How to Use ChatGPT Without Sacrificing Your Originality
Artificial Intelligence is the most useful thing ever invented since the Internet. But like any tool, whether it’s effective depends on how you use it. A hammer is an excellent tool in a woodshed; it’s an insanely inappropriate tool for brain surgery.
If you just copy and paste whatever ChatGPT spits out, yeah, your content will feel generic and bland and like everyone else who does it the lazy way. It won’t sound like you (i.e., what your audience is really craving). It won’t connect with others, as it simply contributes to the noise of mindless internet content.
But if you want to stand out — and leverage AI’s capabilities in a way that makes your message stronger — consider the following workflow:
I always start with my own ideas, on physical paper, with a physical pen, and a physical cup of coffee. This is my time to be messy and let my thoughts flow as they come to me.
I have a conversation with ChatGPT. The application can actually read human handwriting, so it’s as easy as uploading a picture of my journal, and asking it to organize and expand on my ideas. Then, I go back and forth with it, telling it what I don’t agree with and adding any new ideas that come to mind. It takes about 3 rounds of back-and-forth before the AI and I are in agreement on style and substance.
I manually rewrite everything before I post. The words have to come out through my fingers, into my keyboard. As I do this, my brain naturally makes adjustments to the verbiage (I’m literally doing this as I write this post). It reads and sounds like me.
Think of AI tools like ChatGPT as a language calculator. Language isn’t exact like math, but AI helps me organize my thoughts and lends something of an objective perspective to my ideas, which gives me confidence in what I’m saying. And it does it quickly — it takes me farther and faster than I could go on my own.
But I’m ultimately the one in control. I get the final say on what gets published — AI simply rides shotgun.
The brands that will die off when the AI bubble pops are the ones replacing humans with AI; the ones who will thrive in the Intelligence Age use AI to enhance our unique qualities as beings with natural intelligence.
