AI is smart.

I keep hearing that today’s AI “isn’t really thinking,” that it’s just predicting the next word. Technically, sure..

But let’s be honest, AI is really smart.

• Ask AI a question, and you'll get a genuinely smart answer.

• Need creative ideas? It delivers impressive ones.

• Whether it's coaching your professional growth, guiding your finances, crafting personalized workout plans, or refining your emails, AI handles these tasks impressively well.

Are there issues? Absolutely.

• Can you trick it and find ways it breaks? Yes.

• Does it fail in certain areas? Definitely.

But despite these limitations, AI is still remarkably smart. Right now. Not sometime in the future "when AGI arrives," but in its current implementation.

Acknowledging this can help us use AI more effectively. Instead of fighting it or finding reasons not to use it, we should embrace it. It’s unsettling, it could be coming for jobs, and it’s certainly scary, but it’s here, and it's definitely here to stay.

But acknowledging AI’s intelligence doesn’t mean we simply hand over the keys and call it a day.

AI isn’t here to BE YOU. You still need to be yourself. I think we can all agree we don’t enjoy reading LinkedIn posts that are entirely AI-written. We follow each other because we want genuine thoughts, real opinions, and insights that reflect what we'd say in person.

So, there’s an important tension between being your authentic, human, thinking self and leveraging AI because it is smart and incredibly helpful. Where exactly is that line? Obviously, it’s inauthentic if every word in a LinkedIn post is written by ChatGPT - that’s clearly not what we want to read. But does every word in an email need to originate entirely from my brain? Can AI help sharpen my wording choices? Is it still authentically me if it helps just a little?

Determining this line is something we all need to grapple with. My best suggestion is to start using AI a lot, practicing and experimenting, to find exactly where your personal boundary lies.

Bottom line: AI is smart, let’s acknowledge that clearly. Say it with me. AI is really smart. We don’t fully understand what this means yet, but we should definitely be using it more every day. At the same time, we must carefully balance leveraging AI with maintaining authenticity, ensuring that what we produce genuinely matches who we are. Otherwise, if we just put out exactly what AI says, aren't we simply replacing ourselves?

Stay human. Use the tools. See what happens.