite what he described as "outlandish" demands by Hamas.

Hamas submitted a new set of demands on Thursday, including calls for a large number of Palestinian prisoners to be released and an eventual agreement on a permanent ceasefire.

Both Israel and Hamas have at turns accused one another of not negotiating in good faith, while US officials have spoken with more cautious optimism about the talks.

At least 25 Palestinians detained in the West Bank overnight, the Palestinian Prisoner Society says

From CNN’s Kareem Khadder in Jerusalem and Lauren Izso in Tel Aviv

At least 25 Palestinians were detained in the occupied West Bank between Saturday evening and Sunday morning, according to the Palestinian Prisoner Society.

Those arrested included a woman originally   from Gaza, a child, and a wounded person, in addition to former prisoners, the group said Sunday. The majority of arrests were made in the Hebron region, with further arrests throughout the occupied West Bank and in Jerusalem.

The Palestinian Prisoner Society accused Israeli security forces of carrying out “widespread acts of abuse, severe beatings, and threats against detainees and their families” and destroying homes.

The group, an NGO promoting prisoners’ rights, said a cancer patient from Gaza was detained while on her way to receive cancer treatment in Jerusalem.

Israel denies claims: The Israel Defense Forces said Sunday that it conducted overnight “counterterrorism activity,” in which it says it arrested wanted suspects and confiscated weapons.

CNN reached out to the IDF regarding the accusations that it mistreated detainees and arrested a woman on her way to receive cancer treatment. In response, an IDF spokesperson said only six people were arrested last night in Dehisha, a Bethlehem refugee camp. 

"They did not arrest a woman and certainly not a child, there was no destruction of houses and the other claims are far from reality," the spokesperson said. 

Some context : Since Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, more than 7,630 Palestinians have been arrested on the West Bank and Jerusalem, according to the Palestinian Prisoner Society.

For its part, the IDF says it has arrested more than 3,500 wanted suspects during that time period, including some 1,500 members of Hamas.

Violence against Palestinians by both Israeli troops and settlers in the West Bank has sharply increased during the war, according to the Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah.

In the West Bank, an independent Palestine remains a distant dream | CNN

How us lawmakers are reacting to the schumer speech that netanyahu called "totally inappropriate".

From CNN's Andrew Millman, Aileen Graef and Avery Lotz

US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s warning that Israel risks becoming a “pariah” for its war in Gaza, and his call for new elections in the country, sent shockwaves from Washington to Jerusalem .

President Joe Biden called it a "good speech" and said Schumer had expressed a "serious concern" shared by many Americans. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, slammed the address as "totally inappropriate" in an interview with CNN this morning.

Here's some of the latest reaction to the comments by Washington's highest-ranking Jewish official:

Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin , who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has defended Schumer’s recent comments on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday.

“Senator Schumer’s speech came from his heart — what he believes is necessary for peace,” Cardin said.

The Maryland senator said Schumer was simply calling for Israelis to be able to vote for who they want as leader, and that this will only happen once Israel has gotten "past Hamas."

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi praised Schumer's remarks as an "act of courage" and an "act of love for Israel" in an interview on CNN's "State of the Union."

“The prime minister’s presentation proved the necessity of Chuck Schumer’s speech,” Pelosi said.

The California Democrat added that Netanyahu must “be unaware or ill-informed” of the humanitarian situation in Gaza after the prime minister claimed Israel was letting in enough aid to Gaza.

Republican Rep. Michael McCaul , the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, slammed Schumer's comments as "inappropriate" and "embarrassing" Sunday.

“There’s a way to talk about your differences – not to topple a democratic country,” the Texas Republican said on “Fox News Sunday.” McCaul characterized the speech as indicative of a "split in the Democratic party" between what he called a "pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel faction" and those who support Israel.

McCaul said a Rafah offensive would allow Israel to take out "high-value targets" in Hamas.

Meanwhile, on the campaign trail : Former President Donald Trump has criticized Schumer, suggesting Israel is loyal to the Democratic Party "to a fault." Asked on Fox News today if the majority leader's words amounted to the US telling a sovereign ally how to run its government, Trump answered, "100%. There's no question about it and they don't know where to go. They're very bad for Israel."

The former president has repeatedly been criticized for parroting the antisemitic trope that US Jews, a population that historically has voted for Democrats by wide margins, have dual loyalties to the US and Israel.

German chancellor says casualties from Israeli offensive in Rafah could hinder peace deal efforts

From CNN's Benjamin Brown, Eve Brennan, and Jessie Gretener in London

An Israeli offensive in Rafah could hinder peace deal negotiations between Israel and Hamas, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Sunday.

There are an estimated 1.4 million people in the southernmost Gaza city, many of whom have already been displaced several times from other parts of the enclave.

Speaking in Aqaba, Jordan, Scholz said "a large number of casualties in such an offensive would make any peaceful development in the region very difficult."

Scholz made the comments while on a whirlwind trip to the region Sunday, first meeting with the King Abdullah II of Jordan in Aqaba, and then meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem.

Speaking alongside Netanyahu, Scholz also questioned whether there are other ways for Israel to achieve its goal of eradicating Hamas.

"No matter how important the goal, can it justify such terribly high costs? Or are there other ways to achieve your goal?" Scholz asked.

Netanyahu, meanwhile, said "we cannot have a future for Gaza, a future for peace" if Hamas "remains intact." Israel has repeatedly said it must launch military operations in Rafah to root out the remaining portion of Hamas' forces.

More background: The German chancellor's comments come just days after Netanyahu said he approved a plan for a mass evacuation and Israel Defense Forces operation in Rafah.

The head of the World Health Organization and other aid agencies have raised alarm about a potential Rafah incursion, saying the Palestinians sheltering there  have nowhere safe to move to . CNN has  previously reported  on Gazans who heeded evacuation warnings being killed by Israeli strikes in areas deemed safe by the IDF.

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