AI and you. How are you getting on?
This week my wrestling with Artificial Intelligence taught me some powerful lessons.
Firstly, you can ignore the latest AI tools already available to you.
In doing so, you risk unnecessarily consuming your/your colleagues’ precious time (at one end of the scale).
At the other end you risk becoming professionally irrelevant.
Quicker than you might realise.
However, just as dangerous is the naivety that causes some to blindly accept what is being dished up to them by someone else’s thinking… someone else’s biases… someone else’s algorithms.
Let me share what happened to me this week.
And why it led me to those conclusions.
(Conclusions even more relevant if you’re in a leadership role.)
I wrote an article on LEADERSHIP this week.
An article intended for the features editor of an industry magazine.
Of course, I wrote in my style. My “voice” as the editor called it.
Which was the problem.
Because they loved the content.
But the style they deemed “Unsuitable for our readers”
So, here’s what I did next.
I opened ChatGPT (the free version)
And inserted the editor’s comments about style.
Then I inserted my article…
asking ChatGPT to rewrite it.
Retaining my content, while using the editor’s style guide.
10 seconds later I had a fresh article.
10 seconds!
20 minutes later I had rewritten that “fresh article”…
ensuring that MY vocabulary was not overridden by someone else’s.
The editor LOVED it.
And thanked me for responding with such speed.
(“You’re welcome” 😊)
So, What Lessons Did I (Re)Learn?
Firstly, a recognition that AI stopped being ‘Tomorrow’s World’… many years ago.
It is already here.
Everywhere.
All the time.
Ignoring it, hoping that it will go away…
That stance is how individuals and communities evaporate – like dew in the Summer morning sun.
Secondly, used well, this technology really can save you many hours of unnecessary, consuming work; doing things that others can do better, and have probably already done.
However…the speed of delivery and intense global scientific investment in this technology…lends it a credibility, and assumed accuracy, which is both enticing and addictive.
Which means, that credibility can quickly cause us to forget that what is being served to you… does NOT come from some Fountain of Eternal, Universal Truth.
What’s being served up is merely an excellent summary of other people’s views and opinions and methodologies, littered across the current internet database!
Which leads to this Health Warning…
(Particularly if you’re in a position of leadership.
With responsibility for others’ lives)…
Unless you approach AI with a crystal-clear philosophy to guide your thinking…
You’ll quickly find that others – people you might never wish to meet – are doing your thinking for you!
Allow me to share my Personal North Star on this.
The high-level thinking that guides what I use. And How. And when.
- I’m in this life… to learn how to CREATE.
Not to have others CREATE ME! - I’m here on earth… to learn to ACT.
Not an object to be ACTED UPON! - I’ve been given the privilege of LIVING.
Not BEING LIVED!
The ability of the beautiful Human Soul to create… to love… to have compassion… to live with grace and generosity and kindness.
These are precious gifts.
(Yes, there are more)
We can use our wondrous inventions, our mimicking algorithms, to release our time and energy… allowing us to be that More Human Soul.
Or we can become objects-to-be-acted-upon by (invisible) others.
The choice is stark.
The choice is ours.
Yours. Mine.
What’s YOUR Guiding Philosophy, I wonder?
