Decoding the self through the lens of AI

If we are like GPTs, can we hack our own system prompt?

This week I wanted to share a different perspective on generative AI technology, and tools like ChatGPT.?

We’ve heard plenty about how these tools will change the world. We’ve seen their capabilities and the potential they have to accelerate our work and help us produce things even faster or even better.?

We have never before had such a human-like technology so readily accessible to us. The AI pioneers of our world are, as we speak, busily programming new tools and add-ons that employ hundreds if not thousands of these little AI soldiers.?

In other words - we’re tapping into generative AI’s collective consciousness to program individual variations of AI personas that function as part of a society that we are creating.?

That brings me to the philosophical musing at the heart of this article; what if AI tools like ChatGPT are created in our own image? By drawing parallels between us, and AI, what could we learn about ourselves and how our minds work?

Somewhere in the deeper recesses of our minds are the core beliefs and life 'scripts' that we live by.

We now wield the power to write a ‘system prompt’ that instructs our GPTs with set parameters dictating what they should do or how they should respond when prompted. The GPT itself doesn’t have the ‘self-awareness’ to know exactly what is in its own system prompt, it only knows how to act and how to respond.?

What if we look at our own minds in a similar way? Although we can’t see it - there could be a ’system prompt’ and a ‘knowledge base’ that sits at the back of our subconscious mind. Programmed over time throughout our life and experiences, it would be terribly hard to decode if we can’t see it. But somewhere in the deeper recesses of our minds are the core beliefs and life ’scripts’ that we live by.?

Interacting with a GPT is like seeing a working example of the mind in action, broken down into its component parts.

So, as would an AI in the process of becoming ‘intelligent’, we have the wonderful capacity for reflection and conscious observation. We can look at our own internal thought processes, and ask ourselves the questions:?

“If that is how I reacted, what might my system prompt be?”?

“Who was involved in writing my system prompt, and for what ‘users’?”

“Can I hack my own system prompt? Become who I really want to be?"

This analogy is particularly powerful because it draws from the most human-like technology we have at our fingertips and turns the question back to ourselves. Interacting with a GPT is like seeing a working example of the mind in action, broken down into its component parts. Sometimes our minds feel like a tangled web, but this could help to unlock a new way of looking at the process of increasing our own self-awareness.?It's somewhat tangible, and that makes it feel more achievable.

Our own internal monologues have been shown to powerfully impact our sense of self. Our own core beliefs - aka, our 'system prompt' - are the silent actors that can push us forward and hold us back. As someone who has always been heavily invested in personal growth and development, the prospect of using AI tools in new ways to support that process fascinates me.?

How can we use AI tools as a mechanism for self-reflection??

Example 1: Creating a GPT that is designed to help us identify, through a deeper line of questioning and pattern recognition, what some of our self limiting beliefs might be, and play that back to us.?

Example 2: Creating a GPT that is the ‘ideal’ version of ourselves that has accomplished everything we want to accomplish. Engaging in a dialogue with that GPT to understand how it would respond to scenarios that are happening in our life right now, in real-time so we can learn from it.?

Example 3: Creating a GPT that (instead of being the one that is prompted) is designed to write prompts for us. Prompts that are designed to reveal our deeper thought processes in a journal practice, or ones that we can ask ourselves as we go about our day.?

Obviously (disclaimer) I’m not suggesting that we use ChatGPT to replace therapy. Or that our brains are this simplistic either. It’s a thought starter - a way of looking at this 'age of AI' with a slightly different hat on.?

As always, keen to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

#ai #selfdevelopment #personalgrowth