I recently received three instances of AI generated content that were personal: a ‘photo’ of me, a ‘recap’ of one of my articles, and an ‘explanation’ of a decision facilitation model I spent decades inventing.
Photo? My photo (see graphic) is a near likeness. Obviously me – long curly white hair is one of my ‘features’ – but about 15% ‘off’: forehead a bit higher, hair just a bit curlier, eyelashes not as long. But so close that people who don’t know me would assume it was real. A friend said it was missing my ‘sparkle’.
Article? The article recap http://bit.ly/4lf6vfD surprised me. Two lovely people – colleagues maybe? – seem to be having a charming conversation about my tour de force essay on how sales became what it is now (95% fail-to-close rate; focus on the Sell Side with no Buy Side assistance that restricts the target audience rather than a broader group currently managing their buying decision journey.). The original essay –Let’s Make Sales Relevant Again – is filled with nifty insights on the makeup of the decision teams at the core of the buying process: the AI version misses the nuance and doesn’t quite understand the differences between how buyers by vs how sellers sell. It’s ‘almost’.
People unfamiliar with my work or haven’t read the original article wouldn’t fully understand the history of how buying decisions have changed since Dale Carnegie invented the current solution-focused sales model, and why it’s necessary to add new thinking to correspond with today’s environment.
Definition? The third instance, the ‘definition’ of Buying Facilitation®’, is the most disturbing. Someone sent me ChatGPT’s interpretation (different from Perplexity’s version that’s a bit more accurate) of Buying Facilitation® that’s just plain wrong, although it does mention me as the inventor. But that’s where the accuracy ends.
Using an amalgam of the most used terms and standard assumptions in sales, there’s no precedent for my work for AI to cull from except for my own articles and books …obviously a drop in the ocean of available information on ‘sales’.
The current information available on ChatGPT makes Buying Facilitation® into just another ‘sales’ model transposing my original ideas to the opposite meaning and intent (the Sell Side).
If a reader is unfamiliar with my work or the model, they would mistakenly assume ChatGPTs version is correct, and my work, my decades of inventing, training, and writing hundreds of articles and books (including one New York Times Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity) to provide sellers tools to actually help buyers buy and my focus on sellers becoming true Servant Leaders, would be lost forever. This one disturbs and depresses me greatly.
THE DOWNSIDES OF AI
Obviously there are great upsides to AI in medicine and science. When used correctly it can be used as a teaching tool to help students learn, as does Kahn Academy, or as an idea generator. But when used for research, it has real flaws:
- When we assume the information AI offers us is accurate and we use this as the basis for research, decisions or actions, we miss the full fact pattern, nuance, or range of ideas and knowledge available.
- It reduces the time we spend creating or thinking up new ideas.
But the problem is much broader: AI not only proliferates misleading and inaccurate information but reduces natural discussions and debates on the edges where change emerges. It reduces new idea generation.
THE SADNESS OF AN ORIGINAL THINKER
AI negates – by definition! – original thinking.
As an original thinker, I’ve spent my life unpacking the route between the conscious and the unconscious to make it possible to facilitate permanent change: decision making, behavior change, cultural change, from the origination point in the neural circuits in the brain; 10 years inventing a wholly new form of question (Facilitative Questions® are brain directional, not information-gathering) that lead Others, without bias, to where their decisions arise so accurate, congruent decisions can be made quickly; a way to listen without bias; a change management model that includes risk management, etc.).
AI provides composites of conventional, tired thinking: Questions biased by the verbiage, goals, and intent of the Asker; ‘behaviors’ seem to arise from the sea like Venus with no attachment to the neural circuits they arise from; decisions made by weighing options instead of weighing the belief-based criteria from where they arise.
Is this the accepted norm when it’s possible to think differently and assure different results – results that trust that Others have their own answers, with no bias from an influencer?
Since the customary approach to change is behavioral (it’s not possible to permanently change behaviors by trying to change behaviors without getting to the source that generated them) my work, and that of other original thinkers whose work challenges the status quo, faces extinction if AI merely uses mainstream words and ideas to interpret it.
I’m not the only one who is afraid. How do we address this?
How do we insure that original ideas and models get shielded from being smooshed into existing ideas and models, and the new, the original, the very developments that bring the world forward, get maintained?
How?
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Sharon-Drew Morgen is a breakthrough innovator and original thinker, having developed new paradigms in sales (inventor Buying Facilitation®, listening/communication (What? Did you really say what I think I heard?), change management (The How of Change™), coaching, and leadership. She is the author of several books, including her new book HOW? Generating new neural circuits for learning, behavior change and decision making, the NYTimes Business Bestseller Selling with Integrity and Dirty Little Secrets: why buyers can’t buy and sellers can’t sell). Sharon-Drew coaches and consults with companies seeking out of the box remedies for congruent, servant-leader-based change in leadership, healthcare, and sales. Her award-winning blog carries original articles with new thinking, weekly. www.sharon-drew.com She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com.