Within seconds, a business owner can ask an AI tool for marketing ideas, a business plan, a policy template or recruitment advice. Information that once took hours to find is now instant. Which raises a fair question: has mentoring started losing its human touch?
Information has become easy. Understanding has not.
AI is genuinely good at finding patterns, summarising and generating content — a business plan, a job description, a checklist, in moments. At the time of writing, AI tools cannot replicate every aspect of an in-person mentoring conversation — particularly the personal context, experience and judgement involved in decision-making. They do not sit across the table from someone who has spent two years trying to get an idea off the ground, or hear the hesitation in their voice when they finally bring up a difficult staff issue. Often the challenge was never finding information. It is deciding which information actually applies to your situation.
More advice than ever, less confidence than ever
Business owners now draw on AI tools, social media, podcasts, industry groups, government websites, forums, consultants, coaches and mentors, often all at once. The result is frequently information overload — a dozen ideas, conflicting advice from every direction, and no clear sense of which path to take. More information has not reliably produced more confidence. In a lot of cases, it has produced more uncertainty.
Real mentoring is more than answers
Good mentoring involves asking the right questions, challenging assumptions, providing accountability, sharing practical experience, and helping someone prioritise when everything feels urgent at once. Often the most valuable part of a session is not the advice itself — it is having someone listen, understand the actual situation, and help work out what genuinely matters.
Every business is different
A hospitality business has different pressures to a construction company. Someone leaving offshore work to start a career on land has different concerns to someone opening their first beauty salon. Generic examples and broad assumptions rarely hold up against a specific industry, a specific set of resources, and a specific set of personal circumstances.
AI is a tool, not a replacement
We use AI ourselves — for research, drafting, generating ideas and improving efficiency. It works best when it supports human judgement rather than substitutes for it. The future of business support is unlikely to be human versus AI. It is more likely to be human experience, supported by useful tools, with a person still doing the deciding.
This is our view on where mentoring and AI each add value, not a claim about what any particular AI tool can or cannot do. Capabilities change quickly — treat this as a way of thinking about the question, not a technical assessment.