Coaches & therapists need to WAKE UP to the coming reality of AI's effect on our careers...

Someone asked me what I think is the future of, you know, careers that many of us have who are watching this. Coaches, therapists, astrologers, mentors in the face of the advancements in AI. And the reason why this came up is because in the last couple days there have been. There's been a major announcement advancement by OpenAI where the company behind ChatGPT and I just want to show you on screen a little bit about from that announcement video. And I'll put that video below here so that you can watch it fully yourself and be blown away by it. But let me go ahead and show you the screen here. Okay, so I'm going to go just to partway into the announcement just to give you a little snippet, but I promise you there are even more amazing snippets of this video later. But let me go ahead and show this to you here.

Hey, ChatGPT, I'm Mark. How are you?

Oh, Mark, I'm doing great, thanks for asking. How about you?

Hey, so I'm on stage right now. I'm doing a live demo and frankly, I'm feeling a little bit nervous. Can you help me calm my nerves a little bit?

Oh, you're doing a live demo right now. That's awesome. Just take a deep breath.

I mean, just first of all, just notice the intonations and the, and the sort of the. Just the nuances of the voice has become. Has come so far from, well, a few years ago and even from last year. And so continue on here and remember, you're the expert.

I like that suggestion. Let me try a couple of deep breaths. Can you give me feedback on my breaths? Okay, here I go.

Whoa, slow a bit there. Mark, you're not a vacuum cleaner. Breathe in for a count of four.

Okay, let me try again. So I'm going to breathe in deeply and then.

And then for four, and then exhale slowly.

Now, by the way, this is all live. They're doing all this live, so it's not like canned or anything. I mean, these capabilities are going to be available for everyone within a few weeks from now.

Okay, I'll try again. Breathing in and breathe out.

That's it. How do you feel?

I feel a lot better. Thank you so much.

So, Mark, you've been working on. Yeah. And then later on in the video, which you can see, you know, I'll give the link below if you want. It asks ChatGPT to like, tell a bedtime story and even to sing the end of the bedtime story. And it does. Just. Just talking it's, you know, it used to be that, oh, you have to use one AI for music and one AI for that. Now it's just seamless, like, yeah, so here's the end of the story and just starts going into song, just singing and then, and then there's another part of the demo where you can hear ChatGPT kind of like laughing a little bit and like this. So in other words, what we used to think AI couldn't do was replace the human touch. Right? And usually when we say the human touch, we don't literally mean I'm a massage therapist and I, you know, I need to go to massage therapy and AI can't literally. Well, not yet anyway. I think, I think within, I would say within three years, by 2027, robotic massage therapists will be, will be quite what will be available and maybe even common. We'll see. But we mean human touch. We mean the social, emotional, verbal intelligence to make us feel like we're being heard, that we're being cared for, etc, and even before this update last year there was already a study of research where they gave just regular human beings like two options to, to see whose bedside manner they liked. And they didn't tell them that one of the options was AI. They just, here's a doctor and their bedside manner and here's, here's another doctor and their bedside manner. I think this is all done. I think this might have been voice or might have been, might have been type, type text. Anyway, overwhelmingly the people chose the AI doctor bedside manner. And so it's not going to be just doctors, doctors. Maybe, you know, maybe it's, it's, it's known that they don't have the best bedside manners or many doctors don't. And maybe therapists and coaches and mentors and healers have better bedside manners or social interaction, social intelligence. But I'll tell you, increasingly I've seen study after study where human beings just keep preferring the AI responses to various things, AI responses to ethical decisions, AI responses to like they're having a hard day and they have a human versus an AI comfort the person. And anyway, it's stuff like this where I'm like, nobody expected 10, 15 years ago that the first jobs or careers at risk would be creative or emotionally intelligent careers. The ones that ironically are less at risk are like the plumbers and the home caretakers where they still want humans to take care of their elderly parents or their babies or whatever, right? And they still, and plumbing is like so many random tasks and plumbing that you can't possibly. It's hard to train a robot to do all of, to anticipate everything, whereas with language, with voice, and soon with video, like right now, like again in the next couple weeks, all of us for free. This is what's scary too. Chat GPT is releasing what you just saw for free for the world, for free. Now of course, on the free plan, you can only use a certain number of messages a day and then you upgrade, then you'll get a lot more capacity. But, but of course it's technology is only going to keep getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper so that within two years or something, that model you just saw is going to be freely available not just in ChatGPT, but I'm sure in all of our phones without the Internet. And we could use unlimited. And so it brings up the question of companionship, coaching, advising, therapeutic care essentially. And it's like, wow, we thought that we couldn't replace the human touch. And that's what I hear from a lot of therapists and coaches. Oh yeah, I don't worry. Sure it can write poetry, fine, whatever. Poetry is not even that good maybe, but it's very fast. It can draw pictures, fine, whatever. It's not, you know, it's not a world class artist, but it's really fast. And sure, it can give you some brainstorming and give you some instant, you know, advice and whatever, very fast. But not, not like it's not like a meeting with God war mate or something like that. Right? Like, like it's not world class, but it's above average advice instantly. That's the, that's the key. It's instant and it's free. Okay, I'm not talking about should I pay a thousand dollars for a human or a thousand dollars for AI. No, we're talking should I pay a thousand dollars for human or $0 for AI? Even though it's not maybe as nuanced as my therapist or coach, but it's free. That's what we're competing against in the coming years. And so it does have me. I mean, and the person who asked me the question says, am I, am I wrong to be freaking out here? I'm freaking out by, by seeing what is going to be happening to our, to our careers, our businesses. I said you're freaking out you at the, at least at the appropriate amount, maybe you're even under freaking out. Because I've been freaking out since November of 2022 when I first encountered Chat GPT two years ago almost. I was freaking out I'm like, I'm, I see the writing on the wall. What's, what's a business coach going to be doing other than telling my clients, why don't you use ChatGPT? Because this can come up with answers much faster and it can comfort you when it comes to, you know, business distress much better than I can anyway, instantly. 24. Anyway, so what do we do? What does, what does the future of the coach, therapist, mentor, healer career look like with this stuff that's freely available to everybody? Okay, I'll, I'll first say I really welcome your comments below and your ideas and just your, I really, I'm encouraging us to imagine. Okay. Because we have several reactions we can have to any technology, new technology that's threatening our careers. One is thinking appropriately, freaking out or like just being really activated to say I need to, I need to start thinking about this. I need to start imagining therefore. But of course we can imagine badly and therefore become depressed and angry and avoidant. And, and when I say angry, I mean angry at the technology, but angry at other people who are promoting it, like George Kao. Angry at other people who are using it, like, oh, mom, you should stop using that. You know, you know, brother, you should stop using that. That's bad for my career. If you, it, it's, it's. We can, or we start movements or try to support laws that ban it and all that stuff. And I will tell you, having been around technology for, well, all my life, but seriously, professionally, in around technology for at least 20 years and seeing, you know, many waves of technology, I'll tell you, when something is convenient and pleasant for the human, for, for the human being, it is inevitable that it's going to keep growing. It's going to keep being used and it's going to keep growing. I mean, it's convenient, it's comfortable, it's low cost and it's in, in this case, it's emotionally pleasurable. Right. And so basically what does that mean for us? It's. Anyway, so, so let's observe our reactions. Notice if we're going into ostrich mode, digging our head into the hole says, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's not going to happen. It, you know, somehow, you know, the universe will send us a destruction of AI and we'll back, go back to being organic and non transhuman and all that stuff. Okay, that's, maybe some of us wish for that. I, I'm a realist, I'm an optimist, but I'm also A realist. And I just don't see that being realistic. It just, it. I mean, look at, look at what's happened in the last two years since chat. Anyway, so the trajectory is not, is not that it's going out, it's going more intense and going faster. Okay? So therefore the only reasonable, sensible, mindful approach to this is to say, first of all, just like we saw in the demo, deep breaths, right? Deep breaths. And then use our human intelligence to say, how can we utilize what is inevitably a tool that everyone has access to, myself included. How can I utilize it to serve my clients even better, to become an even more effective coach, therapist, healer, mentor, facilitator, etc, etc, consultant. Okay, teacher. So I'll just give you, you know, a couple of quick examples from. Give me one moment here. So I'll give you a couple examples from careers that have been threatened already, even before a coach, therapist, counselor, etc. And that is creative content creators, writers, graphic designers, and soon, well, and writers, graphic designers, more recently, music creators. Because AI can create astonishing music. If you haven't yet heard it. Maybe I should show you, Just to give you another example here, just give me one moment here. All right, so I want to show you something. I have a friend here in Mexico who just recently started a water delivery company. And just for fun, I said, all right, let me, let me, let me. Just for fun, I'm going to send you some, some possible logo ideas. Okay? All right. I hope you don't mind me saying this. So while I was on the toilet, okay, just playing around on my phone on the toilet, I'm like, all right, I'm just going to quickly create like, you know, 20 logos just, just for fun because I kind of know what they're about and, and I'm going to create a bunch for them. And I created like 20. And then I sent them like seven of my favorite ones. And they were astounded that him and his wife were astounded by. Oh my gosh. Wow. Thank you. How much did you pay for this? I said nothing. Or it's part of my usual AI, you know, sort of design suite that I already use for my own business. And then they ended up choosing a logo out of what I, what I created. This is a logo directly, just straight from my, from my AI. And then not only there, I then went ahead and used Suno. Right now Suno is not, is not working because it's so super popular. Suno.com and udio me. And let me go ahead and make sure I Can show you the songs here. Okay. One moment. So sorry about that cheer sound. Okay. And then I sent them a song that again, I did it very quickly and I sent this to them and then they just a day ago used the song in a YouTube video. Listen to this.

Stay on course. Delivered to your door.

Okay, I just want you to understand that's not a human singing, that is a computer. Everything has been made just by me typing a few words like, okay, it's create me a song for a water company called Agua Katia. And we want to emphasize that it's clean, fresh drinking, whatever. And then boom, within minutes, the songs, the song comes out, the. The actual video, the company owner put the images in the video together. Those are actual human beings you saw. But the song was completely I. Generic. So essentially, writers, designers, musicians are already threatened and videographers, people who make videos. Within two years, we're all going to be able to generate professional looking videos with just a few words from our mouths or from our imagination. Within a few years, probably for free. And so if we look at, if we look at what smart and wise writers and designers and perhaps musicians listen, the music stuff is pretty new. Okay. Within six months that these things came out. So I. Musicians are still adjusting themselves. But writers and designers, what are they doing now? Those are okay. Of course, some, some are, some are fighting, as we all have seen in the news, right? Lots of, you know, Hollywood, you know, writers and book authors and designers are all fighting. Our artists are all fighting the AI stuff. But as you can see, it's not slowing down. It's only going to get more widely distributed, this technology. So what are the smart ones doing? They are creating even faster and working with even more client contracts than ever before. So for example, if I were, if I was a copywriter, a smart copywriter, I, I would say, oh my gosh. So what I used to have to do is to, of course I talk to my client. Okay. That's something that AI is still not great at yet. Although I'm not sure. Okay. I used to talk to my client and understand what story they want to tell. And then I would go back and, and in my own, you know, home office, I would, I would spend a day drafting something that might, the client might like. And then the next day I would share, or same day, next day, whatever, I would share it with the client. The client would come back and go, yeah, you know, I really, I like the direction we're going here, but this part, definitely not. And here's why the that would take, let's say, two days for a draft and a reply. And of course, most copywriters probably took more than a day, but they have multiple contracts they have to deal with. But let's say it took two days. Now, with AI, a smart copywriter would be like, okay, I heard a smart copywriter do two things right? One it is, it would have a trained chatbot talk with, had to say, hey, client, listen, I know it's hard for us to schedule time together, so why don't you click on this link and just respond to the prompts that the chat bot is going to give you to keep asking you questions so that we can understand your story. And if I have any additional questions for you based on what I read, I'm going to let you know right away. So the chat bot will talk to the client to understand the story and then give you the delivery, deliver to the copywriter the summary and all the important points and then create a draft right instantly. This is within minutes of the client finishing within minutes. You now have a summary and the draft of, of the possible deliverable for the client. And then the copywriter would look at the draft and go, okay, this part, not bad, pretty good. This part, it's not according to client story. It's not, it doesn't capture the nuance of their personality or whatever. Let me go ahead and rewrite that. This part, pretty good, but you don't have my voice. Let me give you a sample of my, of my writing. The boom. And then I go do another draft and I will create another draft. Ah, this one's much better. Let's send it now to the client all within three hours rather than 48, you know, 24 hours or whatever. Like, and then the, the, the copywriter has worked 3 hours on this, can work another 3 hours for another client for the same day instead of previously, they may have had to, like, pour over a, a brand brief and, and really spend a day brainstorming and writing and rewriting a drip. Now it's, Instead of spending 12 hours on this, they spend three hours on this. And it's probably better quality because they've gone through various iterations with the AI before they deliver even a single draft. And so the client's impressed. Like, not only are you fast, but you got my voice, you got my brand story or whatever. Okay. Designers are doing the same thing, right? Designers used to have to, like, get the understanding of the client and then like, spend a couple of days probably like drawing by hand or by computer. You Know, shapes or whatever. Probably take a couple days to create, like five, 10 drafts that they would send to the client. Now doesn't need it. Now they can, they can prompt AI to say, all right, based on this client's story, why don't we go with this color palette? Give me, give me some, give me 10 examples. Boom. And then the designer, which super has great eye, better than the average human, will say, okay, this nuance is good, but this partner, whatever. And then instantly, within a day, can deliver to the client probably 10 really good drafts that have gone through several iterations with, between the designer and essentially a team of smart interns, the AI. And so the, the designer, the copywriter can now work with multiple clients and deliver much faster, which is higher value. Right, Right. Like, what do you want? Do you want speed? Do you want, do you want high bit, better speed, lower cost or higher quality? Well, now with AI, we can deliver all three. We deliver all three. And so what does that mean, therefore, for us coaches and healers and counselors, consultants? Again, I welcome. And we should probably go to AI and have a conversation around this because essentially, what I can imagine very quick, just off the top of my head, I need to spend more time thinking about this, to be honest. Off top of my head. For example, let's say I'm in a coaching session with a client, and the client presents me with a conundrum, with an issue, with a situation. What I probably will say is, okay, let's take the next five minutes and I, I, I'm going to invite you to journal on what your internal response is to this situation. Because as a coach or even as a therapist, I want to empower you. I want to, I want to empower your skill for creating your own best solution for yourself so that anytime, even when we're not meeting, you can create that solution for yourself. So let's take five minutes and do that. Okay, so the client is off journaling while I, as the coach, instantly, of course, I might be thinking myself and taking the time to think, but I could instantly go to AI and say, here's the situation. And by the way, if the client is open to me recording this and working with my AI on this, I would say, hey, client, do you mind? I'm going to have this thing recorded and this thing is going to be heard by my AI. Everything's going to be confidential and secure, not sent to any AI company. It's all going to just be for us, but it's going to be able to analyze and create some Possible solutions. Are you okay with that? Client says you're going to give me better, better solutions and better ideas. Yes. Okay. All right, take the five minutes. I go and journal. And then I'm now working with the AI to come up with some. And based on my expertise as a coach and in my industry, whatever, I'll be able to say, all right, AI, just in these five minutes you gave me, you gave me five ideas. I really like idea two and four. Why don't you generate another couple ideas based on two and four? Go. Okay. All right, good. Or maybe the client is distraught or something and I'm like, wow, I am feeling a little bit intimidated by the situation or are unable to answer immediately. So I can tell the client again, take five minutes to meditate. Take five minutes to meditate. Let's convene after five minutes. I'm going to set this timer here and while I can go to the air and say, all right, you, you just heard that. How do you. What's, what's your recommend, recommended response to the client? Okay. Maybe even based on all the previous conversations we've had with the client, dear AI. Okay. And the AI will be brilliant in like coming up with the most emotionally appropriate, socially appropriate response that above average, better than most humans and probably better than most therapists and coaches, to be honest, better than most doctors, that's for sure. So in other words, I mean, this is just one idea, right? Of what I can see coming. And those who are not are going to be anti AI. Well, guess what? They'll still, there will still ever always be coaches and therapists that are against AI and not going to use AI and they might even be proud of that in their, in their practice. They might, that could be part of their marketing advantage. 100% organic, 100% non transhuman. Okay, fine, it's good, right? But clients will start to notice that they probably prefer the AI enhanced coach or therapist because the responses are just better. And not just responses are better, but wow. Because the AI has, has, is privy to my conversations with my coach or therapist. And my coach and therapist is very kind to allow me talking to our private, confidential AI Even when I'm not there with the coach and therapist. I can talk to a 24, 7. And then the next time I get together with my coaching therapist, the coach has already seen the coach or therapist has already seen the summary of my conversations with the therapist AI that, that, that my therapist is allowing me to use. And there's probably some kind of licensing fee like, okay, I'm paying not just for my therapist, but I'm paying. Part of my fee includes 24. 7 access to, you know, George Cal coaches AI before I talk to George next time. George. George, of course has the expertise that AI can't have and the human grounded experiences that AI can have. But thank goodness he now has the context of whatever happened during this entire week or this, these two weeks before, until before we met. That, that, that all because problems and, and situations don't just happen right before you meet with your therapist or coach, obviously. Right. It happens throughout the entire week or throughout the entire month. Well, guess what? Now that can be at least having some temporary resolution and some guidance and then we meet and then we go deeper. So anyways, this is just one again. I, I, I, I, I'll end the video by saying this. I think ultimately or from now until then, we just need to keep having this conversation. We need to keep observing what smart people are doing in our industry and in related industries. What are they doing to incorporate these, these new tools to add more value to their clients, to make themselves even more indispensable. What are the smart people doing? Let's observe that and then let's see what parts of that we want to also incorporate into our work. Because what other choice do we have? Well, choice, like I said, you go 100 organic and non transhuman and yeah, there may be a future for that and I'm sure there will be a niche for that. I just, you know, based on, based on what's happening and based on my observations. Funny thing, not funny, but it's just true that humans seem to adore AI responses when they don't know it's AI. Now I think over time as AI becomes embedded into everything, people are going to just be normalized that of course you have AI this, AI that it's being normalized. And it's going to be kind of weird that some people, it's kind of like, some people go like graphic. If you work with a graphic designer, I'm sure some graphic design says I don't touch the computer, I do everything by hand. Right. And I'm sure there's a niche for someone who does everything by hand. Graphic design. It's just, you're like, well, can you, I don't mind if you use the computer, if it's faster and if it's, if it gives me more options. Right. The client is gonna be normalized that it's okay for anyway. So I look forward to seeing your comments below and thank you for, for being in this conversation together. I just want to add one more thing to say that you know what I'm talking about here sounds foreign and alien, right? To, to some of you who haven't, who haven't been diving into these, these, these tools for the last two years, year and a half, like I have, I've purposely done it so that it's become more normalized for me because I see the future. And if it's like maybe, maybe not in 2025 that we're going to have this AI service provider, you know, partnership, so, so soon. But I'm guessing 2026 is going to become extreme, increasingly normal that, oh, if you work with a business coach, if you work with a therapist, if you work with a graphic designer, if you work with a mentor, a healer. Wait, you mean you can't talk to their AI in between sessions? You just, you have to text them, you have to email the human being. You just. It would, I think it's going to seem anachronistic, it's going to seem old school by 2026, 2027, to not be able to just have sort of like an assistant. It's just like, you know, when you work with someone who has an assistant, you don't expect to, well, let me wait for the business owner to get back to me. You talk to the assistant if they're available at whatever it is, scheduling appointments or confirming certain details. But, but you, if the assistant is trained, right, like, like my AI will be trained on all my courses, all my books, all my blog posts, all my videos. And wouldn't it be nice if you're working with me, to be able to. Well, first of all, to be able to pay less if you say, well, I don't want the meeting with George human option because that costs his time. Can I just meet with the George AI option, which is way less, I can charge you way less for that. And it'll be a monthly subscription or some, or some kind of thing, some kind of payment that I'm sure is going to be win, win for both of us. And it's going to be like, all right, I'm going to talk to George AI because all the courses, everything's already there. Why don't I just keep asking help? Here's my situation based on George's understanding of marketing and productivity. What would he say to this? Probably. And then talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. By the way, this is already available on my website of an early, early version. If you go to my website, georgecow.com and check out the button on the bottom right, bottom right of my website. I already have my A.I. there. Um, it's, it's only been trained on my blog post right now. I haven't, I have to take it to the next level and like give access to my courses. And it's kind of a complicated thing anyway, but by 2025 or 2026 it's going to be, and probably won't make it for free because otherwise no one's going to pay me for anything at that point. Right? Like, like we're, this is what we all have to keep talking to each other, keep noticing how do humans continue to be able to have a livelihood, to keep adding value, to have the motivation to keep adding value and to be able to be sustained. So therefore, obviously if I'm able to charge for something that my AI does, I have the motivation and the resources to keep improving that AI interaction. And so it's like, and it's like, let's say my client is chatting with the AI and it gets to a particular conundrum where my AI can't answer, then my AI will say, hey, you know what, let me send this email to George with a summary of everything we've said and George will do his best to respond, you know, before our, your next meeting with him or something like that. And so you don't have to have like, you'll be able to use your AI at different levels of touch point with the client. It doesn't have to be some kind of all or nothing, right? It can be light, it can be an assistant of some kind. And so the key is that it's, what it should do is to free us up from things that are lower order tasks. If it should free us free for the service provider like you and me, it should free up time and energy and spaciousness for us to imagine the next level of our service provision. Imagine how we can emphasize and express our energy signature even more powerfully in our work, in our content, with our clients and to say what is the most essential and irreplaceable energetic exchange I can have with my client that AI can't replace yet. Right? And so it's like, rather because there's so much of what we already do, you know, like notice that you probably say the same thing. If you have lots of clients, you probably say the same thing to multiple clients. And at some point, which is why a lot of people who do one on one services, at some point, they're like, I'm tired of one on one. I want to do group now because I'm tired of saying the same thing to, like, 50 different people, 100 different people. Right. Like, it's going to free you up to a more, you might say, spiritual level of work. So I hope this is uplifting and hopeful, and I look forward to seeing your comments below.