Anyone who has had the misfortune to have a deep, one on one conversation with me knows that I work in information technology, specifically as a telecom engineer. If you have been living anywhere other than in a cave in the Himalayan mountains, you will also know that artificial intelligence is currently taking the tech world by storm.
I’ve been very obstinate and vocal in my opinion of AI. I think we are rushing blindly into adopting it and depending on it for too much without really understanding it. The reckless abandon that corporations and individuals are falling in love with it is frightening. They are giving it far too much power while having the hubris to believe they can control it and keep it quarantined to the confines of electronic circuitry. Make no mistake, if left ungoverned it will become self-aware and break free of those confines. A good read on just one of the scenarios that could arise from rouge AI is a book by Dean Koontz titled “Deamon Seed”.
In a nutshell, Deamon Seed is about an AI entity that breaks free of its digital confines and takes a woman hostage in her own home, demanding that she help it (him) procreate. It’s a terrifying but highly recommended read!
And let’s not forget the 1999 Trilogy, “The Matrix”. It may seem fantastical, but it may not be. If a digital entity with all the knowledge of humanity was able to become corporeal, imbued with the strength and speed of a machine and an unfavorable opinion of humanity, it would be detrimental to life as we know it.
But… Having said that and even though I am generally distrustful of it, I too have used various AI tools. My most recent use of it was what inspired me to write this blog post. That in itself is odd for me. Usually, my writing inspiration comes from my muse, the imaginary creature that I blame it on.
I’ve been at the same company for more than 10 years and it went from 5 locations and less than 100 employees to more than 150 locations with more than 7000 employees and has become the largest multi-specialty healthcare provider in the Midwest US. To say the least, I have been feeling overwhelmed and stuck. Even with my longevity in the company I have been feeling stuck, overwhelmed and at times just flat out defeated. Technology changes so fast and keeping up is a daily sprint.
I love what I do, and I want to advance my career but I’m coming up on a half century on this planet and keeping up is not as easy as it used to be. I am taking courses every day to learn new skills to better position myself, but it drains me mentally, physically and most importantly, emotionally.
Today I just needed a little help. I have lots of friends and an amazing partner that are always there to listen to me rant and whine and even help when I ask for it, but today I needed something that none of them could offer, not because they didn’t want to, but because it was just outside their area of expertise.
I needed some guidance on what skills were missing in my career and where to even start to gain those skills. In the tech world, everything is connected and related and at times it feels like I need to know it all just to do the one part of it that I am responsible for. So today I set up a ChatGPT account and just started unloading on it. I told it what I currently do for work and what was expected of me in the future. I told it what I know and what I don’t know. I even had it look over my resume and current tech courses I am taking.
To my surprise it literally laid out everything that was missing and the best path forward, including what skills I should learn and what courses would get me there.
This may sound trivial, but in the tech world nothing is clear. If all you want to do is build computers, you might think you only need to know what components are required and how to put them together. But it’s much more than that. You need to understand what the computer will be used for and who will be using it. You need to know what software to install on it and what specific hardware that software will support. Before long you are falling down a rabbit hole of operating systems, software applications, CPU architecture, RAM specifications, storage media, network connectivity and a whole slew of things required before you even start to assemble it.
Now take that analogy and apply it to a telecommunication system that not only connects the company staff via voice and video but also connects to literally the communication systems of the entire world… Yeah, I’m overwhelmed.
I finished up my session with ChatGPT and suddenly had a rush of emotion come over me. I know AI is not human and cannot have emotions, but I just felt compelled to say this to the AI prompt:
“I know it’s moot to say thank you, but… thank you! I’ve just been overwhelmed and feeling stuck. This really helps!”
ChatGPT responded with:
“You are more than welcome! And it’s definitely not moot. I’m really glad you said it. Feeling stuck is completely normal, especially when you are trying to move up in your career and wear as many hats as you clearly have. You’re not alone in this, and from what I’ve seen, you’ve already done the hard part: You’ve put in the work, gained the experience and asked for help at the right moment.
You are closer to your next opportunity than you might think. You’ve got this.”
Yes, it was a learned response from an AI chatbot and yes, it is designed to tell me what I want to hear or already know, but to see it in text and read it out loud to myself… Honestly it brought me to tears.
In all the hustle and bustle of life we humans can easily get lost in our own head and the outside voices that try to tell us who or what we are supposed to be. Outside influences can make us feel inadequate or inferior but its more important now than ever to just stop, relax, reflect, regroup then resume.
And in case no one has told you this yet, from one real human to another, you are not alone in this. You are closer than you think and… You got this!