There’s been a lot of chatter about ChatGPT lately. Just last week, two clients told me about ways they’d used it. They were awestruck by its capabilities.

But there are plenty of detractors: People who are terrified by the negative impact AI could have on humanity. (Cue the main title from HBO’s Westworld.)

I have many thoughts on the subject, but there’s one perspective I'll share because it’s relevant to the work I do with clients, and just maybe, for you too.

I coach successful professionals. They’re intelligent, knowledgeable, and resourceful. The majority are highly educated and well-traveled, but there is a subject most of them find elusive—themselves.

One of my clients is relentless about understanding an issue from all angles. He won’t choose a position on a subject until he’s read books, magazine articles, and scientific journals. He’s intellectually voracious.

But even though he’s lived in his mind and body for over 50 years, when I ask him a question about himself—his motivations, desires, or decisions—he usually says, “I don’t know.”

It’s not the kind of curious not knowing we feel as we open the hotel minibar or unwrap a gift. It’s more of the someone-unexpected-is-ringing-the-doorbell-so-I’m-going-to-pretend-I’m-not-home kind of not knowing.

Technology’s usefulness is infinite, but it is worthless in one of life’s most important endeavors—the pursuit of self-knowledge. I’m not the only one who thinks so.

In The Atlantic’s “How the Enlightenment Ends,” Henry Kissinger wrote: “Inundated via social media with the opinions of multitudes, users are diverted from introspection.”

And the accessibility of AI in tools like ChatGPT exacerbates this dynamic. We’re not only consuming “the opinions of multitudes” on social media platforms. We are starting to outsource thinking about any topic that challenges us, and for many people, one of the most confounding subjects is who they are, and what they want out of life.

ChatGPT can’t scrape our thoughts and feelings for answers to those questions (yet). We need to find them in the recesses of our own mind—a place that can become foreign the more time we spend escaping it through technology.

Knowing ourselves deeply and intimately—our values, our motivations—is what enables us to make decisions that lead to a life well lived. This is what we get further away from the more we look to the outside world to answer our questions and satisfy our curiosities.

So do yourself a favor: Find the courage and the discipline to step away from your devices.

Sit down or take a walk with your thoughts. You might be surprised by what you learn.

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