Have you ever stood beneath a sky completely free of light pollution?

I'm 39. I've travelled the world. And I can count on one hand the times I've truly seen it: on safari in Kenya, on a yacht off the coast of Italy, and in the mountains of Pai in Northern Thailand. That’s it. So in over 14,000 nights I have only ever seen the night sky clearly a handful of times.

It stops you. It humbles you. And it makes you realise something important: every single person on Earth deserves to see that sky. Not once in a lifetime. Every night.

Now ask yourself this: how many times have you experienced that same feeling in your own mind? That rare, undistracted, fog-free clarity? Probably just as few times.

That's not a coincidence.

Thomas Edison gave us the lightbulb. Humphry Davy gave us the first lamp. Both are extraordinary. Both changed the world. But somewhere along the way, we stopped asking whether we were using light wisely and started using it everywhere, all the time, without question. It disrupted wildlife. It disrupted us. We traded the stars for convenience and didn't notice what we lost.

AI will follow the same path. I'm certain of it.

Why I'm qualified to say this

In March 2026, I completed my 600th coaching session. Since 2023, I've worked with over 500 clients. I don't call myself an expert. I don't call myself a businessman. If you asked me to describe myself honestly, I'd say I'm a man who is deeply curious about the human condition and who wants to help people move through it.

And right now, I'm worried. I feel that coaches, the people genuinely intent on changing lives, are under attack.

The world is struggling at a rate I've never seen before. More grey than light. More noise than clarity. And at this precise moment, when people need real human support more than ever, the coaching profession is under threat.

My DMs, like yours, are filling up with marketers and AI developers telling me I should be using artificial intelligence to coach my clients.

Tony Robbins now has a 24/7 AI. I respect Tony Robbins enormously. I do not respect that decision. I wonder if he'll rethink it.

The moment that said everything

A marketer reached out to me recently. His pitch was simple: "Greg, you should have an AI coach your clients."

I didn't dismiss him immediately. I asked the question. "How is that possible for life coaching?"

He listed features. Capabilities. Efficiencies.

So I told him about one of my recent clients. A millionaire. A man who walked into his own home and found his wife in bed with someone he worked with. A man who, in that moment, made a decision that sent him to prison. He shot the man in the leg. A man who now wants to rebuild his life from the ground up.

I asked, "How does AI coach that?" His answer? "Easy." I stopped the conversation there.

And if you're a marketer, a developer, or an AI builder reading this, I hope you stop too.

This work is ancient

Coaching, in its earliest form, traces back to Socrates. Thomas J. Leonard formalised it as a profession in the 1980s. But the foundation was never a methodology. It was never a framework. It was a human being with lived experience sitting with another human being and helping them move forward.

That cannot be replicated by a language model.

Every week, I speak with people who have considered ending their lives. Over one million people have already attempted to use AI chatbots to navigate suicidal thoughts. Some did not survive those conversations.

Read that again. AI psychosis is real.

I feel comfortable sharing this now. I have been cheated on. I have been devastated by someone I trusted. I have sat in the dark and considered not going on. I was coached out of that hole by another human being who had faced their own darkness.

That is why I do this work. That is why I was built for it. And that is what makes me the right person to sit with a man coming out of prison, wanting to rebuild his life. Everyone's story is different, but I've walked through the same fire. I know what the other side feels like.

An AI has not. It never will.

I'm not anti-AI, I'm pro-human

Let me be clear, I use AI. I use Otter AI to record my sessions. I use Gemini for image creation. I use a GPT to check my spelling and grammar. I'm not naive, and I'm not a Luddite.

But we are drowning in AI slop right now. So much of it, it's become wallpaper.

I would never take its opinion on a human life. Because it has never lived one.

And to those who ask, "What about the people who can't afford coaching?" I hear you. Join a community. Read a book. Call the Samaritans. Reddit. There are human options. We should be building more of them, not replacing the ones we have.

AI has its place. It may even have a role in business coaching. My friend Jonathan Maltby made me think seriously about that. But in the life coaching space, where we deal with grief, trauma, identity, and survival, it should not be permitted to operate. Not because it's conscious. But because it cannot feel. It cannot empathise. And it cannot love.

The why always wins

I grew up before the internet. I watched the dot-com boom arrive with extraordinary promise, and I watched most of those businesses fail. Not because they didn't know what they were building. Not because they didn't know how. But because they never asked why.

AI is heading down the same road. Most of what is being built right now will fail, not because the technology isn't impressive, but because the people building it are asking the wrong question. They're asking how to make money. They're not asking how to help people.

Most are only interested in themselves. If you are building an AI life coaching tool for no reason other than profit, I'll say it plainly:

Shame on you. Life is not a market to be captured. If you're a coach, please share this.

What side will you be on?

Because the people we serve deserve better than a shortcut.