Somewhere today, someone used AI to write a cover letter that sounds nothing like them. To craft the perfect text back. To edit their dating profile to make sure only their good side shows.
We're all doing it.
And we’re losing the truth of our humanity because of it.
The danger isn't the tool. It's that we're letting it speak for us – and it has no interest in accuracy. Only appeal.
Since this is an article, let me explain why that matters with a Steve Jobs history lesson...
It’s 1983, and Steve Jobs is seven years deep into Apple’s story. At this point, he’s looking for an operator, and the perfect pick appears before his eyes - or so he thinks, oOoOooOo.
His name is John Sculley, and he’s the CEO of PepsiCo. On paper, it’s the perfect fit.
Sculley is what the industry calls an “adult supervisor,” an experienced CEO who can provide insight to the younger, inexperienced founder. He’s got a proven track record in marketing for a well-established company. So Jobs makes the deal, and they start working together immediately.
It was a disaster.
Despite the company’s growth, Jobs and Sculley clashed over everything. Jobs wants to innovate for the future, Sculley wants to keep things how they are. Jobs wants to price cheaply and distribute widely, Sculley wants to hike up prices to maximize profits.
After three long years of disagreements, Jobs realized his mistake and tried to have Sculley removed. In an ironic twist of fate, Jobs was voted out of his own company and resigned later that same year.
But is Sculley a villain, evilly taking over Apple for his own nefarious purposes, maybe with a mad-scientist-worthy cackle in the background?
Not at all.
Although unfortunate, both Jobs and Sculley felt the effects of their constant disagreements. It simply wasn’t a fit. Jobs saw the resume. Not the person. And they would have both been better off if they had known that from the beginning.
So what needed to change?
For one thing, a large part of this problem could have been avoided if Jobs had understood himself better from the beginning. If he had understood his mode of operation clearly enough, it would have been much easier for him to make hiring decisions with that in mind.
This also requires Jobs to pre-emptively communicate about who he is. Maybe, if Sculley understood Jobs’ goals and personality well enough, they both could have determined that it wasn’t the right fit before things went completely downhill.
Ironically enough, thirty-three years later, it’s now harder to fix these problems than it’s ever been.
Jobs' problem was that he had no way to see past the surface. Ours is that we're actively building better surfaces.
In the age of AI, the human voice is getting more and more scarce. Weaknesses are brushed under the rug by LLMs who can turn any person into a marketable, hirable, dateable cardboard prop.
And as we spend less time remembering our humanity, we forget the things that make us human. We struggle to communicate our differences and the things that determine fit.
Again, we’ve all been there: generating our resumes so that only our good side shows, editing texts and messages we send to the folks we're dating, updating our Hinge bio prompts to optimize for better convos when it's not even how we naturally speak...
But all that means is that AI is flattening our entire personalities, making our 3D selves into a 2D impression that’s the same as everyone else.
But tbh I'm still super excited about AI, because I genuinely believe we can build towards a better world. A world where we can use the new technology we have to see the real people around us — not just the version they've prepared for us. A world where computers don't understand us more than we understand ourselves.
A world where we can find where we truly belong.
That work starts with every single one of us.
It starts with us remembering that the most important signal you send is your genuine self. You shouldn’t have to outsource that.
At Trove, we're building tools to help you understand yourself better than AI ever could. We're hiring, so any of this interests you, I'd love to connect!
Top comments (0)