Coaching to Fight Social Deskilling in the Age of AI

Connect Students to their Humanity

As humanity continues to unpack the cautions and opportunities of genAI — an ongoing process with seemingly no end in sight — concerns grow about the social costs of genAI use. As social beings, one of the most important continual learning experiences of our lives involves interaction with other humans. Interpersonal skills lie at the heart of personal and professional success. However, humans being widely variant and unpredictable, social interaction is challenging, often messy, and demanding of attention and constant practice.

We learn what we practice. What happens if interacting with genAI feels easier than dealing with human beings? If interpersonal skill practice is replaced with ChatGPT interactions, there is a risk of what ethicist Kwame Appiah and others have referred to as "constitutive deskilling" (empathy, discernment, creativity, and meaning-making, as explained in this article in Psychology Today) as well as "emotional offloading" (which NYU vice provost Clay Shirky describes in this article as "the use of AI to reduce the energy required to navigate human interaction"). Both writers caution that this offloading and deskilling could reduce human agency and lead to unwillingness to risk errors (one of life's greatest teachers) or discomfort (a natural part of many human interactions). Furthermore, as early research is showing, the preference for sycophantic AI that agrees with the user can reduce tolerance of other opinions and inflate a sense of personal correctness.

Coaches, you are in a position to go against this tide, and reintroduce students to their humanity. How?

• You are already part of the solution by interacting with students directly, personally, and authentically. Coaching sessions can be a training ground for social interaction.
• You can encourage and facilitate additional interactions, especially when students are resisting out of fear. Within the safe space of your conversation, you can encourage a student to email a professor, register for a meeting with a TA, or even plan a phone call.
• You might share information and research about genAI and the risks of using it in certain contexts. Provide facts, and invite students to reflect and respond with their thoughts and experiences. 
• As you ask questions that engage the coaching principles of agency and coachees being experts on themselves, you provide consistent invitations for students to engage their intuition, risk exploring their own ideas, and build trust in themselves.

Learn more about how educators can tackle the challenges of genAI in the coaching space. Join LifeBound for training.

• 3-Day Virtual Coaching: Next Class - February 23, 25, 27
• Self-Paced Coaching: Choose your own dates!
• Coaching Certification: Summer Cohort Begins May 26

 Explore which course is right for you at www.lifebound.com.