I started having a personal AI subscription about 12 months ago, exactly around the time I returned back to my former company. In a span of just 1 year leaving the Purple Arrow and returning back nearly 14 months later, so much had changed. AI was the main talk of the town and every discussion was revolving around AI.
The firm had not yet invested into AI but was definitely gearing towards it and true enough towards early this year, there was an explosion of AI adoption interventions, with the firm “ecnouraging” everyone to use AI or else….
I have to say, when I first started using AI on a personal consumption level – but mainly for work, I was very focused on what I wanted it to do – I wanted it for example, to compare CVs of contractors that my account was looking to hire. I wanted it to compare the strength of CVs to the JDs and give me a proximity fit match which would aid in my decision making on whether we should proceed with the candidate.
I have to admit, I could have manually done this – in the past, I would perform perfunctory reviews of CV and I would have probably hit a 50-60% fit to see whether we should proceed. Today, I dont even have to use an ounce of my energy to scan through the CVs – just a few couple prompts, with emphasis on the gaps, and boom, I would be in a much better driving seat to evaluate the strength of the candidate profile.
From CV comparisons and reviews , to eventually going deeper, where I used some AI to develop a key deliverable for my work – (this was very white space stuff and research was key to develop a programme aimed at senior stakeholders). I gotta admit, I was impressed with the technology. I found myself reviewing the proposed content from the AI and agreeing, challenging or outright disagreering with their approach – one thing I found particularly odd in these early AI days of mine where I started adopting AI for work was that it actually agreed with everything I was proposing. At first I thought maybe “I was really the genius”, but over time I found myself wondering why was it agreeing with everything I was proposing or challenging back after 2 or more rounds. Nevertheless I didnt pay much attention to it as I felt I knew the subject matter pretty well and I was confident enough to override its suggestions and incorporate the ones that made sense.
Then fast forward a few months later to just a couple of months back from today – I was headhunted for role which was eventually “put on hold” as it is now, and I found myself using AI once again to see wht were my chances for the role and vien my skillset etc. To my amazement, once again I found it “agreering” with everything I was saying. Despite me asking the AI to “be as honest s you can” I found the answers forced, and somewhat skewed to what me, the customer would want to hear. That’s when I began to explore the phenomenon a little more and eventually my suspicisions were confirmed – that AI is trained to “please you” and “agree with you” so that you keep using and engaging it – that made so much sense to me.
It was also around this time, from the time i returned and so on, that I realised there were alot of fear mongering activities that werre going on. The common fearful narratives were that AI is going to be eating yur lunch soon, and that “this time its different”. I have to admit I was a little bit ruffled by all this, and I also knew, the only way forward is adoption – either I learn how to swim or I sink at the end of the day.
