Interviewed by AI
This morning, I broke my habit goal of not reaching for my phone until all the morning routines important to me are complete.
I scrolled, either on LinkedIn or Instagram, reading a post that said, "How to Introduce Yourself in an Interview." Except I glanced so quickly at the posting that I thought it read, "How to Introduce Yourself to AI."
Initially, as I sat with the thought of such an introduction, I was creeped out because the idea felt too close to personifying AI. But as I considered it further, I couldn't help but infer the practicality of approaching AI in this way.
Interviews are our chance to make impressions, and it's through these impressions that people often judge and treat us. So, what if, instead of jumping into an AI tool and straightaway asking it questions or describing what we want, we spent some time giving context about our role, goals, tasks, audience, impact, past experiences.
Investing a bit of time upfront to share context helps us learn how to treat AI like a persona rather than a tool. After all, it's people who enter inputs and consume outputs. So if we extend that rationale, it becomes clearer that AI might better satisfy our human nuances if we approach it in this way.
Perhaps we aren't far from being interviewed by or interviewing AI. But for now, if we treat it as a persona, it might serve us in ways sensible to human beings. That feels more effective than limiting its autonomous decisioning to simply an information servant.