67% of L&D Hiring Still Requires 1975 Method AI Rendered Worthless

New analysis warns of 'Cognitive Divide' as training industry hires for skills AI now performs better, faster, and cheaper.

SEATTLE, WA, UNITED STATES, December 30, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- A striking disconnect has emerged in corporate Learning & Development: 67% of companies currently hiring L&D professionals require familiarity with ADDIE or similar instructional design methodologies...frameworks developed for the U.S. military in 1975 and rooted in behaviorist psychology.

The problem, according to learning scientist and author Rich Carr, is that ADDIE was explicitly designed to develop remembering, understanding, and applying...the three cognitive levels that artificial intelligence systems mastered between 2022 and 2024.

"Two-thirds of the industry is actively seeking professionals trained in a fifty-year-old military methodology at precisely the moment that methodology became economically irrelevant," said Carr, whose company Brain-centric™ has delivered thinking skills training to Fortune 100 companies, including Nike, CVS, and the Veterans' Administration, for two decades.

The analysis centers on Benjamin Bloom's 1956 taxonomy, which describes six ascending levels of human thinking: Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, and Create. This framework has guided educational and corporate training design for seventy years.

Carr's assessment is direct: "ChatGPT recalls information with perfect accuracy, in any language, instantly, forever. Claude explains quantum physics to a five-year-old, legal contracts to poets, adapting complexity in real-time with patience no human possesses. Every AI follows procedures, executes frameworks, implements methodologies flawlessly, endlessly, without coffee breaks or bad days."

His conclusion: "The taxonomy didn't erode. It fractured. Right down the middle."

The World Economic Forum's 2025 Future of Jobs Report, surveying over 1,000 leading global employers representing 14 million workers, supports this division. Analytical thinking remains the #1 skill employers want...70% consider it essential. Creative thinking, leadership, and evaluative capability round out the top five.

These are Level 4, 5, and 6 skills. The capabilities above the fracture line.

The same report estimates 39% of current skills will be obsolete by 2030—not disappear, but become economically worthless because AI performs them better for less.

ADDIE - Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, Evaluation - emerged from behavioral psychology, which Carr describes as "the theory that treats humans as stimulus-response machines. Ring bell, dog salivates. Complete module, check box."

Critics of behaviorist approaches to learning have noted that the methodology "focuses solely on observable behavior and overlooks the influence of internal cognitive processes" and "may not fully address complex learning, creativity, and critical thinking skills."

"ADDIE was never designed to develop analytical, evaluative, or creative capability," Carr said. "It was designed to transfer information and install procedures...Level 1-3 work. The work AI now does better."

The training effectiveness data have always been damning. The Association for Talent Development found that only 12% of employees effectively apply new skills learned in training to their jobs. Research shows participants forget up to 75% of what they learn within days. One study found that only 1-in-5 participants change their behavior from stand-alone training.

"At a 12% application rate, that's $88 billion spent teaching people things they'll never use," Carr said. "This wasn't a measurement problem. It was a thinking problem. The training industry spent fifty years perfecting methodologies for developing the exact cognitive capabilities that became worthless in eighteen months."

Carr calls the emerging gap "The Cognitive Divide"—the widening separation between professionals who can think at levels machines cannot and those whose expertise lies in cognitive work AI now performs more efficiently.

"The real story isn't humans versus machines," he said. "It's humans strengthened by machines, but only if they develop the capabilities machines cannot replicate. The professionals who use AI to handle the computational while strengthening their analytical, evaluative, and creative capacity will have an absurd advantage. Not because they're more AI-proficient. Because they're more cognitively fit."

About Brain-centric™
Brain-centric™ provides training and curriculum development for businesses in thinking skills, with a focus on developing analytical, evaluative, and creative capabilities, as well as influential communication. The methodology was co-created with a cognitive neuroscientist and has been delivered to Fortune 100 companies, including Nike and Microsoft. Founder Rich Carr is the author of Brain-centric Design, SURPRISED, and Invisible Influence.

Rich Carr, BcID
Brain-centric, LLC
email us here
Visit us on social media:
LinkedIn
YouTube
Other

Legal Disclaimer:

EIN Presswire provides this news content "as is" without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the author above.