What Impact Can Artificial Intelligence Have On Coaching?
Chat GPT appeared and the debate has not been long in coming, there are already those who are talking about a true revolution, for now in the classrooms.
But what is Chat GPT? It is a chat system that the company OpenAI has developed, based on a language model created through artificial intelligence. Today’s date, Chat GPT is one of the largest and most powerful language processing AI models since it has 175,000 million parameters.
OpenAI is a North American company founded in 2015, among others by Elon Musk and Sam Altman, which was originally defined as a non-profit organization and whose mission is to promote and develop “friendly” artificial intelligence that benefits humanity in its set. After several projects and tests, and several applications especially in the world of video games, In November 2022, the company launches its “Chat GPT” application And today, a short time later, there are already those who speak of this tool as the “new Google”.
And this chat is capable of developing texts of different sizes and on multiple concepts in record time based on the knowledge that navigates the virtual world on that topic. The system is capable of creating new content (so at the moment it seems that the existing filters to detect plagiarism do not apply) and with a quality that some consider excellent.
As of today, it can still be accessed for free, although it seems that paid versions will be enabled very soon. The company wants to monetize the application and plans to launch a paid premium version in the near future.
How can this possibility of accessing structured content and access to multiple sources of information very quickly impact the educational system, especially in schools and universities? In New York State, for example, Student access to this application has been prohibited in schools And very critical voices are beginning to emerge with this application.
The issue is that the technology in this case – and as often happens on different occasions – is already here, is accessible to many and seems to be ahead of opinions on the matter. There are those who are committed to conceiving AI as just another teacher’s tool, which can enrich the training experience provided. On the contrary, there are other voices that see in this a danger of deterioration of the students’ ability to learn and reflect.
It would seem that the emergence of AI will imply the need for changes in the way of both teaching and evaluating students. And AI seems to be here to stay. The million dollar question is How do we adapt as a collective to this new reality?
A first reflection would lead us to think about finding ways to preserve the added value that the teacher brings. Some ways would be to promote personalized learning, bet on originality and creativity, and increase face-to-face training as opposed to online training or other virtual formats.
And if that is what happens today with AI in the educational world, What can happen in the areas of providing professional support services to people? What can happen in the world of psychology, different therapies, consulting, mentoring or coaching?
We are going to approach the matter from coaching, which is our specialty.
Coaching and Artificial Intelligence
The question is… Will our clients coach with an AI bot? Will there come a time when coaches will be replaced by bots?
For some time now, projects in this sense, tests, first versions of “artificial coaches” with results that are still poorly measurable and known The debate has been going on for some time now and among the community of professional coaches (about 70 thousand worldwide at this time) many reluctances seem to arise. At the moment, the opinion seems to prevail that “machines” cannot currently replace people in these professional accompaniment, because “machines” do not have the “human” skills and competencies required for a good service.
Many questions still on the table, many questions and few certainties. But technology advances at an exponential rate, improving the skills and abilities of these “robots” every day to make them increasingly “human.”
Will AI be able to develop those human abilities, those “human skills”? Will machines be capable of acquiring emotional intelligence, managing both their own and other people’s emotions in an effective way? Will machines be able to establish relational links of trust with people, in use intuition instead of just reasoning?
My opinion is that, in the case of professional coaching, we coaches are faced with a great challenge: that of sustaining and enhancing the added value that our accompaniment brings to our clients. And that point is the differential value of our personal accompaniment compared to other types of accompaniment, both present and future and (why not?) from a “bot”.
The added value that the coach provides
As one of the competencies expected of a professional coach says: the coach facilitates the growth of each client. And the coaches offer and provide each of our clients a unique, personalized and unrepeatable service Each interaction with each client is unique and different, since the coach will adapt to the language, the interpretive world and the learning channel of each of his clients. The task of a professional coach is to accompany their clients to deepen their self-knowledge, reflect on the future they want to achieve and challenge their beliefs and emotions.
We also provide our clients with learning resources so that they can learn about themselves, and we support them in this training to acquire new habits that lead them to achieve their goals and challenges. The task of a coach today goes a long way beyond guiding our clients to plan their actions The challenge of the professional coach today is to be a facilitator of transformational learning for the client, which allows them to grow and develop both as a person and as a professional, in any area of their life.
The community of professional coaches that was born in the early 90s has not stopped growing since then. And the reason is very simple: the coaching methodology works. Coaching accompaniments work, carried out with strict confidentiality and respect for the client, from the non-judgment of the coach and of course from the main premise of coaching of not providing advice to the client.
Since then, more and more people have found in coaching a way to achieve greater life satisfaction, through awareness and assumption of responsibility. People who want to take control of their lives, who decide to incorporate changes in their habits and improve their relationships with other people, people in short who come closer to that concept of well-being and fulfillment.
In this time of uncertainty regarding the consequences that AI may have for our profession, we advocate to enhance the quality of our services and improve customer service. We coaches have trained competencies and skills such as empathy, intuition or genuine interest in people and we put them into play in every interaction with our clients.
Concluding…
We do not know if the “machines” will be able to acquire such skills, perhaps yes, how many things that once seemed “impossible” have now become!
Meanwhile, and following the ethics of our profession, we would like to encourage professional colleagues to continue living with that “coaching mentality”, that perspective that places us in the chair of responsibility, that invites us to continuous learning, to creativity and innovation and yes, with the utmost respect for each of our clients. We believe that, from there, as a community we will be able to adapt our services to our clients, adapt to emerging technologies, continue to grow in number and continue to spread coaching, as the wonderful discipline of change management that it is.
Author: Montserrat Altarriba, Director of the EDPyN Coaching School
