In a world where AI is having greater and greater input, there’s so much of ourselves we need to know about before we give all of who we are away.
A client of mine, in the Middle East, has written a book showing what knowledge truly is. It certainly encompasses what we learn in school and through extensive reading, yet it also entails what we intuit, what we know instinctively, as well as what we learn through prayer or meditation and through a knowing we can not define.
She wrote this book because of her experiences as a college professor and watching her students refer to AI for answers rather than thinking them through and sitting with how they felt inwardly about their findings.
I have used ChatGPT to get outlines for a talk or a presentation on a podcast yet filled in the details myself based on my experiences in my industry. A dear friend told me yesterday that she has just discovered that I could put a batch of my written content into the professional version of ChatGPT and ask for a rebranding direction including all the material needed, saving thousands I would have paid to a graphic designer or rebranding expert.
There is certainly a seduction to not hiring professionals and spending long hours, days, weeks, even months on a rebrand when it can all be done in a matter of minutes through AI and doing so for only $10-$20 a month through a paid AI subscription.
Seduction is appealing and yet, always, I feel the need to ask, “Who am I?”
Can anyone or anything actually encompass who I am and what I bring to the table?
Can a non-human present my passion for watching people get “IT?” for reading what even they can’t see as I watch them challenge themselves to risk what they never imagined risking?
Can AI bring the most authentic of human needs, from the soul and heart level to its writing?
I am fully aware that my questioning will not be front page news. It is something so many others with a far wider national and/or global reputation than I have been asking. It brings the question back, nonetheless, to something that was significant long before the concept of the internet, much less AI was present.
Are we willing, especially Westerners, to stop, meditate, and develop an inner life that allows us to see what our soul truly calls us to?
Are we willing to learn through self-awareness and reflection what our values truly are? A
re we willing to completely give up or invalidate the inner knowing of those things that from somewhere inside we know are wrong for us, or at least wrong at the moment?
Before we can assess the value and validity of what AI presents about us individually as well as about us as a human race, we must first know who we are. We could, in ignorance, be giving away intrinsic values we haven’t even recognized or owned. We could be relying on one-dimensional truth when we should be held accountable for all the other modes of learning at our disposal. Could AI tell us much about ourselves based on behavior? Without a doubt, but will it ever be able to understand the human heart and the soul’s longings, purpose, or calling? Never? Those things are left to each of us, individually.
The real question is, “Are we willing to do the work before we forget all the dimensions of who we are?” It’s a question that needs reflection, prayer, and a deep level of inner knowing.
