24 Jun 2025 · 6 min
George Kao argues paid courses survive AI by offering three things free content won't: deep expertise from lived experience, your authentic style, and facilitated community. As AI floods the web with average information and generated courses, creators should lean harder into what only they can provide.
Hi everyone. So I want to take this short video to talk about what I see as the future of paid courses. Now, first of all, just to take 30 seconds to say I believe that information is worth paying for. Now there's going to be tons and tons of free, there's already tons and tons of free information and it's going to, it's already exploding with the age of AI. However, information, information that comes from a unique human perspective, that has deep expertise in a field will always be worth paying for. And, and, and because AI chatbots will always feed you the most average of the information within a field. I mean notice if you talk with ChatGPT or other AI chatbots about your field, it always is, you know, know, talked about. It's, it's average information. Whereas your unique perspective and life experiences applied to your field is nuanced and will always have, have value. But, but in this age of AI, what is going to happen with those of us who do sell paid courses? Like I said, I'm hoping, I'm hoping that all of you who are watching this, who share information in your social media, who share advice, inspiration, education will decide to charge and charge for some paid courses. I think that's very important. I have a longer video where I try to make the case for that, but now I want to just briefly talk about. Well, now with AI in the next few years everybody is going, most people are going to be using AI very frequently and AI can instantly create a customized course on any topic for you in the next few years. Right now it's all via text, all via words, but in the next two to three years it's going to be AI can create instantly a video course customized to your preferences and to your interests. You know, give me a 3 hour course on XYZ topic with videos that are 3 minutes long so it's easy for me to consume and put it on a private podcast feed for me as well. AI will be able to easily do that in a few years. So what is the future therefore, for us paid course creators? Here's what I think. I think that because AI is always trained on the average of the information on the Internet, when you can present information that is different from the average, that comes from a unique, deep grounded perspective from your life experience and from your experience in your field, your knowledge and your content will always stand out. So deep, nuanced expertise, number one. So you gotta keep keep going, diving deeper and, and find more unique ways of thinking about your field, number one. Number two is that your energy Signature, as a human being, your authentic expression is always going to be different than the average AI, right? The so, so in other words, you've got to keep leaning into your, your authentic expression, your soulful expression. Of course, making videos is a great way to experiment with that and to lean into that even more. But writing as well, okay, but you gotta, you gotta just practice, practice, practice, practice and be brave and bold and practicing expressing yourself and your expertise on, on, on through content, that's a great place to start. And then through paid courses as well, because that kind of unique energy signature is going to draw forth an audience for you that is a true fan audience who resonate with your unique energy. And that AI is having a difficult time replicating because AI is replicating the average of the Internet. Okay? So got to be, be weird, be, be unique, be humanly fallible. All those things AI cannot is, has always trying to play catch up with, with duplicating. So energy signature. And third, third strength for human course creators in the future is going to be the ability to facilitate a co learning experience. So that's something that I think humans will always look, look forward to is to be in an experience with other humans facilitated by a human where they are having, well, human experiences of learning, of failing, of connecting with one another. So the more you can put those kinds of connective experiences into your courses. I mean, notice that all the courses I've launched recently, I have, you know, called them co learning experiences for a very specific reason because I think that's what makes my courses unique. It's not just me telling you stuff and teaching you things. Again, information becomes a commodity, is long, long since been a commodity by this point. But the experience of being with other humans in a connected, warm, authentic, heartfelt experience is always going to be uniquely human, shall we say. So I hope this is interesting for course creators and I hope all of you who create content and want to create content for a living will become course creators, paid course creators as well. So anyway, I look forward to seeing your comments below. Let me know if this is helpful at all. Thanks.
"Be of good cheer. Think not of today's failures, but of tomorrow's successes...”
