News Room

Corporate training isn’t all fun and games, but maybe it should be. Most of us have (often grudgingly) used corporate learning systems. We skim through the 50-slide PowerPoint decks hoping to correctly guess enough answers to pass so that we can get back to our “real work.” Anything we learn may be forgotten by the time we receive our certificate of completion. But a new study shows that gamified training done right — lessons conducted carefully and over time, incorporating elements such as progression through challenges and levels, instant feedback, points, and competition — can significantly improve employee performance.

Few, if any of us, live in a place like Mayberry, the fictitious town in North Carolina that provides the bucolic setting for the 1960s television program “The Andy Griffith Show.” Before we leave our homes, we secure our doors and windows. When leaving our vehicles, we lock their doors. We install complex security systems to protect our property against intruders.

Soon after Alan Turing initiated the study of computer science in 1936, he began wondering if humanity could one day build machines with intelligence comparable to that of humans. Artificial intelligence, the modern field concerned with this question, has come a long way since then. But truly intelligent machines that can independently accomplish many different tasks have yet to be invented. And though science fiction has long imagined AI one day taking malevolent forms such as amoral androids or murderous Terminators, today’s AI researchers are often more worried about the everyday AI algorithms that already are enmeshed with our lives—and the problems that have already become associated with them.

From upgrading counterfeit detection technology to destroying merchandise and raiding factories, Amazon says it’s pulling out all the stops to prevent fakes on its platform. 

MADISON, Wis. -- University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Laura Albert joins Live at Four to break down the new rule changes for this year's Major League Baseball season.