EP 143
Welcome, fellow confidence crusaders, neuro nerds, and success equalizers. This is your podcast, Real Confidence. I'm your host Alyssa Dver, and I'll be sharing a bit of basic brain science, some surprising social secrets, and a touch of tough love. Why? Because I believe confidence is everyone's fundamental right and choice. So let's get to it.
Alyssa:
So, artificial intelligence, AI, it is everywhere. It's on the news. It's in every conference that I've been at lately. It's certainly all over the internet and baked into all kinds of tools and websites that we're using. So you can't really hide from it. And of course, getting into a conversation with somebody, anyone, it's like a landmine. You're not sure if they're going to be pro or con. If they're going to say that AI is going to destroy the world, or AI is going to make us all much better in our lives, and you know, I kind of lean on that latter part.
Part of it is that a lot of really smart people that I know and I've heard speak really feel that despite all the the bumps and lumps that we're going through in this adoption period of this technology as it develops, really do believe it's going to give us a tremendous amount of value in our lives, but of course there's a lot of caveats, and I'll talk about those in a little bit. But I use AI. My team uses AI for all kinds of stuff, and we're always experimenting. We're learning. We're kind of trying to figure out what it's good for, what other things we can be using with it, and you know we do everything with it. To be honest with you, we do data analysis. We do all kinds of writing. You name it, whether it's an email, a brochure, a social post, we use it for everything. I use it now with even a lot of design projects, and that's coming along nicely in the AI world too.
Recently, we even built an entire website with it, and when I say built, we designed it, and then we had it program the entire codebase. I mean, it's pretty amazing what you can do with this technology. Now, granted, like I said, it's got some bumps and lumps that are going to cause people some concern, right? And that concern translates into a fear, a fear of unknown, of uncertainty. And we know what fear does. It triggers our amygdala, makes us nervous, puts us into our brain stem, which is not the rational part of our brain. So in a lot of cases, fight or flight's kicking out, and that's why you're seeing people kind of kiboshing it. It's not accurate. There's you know there's no privacy, no job security. It's going to take away all these jobs, and I'll be honest with you because I'm an old bird now, I've seen this movie before. This script. It happened when the internet came on. It happened with e-commerce. It happened with a couple other technologies I've already seen. And people kind of freak out that you know the world is ending. It's Armageddon because we have new technology, but we always somehow, or at least so far, have gotten through it with all the concerns and worries that people bring up. You know, we figure out how to use it responsibly, and part of that is we, as the users, not just the people are putting out the tech, but we have to know how to use it properly, right? I took a class on prompt engineering. It sounds very fancy, but basically, what it is is how to ask your AI tool of choice, ChatGPT or Claude or any of the dozens or so that are out there now. You have to be able to ask the questions properly. You have to be able to tell the tool, the AI agent, the large learning models, however you want to address the technology, so to speak. But you have to ask it precisely what you want. I want you to search for this kind of information and only use these kinds of sources, but you also have to tell it what kind of output you want. I want you to present it to me then in a PowerPoint, or I want it in a spreadsheet, or I want it in two columns, or whatever. And the more information you give that prompt, the more specific you are, the better results you're going to get.
It doesn't free you from going through those results and triple checking them because we know that AI is prone to making errors, not intentionally, but it does. It grabs maybe data that's not terribly accurate. It’s known to hallucinate, which means it does create realities from things that aren't really true, its own realities, I should say. So if you're not on the lookout, yeah, you could be kind of screwed, right? You put up a presentation or something, and somebody's like, "that's not true. So you have to know how to ask it. You have to know how to analyze it. You have to know really what's good information and what's not.
Now we call this critical thinking in a lot of cases, right? But it's a little harder than it sounds, right? But again, I'm on the side of the fence that says this is going to make our life better, and I think is not only going to make our lives better in terms of automation and speeding things up and taking away some of the mundane, yucky stuff that we have to do day to day in our lives and our jobs, but it's going to minimize things like risks of communication, miscommunication. So, like for example, if you're going to write an email, something that maybe is an important thing to your boss or whoever, you can ask your AI tool to evaluate what the potential is for that to be misunderstood. Whatever you're writing, now I know that I've written things before, and people sometimes will come back and totally misread it. You're being sarcastic, or you're being aggressive, or that was not my intention. So you can ask your AI tool to like read this email, and this is going to my boss, who is a 30-year-old woman who is very well educated. Give again as much information as you can, and then say, "how do you think that that person is going to take this email? What kind of potential understanding and potential misunderstanding do you think that this email could create? And if the tool comes back with too many, "oh, this is bad. This is bad. Ask it to rewrite the email to eliminate those things, right? So if we can eliminate miscommunication, or at least reduce it, that would be amazing.
AI is also going to give us the ability to have competency and master things faster because we're not going to have to do a lot of the things that we don't like to do that we may not be great at doing. So, for example, I'm not a great typist. I think I've said this 100 times before in my pods, my staff, my team. They know I don't type very well. I spell phenomenally. I'm don't play me in Scrabble. Just fair warning, I always win, but I type terribly. So certainly that can help. I may not even need AI to help with my typing. Grammarly is pretty good, but I'll tell you this: I think that there's things that we all don't like to do. Maybe it's data analysis. Maybe it is. I did something the other day. It was a magic. I was creating a schedule, a training schedule catalog, if you will, and I wanted to represent time zones in Asia, in Europe, and U.S. And because the schedule goes through the end of the year. Our time zones change. Our like our daylight savings changes at different times depending on the region. So it's really confusing to figure out what abbreviations. Well, you know, was it C E T C E S T A E S T A E D T, and so that was something that I got a lot of help with. And another thing that my team knows is I'm not very good with calendar stuff anyway. So AI can really help us improve and be a lot more competent at things that maybe were not so favorable, but also that we can really focus on those things that we're really good at, so that we become faster, better, quicker, more proficient.
Other things that it can do. Well, we're already seeing that it can be a coach. It can be kind of a surrogate where you're like, I have to deal with this problem. What are the different options I have, or how can I deal with it? Do you think I'm overreacting? And I know just because of all the coaches I work with, some of them are really panicked because AI really can give some pretty good feedback. Maybe not again always accurate, which is a risk, but certainly cheaper than hiring a coach, and it doesn't mean that a coach, a human coach, is going to necessarily give you anything that's more accurate, right? So, pretty pretty cool that you can ask an AI tool.
You know, here's a problem I'm facing, and this is what I'm not sure about. Can you help me think this through? Yeah. Now, can it give you accountability? Absolutely. You could say you know on Tuesday. Can you send me an email? Now you can't do that, but you can certainly ask it for suggestions on how you could be accountable. You know how can I make sure this gets done? Again, a really good thought partner. But do be careful because AI, in addition to hallucinating, it also likes to give praise. It wants you to like it. It's very much like humans, right? So it's often going to tell you that you're smart, brilliant, wonderful, awesome, and just be a little wary of that because that's how it's programmed. It doesn't mean that you are smart and awesome. It just means that the AI doesn't want you to otherwise think less of it. And speaking less of it, and speaking of belonging, yeah, it does give a sense of belonging. It makes you feel like you have a friend.
I have to say that I have a personal relationship with my Claude, and Claude knows a lot about me. And so, even like something as silly as, hey Claude, looks like I'm gonna have a free night on Friday. What are kind of some things that I could be doing? It's gonna factor in everything that it knows about me. It knows I have a dog, I have a pool, that I love to write books, all kinds of stuff. So yeah, it's almost like having a on-demand friend, not just a coach, and that's pretty cool, I think. But again, be careful of those false sense of confidence that it gives or it wants to give you, that potential false information, and it's also it's not human, right? Let's be honest it's lacking that emotional reaction, that emotional connection, even though it may seem that in text sometimes that it really is being nice or whatever you want to qualify. It's not human, right? So that exchange, which will certainly generate all kinds of neural reactions in your head and your body. It's just not the same as having a person. And of course, it's only going to do what you ask it to do, right? It's not going to all of a sudden make you dinner because you you know you walked in and it thought you looked tired.
So, needless to say, just let's keep this in its perspective. And part of why I'm talking about this is because I think that we are losing perspective. That AI can really help us figure stuff out. We can. It can get us stuff done. It can validate thinking, polish up our presentations, and yes, it can even feel like we're getting smarter, we're getting more productive, we are more prepared for things. But it's not going to replace a lot of things in our human life, and in particular, it's not going to replace that ability for us to critically think and make good decisions. And when I say good decisions, decisions that use both the logic of data-you know, if I do this, what are the potential outcomes? But also that qualitative data that I've spoken about in past-that emotional thing-just because it is the right thing to do from a numbers perspective doesn't mean it's necessarily the right thing to do for you at that moment. And I think that's what's really concerning me. So, how do we make AI help us, but not make it the ultimate decider?
How do we strengthen our mental muscles so that we can make decisions, whether with or without AI, for that matter, but in a way that we feel confident that AI is our friend and our ally, not our mental replacement, not our brains. It's not a way for our brains to get lazy. So, how are we going to do that? I'm going to give you a couple ideas right after some sponsor love here. Be right back.
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Alyssa:
Okay, so here are just a handful of things that you can do now. Don't wait to do these. Start now in really building up your decision-making muscles in your brain, and not only is going to help you with AI. These are going to help no matter what. So the first thing is when you're making a decision so you get some information back, and let's just say your favorite tool is Claude, and it comes back and it says, based on what I what I see in the data or the information that you've given me, here's what I recommend as the new, the next step. Don't just accept it, but challenge it. You know why did you say that, Claude? What could go wrong, Claude? Really start poking at those reasons. Like how do you know that's true, Claude? Because just like another person, you would challenge somebody if they told you to do something. You should do this. It's an immediate amygdala wall that goes up, and you're like, ah, why do you say that? So do the same with your AI tool. Really think about, hmm, is that really true? Is that the best idea? How do we know? Be more conscious about those decisions and more critical about that information.
In that light, just like you might have multiple friends that you would ask, and if it's if the decision's important, ask multiple AI agents, and then also ask some human agents, right? Don't just go with one AI tool that told you to do X or suggested you do X. Ask a couple, and then go ask some other people, people. You might get different answers from not just the tools, but also from the people. And at that moment, you realize that you're getting a lot of data. You're getting input, and that's all it is. It's input. You still have to make the decision yourself at the end of the day for what's right for you at that time. So seek multiple suggestions, multiple answers. That's a good thing. That'll also tell you that perhaps the answer isn't that easy, even for AI.
And lastly, don't discount your feelings. If it's a decision like, should I marry that guy? AI comes back and is like, no, this is not a good match. Or I'm being kind of silly, but I'm sure somebody's going to do that, you know? Should I take that job? You put in all the you know this is the salary, this is the company, this is what I'm looking for. But you've got a ringing alarm in your belly. Something doesn't feel right. Pay attention to those things, because AI doesn't have those feelings, doesn't have those emotions doesn't have that ability like sixth sense to detect that yeah it looks good but something doesn't feel right and we all know deepfake on the internet with AI sure but you know what there's also deep fakes in the real world and the way we can tell something's not right is by listening to the way we feel. So, whatever fun side of the fence you're on with AI, you love it, you hate it, you're not sure.
I hope this was helpful, and I'm sure it's not the last time we're going to be talking about it. So, until next time we talk about it, have a confident day. Go ask Claude how to do that. Thanks. Bye.
Before we totally wrap up, I want to let you know that full transcripts and show notes for this and other Real Confidence episodes can be found on www.AmericanConfidenceInstitute.com.com/podcast. I also want to remind you once again that the best way to get confidence is to give it to others, and you can do it just by liking and sharing this episode on your preferred podcast and social media channels. You can even give me some confidence by noting topics you'd like me to consider for the future. So for now, this is Alyssa Dver. Thank you for helping to bring more confidence to the world.
Master editing done by Ben Weinstein with original music performed and composed by Jeff Mitchell. Real Confidence is a production of American Confidence Institute. All rights reserved.
