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 speak of a true revolution, for the moment in the classrooms.
But what is Chat GPT? It is a chat system that has been developed by the OpenAI company, 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.
What do we know about OpenAI?
OpenAI is an American company founded in 2015, among others by Elon Musk and Sam Altman, which was originally defined as a non-profit organization 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 videogames, in November 2022 the company launches its application "Chat GPT". And today, shortly after, there are already those who speak of this tool as the "new Google".
And it is that this chat is capable of developing texts of different sizes and on multiple concepts in record time based on the knowledge that the subject navigates through the virtual world. The system is capable of creating new content (so at the moment it seems that the existing filters to detect plagiarism do not apply to it) and with a quality that some consider excellent.
As of today, it can still be accessed for free, although it would seem that the 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 impact of information very quickly in the educational system, especially in schools and centers university? In the state of New York, for example, Student access to this application has been prohibited in schools. And very critical voices begin to emerge with this application.
- Related article: "The 13 types of learning: what are they?"
A social change promoted by new technologies
The issue is that the technology in this case - and as it usually happens on different occasions - is already here, it is accessible to many and it seems to be ahead of the opinions about it. There are those who are committed to conceiving AI as one more tool for the teacher, which can enrich the training experience provided. On the contrary, there are other voices that see in it a danger of deterioration of the learning and reflection capacity of the students.
It would seem that the appearance of AI is going to mean the need for changes in the way of both teaching and evaluating students. And it is that the AI seems to have come 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 provided by the teacher, the teacher. Some ways would be to promote personalized learning, bet on originality and creativity, and increase face-to-face training against online training or other virtual formats.
And if that is what is happening today with AI in the educational world, What can happen in the areas of provision of professional services to accompany people? What can happen in the world of psychology, different therapies, consulting, mentoring or coaching?
We are going to address the issue 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?
Some time ago projects in this sense began to see the light, 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 (some 70,000 worldwide at the moment) there seems to be a lot of reluctance. At the moment, the opinion seems to prevail that "machines" cannot replace people in these professional accompaniment, because the "machines" do not have the "human" skills and competencies that are required for a good service.
Many questions still on the table, many questions and few certainties. But technology advances at an exponential rate, improving every day the skills and abilities of these "robots" to make them more and more "human".
Will the AI be able to develop those human abilities, those “human skills”? Will the machines be able to acquire emotional intelligence, manage emotions both your own and others in an effective way? Will machines be able to establish relational bonds of trust with people, use intuition instead of just reasoning?
My opinion is that, in the case of professional coaching, coaches are facing a great challenge: sustaining and enhancing the added value that our accompaniments bring to our clients. And that this point is the differential value of our personal accompaniment compared to other types of accompaniment both present and future and (why not?) of a "bot".
The added value provided by the coach
As stated in one of the skills expected of a professional coach: the coach facilitates the growth of each client. And it is that 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 delve into their self-knowledge, reflect on the future they want to achieve and challenge their beliefs and beliefs. emotions.
We also provide our clients with learning resources so they can learn from themselves, and We support this training to acquire new habits that lead them to achieve their goals and their goals. challenges. The task of a coach today goes a long way beyond guiding our clients to plan their actions. The professional coach today has the challenge of being a facilitator of transformational learning of the client, which allows him to grow and develop both as a person and as a professional, in any area of his 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 customer.
Since then, more and more people have found in coaching a way to achieve greater life satisfaction, through awareness and the 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, ultimately people who come close to that concept of well-being and fullness.
In this moment of uncertainty in front of the consequences that it can have for our profession AI, we advocate enhancing the quality of our services and improving care for our customers. We coaches have trained skills and abilities such as empathy, intuition or genuine interest towards people, and we put them into play in every interaction with our customers.
Concluding…
We don't know if the "machines" will be able to acquire such abilities, perhaps yes, how many things that once seemed "impossible" have now been!
In the meantime, and in keeping with the ethics of our profession, we would like to encourage colleagues in the profession to continue to live with that "coaching mentality", that perspective that places us in the chair of responsibility, which invites us to continuous learning, creativity and innovation and, yes, the utmost respect for each of our customers. We believe that, from there, as a community we will be able to adapt our services to our clients, adapt to the technologies as they emerge, continue to grow in number and continue to spread coaching, as the wonderful discipline of change management that is.
Author: Montserrat Altarriba, Director of the EDPyN Coaching School
