The AI Research Skills You Need for 2027

Part of The AI Research Capability Stack

Hosted by John Whalen, PhD

Fri, Jul 10, 2026

4:00 PM UTC (30 minutes)

Virtual (Zoom)

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AI for Customer Research: Deliver Trusted Insights at Scale
John Whalen, PhD
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What you'll learn

Map the 2027 skill stack

See the core capabilities AI-confident researchers need: tool evaluation, AI interviewing, synthesis, synthetic users, agents, and governance.

Connect skills to certification

Understand how AI for Customer Research and Agentic AI for Research work together in the certification pathway.

Choose your next step

Decide whether to start with trusted AI research workflows or move into agentic systems and custom research automation.

Why this topic matters

AI research is moving from experimentation into professional practice. The skills that matter now are not just prompting or tool awareness. They are knowing when to use AI-moderated interviews, how to judge AI-generated synthesis, when synthetic users are useful, and how to build systems that stay grounded in evidence. In this Lightning Lesson, John Whalen maps the AI capabilities you need today.

You'll learn from

John Whalen, PhD

CEO, AI Research Leader, Cognitive Scientist, O'Reilly Author

I’m CEO of Brilliant Experience, have a PhD in cognitive science, and wrote Design for How People Think (O’Reilly).

For 20 years, I’ve helped teams at companies like Google, GSK, and Capital One better understand their customers, capture insights, and build better products.

When AI started reshaping research, I got curious and learned. My team ran “AI vs. Humans” studies to see where AI excels, where human judgment matters most, and how to effectively blend both.

I’ll teach you how to create trustworthy AI research workflows that let you trace every step and insight.

Then advance to the next course and learn to orchestrate agentic research teams, work strategically with synthetic users grounded in real data, and bring in human judgement so you can scale research without losing rigor.

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