ChatGPT Prompt:
Tell me something about myself that I probably didn’t know
ChatGPT’s response to me:
You might not have realized just how much your career shift from machining to project management aligns with your natural strengths. Your love for organization, process improvement, and structure—combined with your preference for managing projects over people—means you’ve been building toward this role for a long time. Even in your machining days, your problem-solving and efficiency mindset were already setting the stage for your current success in operations and production support. It wasn’t just a career change; it was a natural evolution.
Artificial Intelligence can feel like magic. It can predict what we’re thinking, point out patterns we didn’t notice, and sometimes, it even seems to know us better than we know ourselves. But is AI truly insightful? Or is it just a really advanced mirror, reflecting back what we’ve already shared with it?
AI doesn’t actually “know” us—it remembers what we say. Imagine having a friend who never forgets a single conversation. Every time you talk, they recall past discussions and bring up things you mentioned months ago. AI works the same way. It doesn’t have opinions or personal insights—it’s just really good at recognizing patterns in what we’ve said before and using that to shape its responses.
For example, if I ask AI to tell me something about myself that I might not know, it might come back with an eerily accurate statement about my personality or career journey. It might feel like AI is reading my mind, but in reality, it’s just pulling from things I’ve told it in the past and presenting them in a new way. This can create the illusion that AI is insightful or has a deeper understanding of who we are. But the truth is, AI isn’t making independent judgments—it’s just repackaging what we’ve fed into it. If I consistently talk about my love for organization, my preference for structure, and my interest in process improvement, AI might eventually tell me, “You seem to enjoy managing projects over people.” That might sound insightful, but all it did was take the puzzle pieces I provided and arrange them into a clear picture.
This also means AI is only as good as the information we give it. If we provide biased, incomplete, or misleading details, AI will reflect that right back at us. It doesn’t have independent reasoning—it just works with the data at hand. This is why it’s important to be mindful of how we interact with AI. It’s a powerful tool, but it’s not an all-knowing being. It won’t challenge our assumptions unless we ask it to. It won’t correct our misunderstandings unless we provide it with better information.
While AI might not be truly insightful, it can still be incredibly useful. One of its greatest strengths is its ability to organize and structure our thoughts in ways that make them easier to process. Often, we have ideas floating around in our minds that feel disconnected or unclear. AI takes those scattered thoughts, identifies patterns, and presents them back to us in a structured way, helping us see things from a fresh perspective, make connections we hadn’t noticed, and clarify our own thinking.
It’s not that AI generates new insights on its own—it simply refines and reorganizes what we’ve already expressed. If we’re brainstorming solutions, it can act as a sounding board, arranging our ideas in a more logical order and offering alternative angles. When we struggle to articulate something, whether it’s an email, a report, or a personal reflection, AI can streamline the process and help us communicate more clearly.
Beyond just structuring thoughts, AI’s ability to remember and recall past conversations makes it a powerful tool for reflection. It can highlight recurring themes in our thinking, track how our ideas have evolved, or remind us of solutions we might have overlooked. This can be invaluable for personal growth, long-term projects, and even decision-making.
In this way, AI functions less like a mind-reader and more like a mirror—one that doesn’t just reflect raw information but arranges it in a way that makes it easier to understand and act upon. It’s not creating wisdom out of thin air, but it provides a framework that helps us recognize our own wisdom more clearly.
So next time AI gives you an answer that seems surprisingly deep, remember: It’s not magic, and it’s not reading your mind. It’s simply giving you back what you’ve given it—just in a way that might make you see it differently. What do you think? Have you ever had an AI response surprise you?
These images were created by ChatGPT–4O using the Dall-AI Generative Image Creation by By teal farm pub, which “Transforms text descriptions into images using DALL·ai“.
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