ChatGPT vs. Human Coach or Mentor: Who wins?

Have you taken a few moments to play around with ChatGPT?

If you haven’t, I’d suggest you give it a try to keep up to date with trends that could impact your business and to get a sense of its capabilities (and limitations).

I’ve been having a lot of fun using ChatGPT to help me compose birthday wishes in various styles – Shakespearean, Biblical and even Rap (I didn’t actually use them!) 

I’ve also asked it to help me compose some emails and come up with SEO-worthy headings for articles I’ve written. All for fun!

Some important questions to explore are:

• How can AI be helpful to you? 
• Will it eventually replace us at work?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been making significant growth in recent years. From natural language processing to medical diagnostics, AI technology has had an impressive impact. One area where AI can possibly make a difference is in the field of mentoring and coaching.

Chat GPT is a new type of AI-based technology that uses natural language processing and deep learning to provide personalized advice and guidance. It can be used to provide real-time advice and feedback on a variety of topics, such as life skills, career development, leadership development and self-improvement. It’s powered by a deep neural network and trained on millions of dialogues to generate quality replies.

I decided to look a little further and check if you’re able to use ChatGPT as a replacement for your coach or mentor?

The short answer, for now, is “no.” 

I also asked ChatGPT this question and it seems to agree with me!

While ChatGPT is a powerful tool, it’s not a replacement for the personalized guidance and support that a coach or mentor can provide. A coach or mentor can offer unique insights, customized feedback, and a human connection that ChatGPT simply can’t match. Experts are saying that for now, coaching and mentoring are still quite safe in the human domain.

Let’s understand why…

6 Reasons Why ChatGPT Cannot Replace Your Existing Mentor or Coach

1. ChatGPT does not provide personalized guidance

ChatGPT works best when used to answer general questions about a wide variety of topics. Unlike a mentor, it cannot provide personalized guidance tailored to your specific situation. For example, if you’re trying to decide what career path to pursue, a coach will be able to provide advice based on your particular circumstances combined with their own experience and knowledge. AI cannot provide this level of personalisation.

2. ChatGPT cannot provide in-depth advice

ChatGPT is designed to answer general questions quickly and accurately, but it can’t offer in-depth advice. It can’t go into detail about a particular subject or help you come up with advanced strategies. For example, if you’re, dealing with a conflict between 2 people in your team, speaking to a real-life coach would be far more beneficial than any advice ChatGPT could give you.

3. ChatGPT cannot provide emotional support

A coach offers invaluable emotional support. ChatGPT is unable to provide the same level of empathy, and it cannot offer encouragement and motivation. Because, for that, it needs to be able to understand and appreciate the complexities of human emotions, something it’s not yet capable of doing.

4. ChatGPT is not always reliable

ChatGPT is an AI system, and as such, it can make mistakes. It may be able to answer general questions quickly, but it cannot always provide accurate, reliable answers for a lot of things. In fact, Sam Waltman, CEO of Open AI himself said that ChatGPT is still incredibly limited.

5. ChatGPT cannot foster relationships

The strength of a coaching or mentoring process lies in the ability to develop and maintain a meaningful relationship. ChatGPT can’t foster relationships in the same way. For building quality relationships, one needs to understand the individual and their personal challenges, something that a computer system simply cannot do. And, a human is better at understanding the nuances of communication and relationship management.

6. ChatGPT cannot provide feedback

ChatGPT can generate responses and provide answers to questions, but it can’t give tailored, personal feedback. A coach or mentor uses their years of experience and expertise to give useful and meaningful feedback, based on their knowledge and understanding of you. These experienced-backed suggestions can help improve your performance.

For instance, if you’re struggling with managing your time effectively, a coach will give you feedback on your current strategies and work out a way to make them more effective. Whereas ChatGPT can only gather data / suggestions that are already available on the web and can’t process anything beyond that.

Feedback is an important tool in a coaching and mentoring process.

So, How to Choose a Mentor or Coach?

Of course, if you’re a CEO looking at working with an executive coach or mentor, it’s important to know what to look for in making your selection.

There are many advantages to having a human as a mentor or coach. However, it’s important to choose the right one for you.

Here are some tips on what to look for:

• Look for mentors who are willing to push you out of your comfort zone
• Consider the mentor’s personality and work style
• Assess their willingness to share their contacts and resources
• Check the mentor’s ability to give you honest and direct feedback
• Seek out mentors who have experience dealing with similar challenges or obstacles

In conclusion, ChatGPT can provide convenience and easy access to information. It can also help you create great wording for emails and other general communications you may need to put out.

However, at this stage, it can’t replace the personalisation, expertise and emotional support that only an experienced (and human) coach can give.

What are your thoughts?
Have you had a look at how it will impact your business?

One thing I know for sure is that we need to be aware of what’s happening in tech and AI and know how to use it to our advantage, otherwise we will be left behind.

And of course, if you’d like to chat about hiring a real-life, human coach for you and your team, reach out and let’s chat! Our team of expert coaches are ready to serve…

We’re a 100% human service.

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