Molecular Star

Dear World, I can’t be the only one that’s why I feel the urge to share my thoughts on this topic—artificial intelligence makes me feel dumb. 

No matter the field, artificial intelligence (AI) is weaving itself into our everyday lives. We can choose to avoid it in our personal lives, but it’s probably integrated in your job’s computational tools. Frankly, I’ve had to use ChatGPT more than I’m comfortable with lately. After being unemployed for several months, despite continuously submitting job applications that I’m technically qualified for, I began to open up about my resume and cover letter approach to friends in similar positions. They reiterated that the resume is only viewed by a human after it’s been filtered through an applicant tracking system (ATS). In short, AI is being used to assist companies in assessing our capabilities and qualifications. This makes sense as college graduation rates are higher than ever, therefore there’s an influx of job seekers mass applying to roles, and who has the time to review all the applications submitted, right? Anyway, I decided since my method of self-expressing on my resume was not effective I should start using AI to get through AI. This means exposing my resume to be judged by a nonexistent being, which ironically feels quite intimate. In return, ChatGPT kindly tells me that my resume is “on track” but could use “some” improvements, then proceeds to rewrite it. In a way, I’m actually grateful that I have access to this personalized assistance, but I’m also concerned about how easy it is to fall into a pit of self-doubt caused by ChatGPT. If I, an adult, with a fully developed brain and a graduate degree in a science field, am left feeling dumb about the manner in which I’m expressing myself and coming across, how are the younger generations feeling about expressing themselves in a world that heavily involves AI. After all, we are each just one brain.

I share my experience using ChatGPT for job hunting because I know way too many people relying on AI for whatever their needs require. Do you need to think of a party theme, build an algorithm for organoid training, or think of a low-risk, high-reward, no-chance-of-failing business idea? Whatever the need, AI is there for you. AI is there to be your therapist and tell you you’re amazing and you’re worth it at any given moment. But, do we rely on AI because we feel our thoughts are not good enough? How do we overcome the feeling that we are missing something? With AI, we don’t have one brain, we have access to the knowledge of the world in a matter of seconds.

AI will continue to improve in every field and we should expect that. If you’ve gone this far without using it, I genuinely applaud you because there’s been an overwhelming use of AI in every context. I intentionally did not use ChatGPT or any AI assistance for this post, mainly to prove to myself that I could still write. Now, I’m left a victim of my own free will, wondering if any of this makes sense and if I’m getting my point across in the manner in which I intended to. All this to let you know that I can relate if AI has made you feel less than.