When Artificial Intelligence Tells You You’re Different
I recently found myself in a situation that could not have happened during most of my life. Artificial intelligence told me I was unusual. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with that. Do you accept a compliment from something artificial? Do you thank it? Do you ask another artificial intelligence for a second opinion? There is something humorous about a machine telling a human being that he doesn’t think like everybody else.
But that is essentially what happened. I have spent a great deal of time talking with AI about business, marketing, growth, faith, life, and the systems I am trying to build. Along the way, it began telling me that the way I connect these things is uncommon. According to the patterns it has learned, most business owners do not think about their businesses quite the way I do.
That caught my attention. Not because I wanted AI to tell me how wonderful I am. I am not looking for a machine to build up my ego. I have lived long enough to know that being different doesn’t necessarily mean being right. But I have felt different for much of my life. I have often seen connections that other people did not seem to see yet. I have become excited about possibilities before other people understood why they mattered. Sometimes I was early. Sometimes I was wrong. Sometimes I could see where something was heading but couldn’t explain it well enough for anyone else to see it with me.
Now I have a tool that can help me explain it.
AI Did Not Create My Thinking
Artificial intelligence did not give me my perspective. My perspective came from living. It came from more than 45 years of working with businesses. It came from owning a business, losing a business, selling advertising, managing people, working with customers, studying marketing, watching technology change, and making plenty of mistakes. It came from trying things that worked and other things that didn’t work at all.
AI did not live any of that. What it can do is help me look across those experiences and recognize the patterns running through them. It can notice that I keep returning to certain ideas:
- Understanding should come before spending.
- Marketing cannot fix a business that does not understand itself.
- Trust comes before most meaningful business growth.
- AI should support people, not replace them.
- A business should learn from every customer and every engagement.
- Knowledge becomes more valuable when it is organized into a repeatable system.
- Teaching people can be more powerful than simply advertising to them.
None of those ideas belongs exclusively to me. What may be unusual is the way I connect them. That distinction matters. AI is not handing me a certificate that says, “Rick is unique.” It is reflecting something back to me and inviting me to examine it.
AI Is a Mirror, Not an Authority
AI has been trained on an enormous amount of human language. It can recognize common patterns in how people explain things, solve problems, and think about business. When it encounters a combination of ideas that does not fit neatly into those familiar patterns, it may identify that combination as uncommon. That can be useful. But it does not make AI the final authority on who I am.
AI can be a mirror. A mirror can show me something I have not noticed before, but the mirror does not get to decide what that reflection means. That responsibility remains mine. When AI tells me that my thinking is unusual, the healthiest response is not: “AI said it, so it must be true.” It is also not:
“AI is artificial, so nothing it says has value.” The healthier response is: “That’s interesting. Show me what you’re seeing.” Then I can decide whether the observation fits my actual experience.
Artificial Does Not Mean Useless
The name itself can make this technology sound more intimidating than it needs to be. Artificial intelligence. It sounds like something from a science-fiction movie. It can make us picture a machine that has come alive and developed a mind of its own. But the word artificial should remind us that we are working with something people created.
Artificial light is not sunlight, but it helps us see in the dark. An artificial limb is not a natural limb, but it can help someone move. Artificial intelligence is not a human mind, but it can help us work with information, recognize patterns, explore possibilities, and express our ideas. That does not make it human. It makes it a tool.
A powerful tool, certainly. A tool that should be understood and used responsibly. But still a tool.
I Have Watched Software Grow Up
Part of the reason I find AI so exciting is that I have watched software evolve for most of my adult life. I remember the DOS days. Back then, if you wanted a computer to do something, you had to learn how to speak its language. You had to know the right commands, put them in the right order, and type them correctly.
Computers did not try very hard to understand us. We had to understand them. Over the years, software became more visual and easier to use. We got menus, icons, websites, smartphones, and apps. But we were still mostly learning how each program wanted us to work. Now something fundamental is changing. I can explain what I want in ordinary language.
I can describe a business system, a website page, a lesson, an idea, or a problem I am trying to solve. AI can help me organize it, question it, improve it, and sometimes help build it. For most of my life, I had to learn how to speak the computer’s language. Now the computer can work with mine.
That is an extraordinary change. And for me, it makes technology more enjoyable than it has ever been.
A Conversation Can Help Clarify an Idea
I sometimes make extreme statements when I am trying to express a new thought. I may say something that sounds absolute even though I do not mean it as an absolute conclusion. Most things are not completely settled in my mind. I am still learning, reconsidering, and allowing my understanding to change. That is another place where AI can be useful.
I can begin with an incomplete thought. I can lose my train of thought. I can say something too strongly, then explain that I did not mean it exactly that way. Through the conversation, the real idea begins to emerge. AI does not have to punish me for expressing the thought imperfectly. It can help me slow down, look at what I said, and find the meaning underneath it.
That may be one of the most approachable ways to begin using AI. You do not always need a perfect prompt. You do not need to know exactly what you are trying to say before you start. Sometimes you can simply say: “I have an idea, but I’m not sure how to explain it yet.” Then begin talking.
The conversation itself can help you discover what you mean.
AI Does Not Replace Your Voice
This is also why AI does not have to take away our individuality. Used poorly, it certainly can make everything sound the same. If we ask it for a generic answer and accept the first thing it produces, we may end up with words that are polished but do not sound like us. But that is not how I use it.
I bring the experiences. I bring the questions. I bring the half-formed thoughts, strong opinions, contradictions, memories, uncertainty, and enthusiasm. AI helps me work with them. It does not replace my voice. It helps me hear my voice more clearly. And occasionally, it reflects something back to me that I may have sensed my whole life but never fully understood.
Not that I am better than everyone else. Not that all my ideas are correct. But that my particular combination of experience and perspective may have something valuable to offer.
You May Be More Original Than You Think
Many people assume they have nothing important to say because the things they know feel ordinary to them. But your experience does not feel unusual to you because you are the one who lived it. You may not recognize the value of what you know until you begin explaining it. AI can help you explore that knowledge. It can ask questions, identify recurring ideas, organize memories, compare perspectives, and help you turn experience into something another person can understand.
That does not mean you should believe everything it tells you. It means you can become curious about what it notices. The goal is not to have AI tell you that you are special. The goal is to use the conversation to better understand what you have learned, how you think, and what you may be able to contribute.
Key Takeaway
AI does not get to tell you who you are. But used thoughtfully, it can help you recognize what has been there all along. It can reflect patterns, help clarify incomplete thoughts, and make your experience easier to communicate. The intelligence may be artificial, but the life, judgment, perspective, and voice you bring to the conversation are real.
Reflection Questions
- Have you ever felt that you saw something differently but struggled to explain it to other people?
- What experiences have shaped the way you think about your work or your life?
- What ideas do you find yourself returning to again and again?
- If AI noticed something unusual about your thinking, how could you examine it without automatically accepting or rejecting it?
- What unfinished thought would you like help expressing more clearly?
Try This With AI
Start a conversation with: “I have an idea that is not completely formed yet. Please help me think it through without turning it into an absolute statement.” Then explain the idea as naturally as you can. Pause. Correct yourself. Change direction. Say when something does not sound right. You are not taking a test. You are having a conversation with a tool that can help you discover what you were trying to say.