This week: Increasingly, employees are reporting dissatisfaction with AI trainings. In my latest blog post, I break down what you should be looking for if you're hiring an AI trainer. Hint: competitive advantage matters more than productivity.

Hi Reader

I hope your summer is filled with all good things — friends, family, and free time to enjoy what matters.

For me, AI trainings continues. Here's what I've been noticing: the questions have changed. Six months ago, everyone wanted to know my favorite AI tools. Now they want to talk automation, agentic AI, workflows that run without them. People are getting sophisticated, fast.

Meanwhile, the media has been reporting that complaints about AI trainings are piling up. A recent study by Docebo, an AI training platform, found 85% of employees say they can't use what they learned in an AI training to help them in their business.

My own trainings almost always start with understanding/defining your competitive advantage. Sometimes that feels a little disconnected. "Wait, I thought this was an AI training" But my take is: if you don't know why people buy from you, no amount of AI-produced output can help you level up.

So, this week, I wrote a (clearly self-promotional) take on what you should be looking for if you offer AI trainings for your employees or audience.

Monica

PS: On August 6, I'll be moderating an AI panel featuring some amazing AI pros from around New Mexico. If you want to level up how you use AI, this will be a good one! [Register Here ->]

What to Look for in an AI Training

When an AI training curriculum can write itself, what are you paying for? Definitely not another rundown of the great ChatGPT-versus-Claude showdown. You’re paying for something a lot harder to quantify: understanding where AI belongs inside your business.
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What I'm Reading

🔵 AI "Inbreeding" May Reduce the Power of Future Models — "The next generation of AI models are meant to be trained by people paid to have conversations with them, but several of these workers have admitted to New Scientist that they simply get chatbots to do it instead. This "AI inbreeding" may reduce the power and usefulness of future models, warn experts." [New Scientist]

🟢 AI Washing: The Cultural Traps That Lead to Exaggeration and How CEOs Can Stop Them — Much like its predecessor, greenwashing, AI washing occurs when companies inflate their AI capabilities to appear more innovative and technologically advanced than they truly are. The result? A credibility crisis that threatens to erode trust and stifle genuine innovation. [California Management Review]

🔴 Workers are Interested in Creative AI Tools. But Barely Any Are Using Them. In a recent Adobe survey, 90% of workers say they want to use creative AI tools at work. But only 9% say they really use these tools in their workflows. [Fast Company]

My Upcoming Events

Become a Social Media Pro with Canva
​July 28, 2026 | noon | SCORE | Webinar
Use AI to create professional graphics in minutes. [Register]

New Mexico Business Growth Summit
​Aug. 6, 2026 | 7:30 a.m. | SCORE | In-person event; $45
[Register]

Brand Refresh​
Aug. 18, 2026 | noon | SCORE | Webinar
Use AI to update and refresh your brand. [Register]

Work with Me

💸 Work with Me — If you’re ready to dive in, upskill your team, or just figure out if this whole “AI thing," let's talk about how AI fits into your business strategy.

🎤 Hire Me to Speak or Train — My presentations are largely built around one theme: How to use AI to accelerate your Unfair Advantage. Each session is audience-specific, customizable, and built to give you and your employees strategic skills you can put to work immediately.

☕The Great Coffee Date — I'm exploring 50 of Albuquerque's finest coffee shops in 2026 — talking to real humans about AI, what's working, and what's not. Want to join me? Not in Albuquerque? Virtual coffee works too. No sales pitch. Just great conversation.

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