AI Coaches: It Has Never Been So Easy to Become Excellent

Never before in history has it been so easy and inexpensive to be excellently taught, advised, and coached. What used to be reserved for only a few – a personal teacher, a dedicated trainer, a career mentor at your side – is now practically available to anyone who owns a smartphone.

The reason: AI systems are evolving into personal companions that know our strengths, weaknesses, and goals, continuously adapt to our development, and challenge us in a targeted way. They listen, provide individual feedback, never lose patience, and are available to us around the clock.

This will fundamentally change the education sector. For the better! Because it's not about outsourcing knowledge and no longer having to exert our own brains, but about acquiring skills in a targeted, situationally appropriate, and highly individualized way. Learning is likely to become significantly more fun in the future!

The Khan Academy has developed an AI tutor called "Khanmigo" that supports students in their learning and adapts to their individual learning progress and pace. This involves not just answering questions but also engaging in interactive conversations that foster critical thinking and help students better understand complex concepts.

The Alpha School in the USA takes an even more radical approach: its students complete the classic academic curriculum in just two hours a day, accompanied by highly individualized AI tutors. And they achieve results that place them among the top two percent of all students in the country.

What has been considered the ideal of educational research for decades – highly individualized support tailored to each person – is now becoming possible on a large scale for the first time, thanks to AI.

In the field of sports and health, too, AI entities are increasingly taking on the role of personal coaches.

The "WHOOP Coach" from fitness tracker manufacturer WHOOP analyzes individual sleep, recovery, and training data, answers personal questions, and provides tailored recommendations: How intensely should I train today? How can I improve my sleep quality? When does my body need recovery? The AI coach knows the personal goals and physical conditions of its user, learns from their data, and is available around the clock. A personal trainer for everyone, not just top athletes.

Such data-based assistance systems could evolve into AI coaches that accompany their users for years, understand their physical and mental development, and provide individualized support for training, nutrition, recovery, and a healthier lifestyle. By exchanging information with other AI coaches and applications used by the user and linking their insights together, they could also align their recommendations across different areas. This would create holistic, individually tailored coaching that goes far beyond the capabilities of individual apps and human trainers.

Another area where AI entities will increasingly challenge and support us is career development. The US provider BetterUp combines human coaching with AI-supported programs that individually support employees in their professional development. This offering is by no means used only by start-ups: corporations such as Salesforce, Google, and Hilton rely on BetterUp.

Anyone wishing to prepare specifically for a job interview or an important public appearance can already practice today with AI trainers such as Yoodli. The AI takes on, for example, the role of a critical interviewer, asks spontaneous follow-up questions, and then analyzes speaking pace, filler words, and eye contact. This allows difficult conversational situations to be practiced as often as desired, with individual feedback and without any stage fright in front of a real audience.

Education, health, career – AI companions are emerging everywhere. Technological progress will make them increasingly useful to us. In both the virtual and physical world alike.

AI entities are being given faces and are integrating virtually into our social environment. They will increasingly be able to recognize our emotions and respond to them appropriately. In AR/VR, they can show us how to produce, operate, or repair things.

Other AI entities are being given a body. The number of humanoid robots delivered per year is expected to rise from 16,000 this year to 26 million by 2040 (Berg Insight, 2026). This opens up an entirely new dimension of personal coaching: humanoids can directly demonstrate physical skills and complex sequences of actions to us, train together with us, and individually correct our movements and actions. Thus, AI becomes not only a conveyor of knowledge but also a personal master teacher for practical skills.

In the future, the decisive question will no longer be who can afford excellent support, but how far we can grow beyond ourselves once every person has their own personal master at their side.