Now I know what you’re thinking, “why choose to use AI?”
And at the end of week one, I can confidently say, “why not?”
I suppose I should preface this a bit. Life happens to us all and I was suddenly plunged back into the job hunt by forces way beyond my control. So I did what any sensible human would do. I panicked. And then subsequently broke out a resume that obviously hadn’t been polished in a number of years. Facing the quest for a new job with old skills and a degree that’s going stale, I first had to overcome barrier number one:
How do I get my resume to survive the online AI filtering process?
These aren’t questions I’ve ever had to ask before. And honestly, my hunt for a job that utilizes my skills is still ongoing at the time of writing. But I again chose the sensible option.
I decided to have another human or two look at it. More specifically, management, to see exactly what they’re looking for. This process helped me definitely refine my resume, and definitely organize it better.
But my next question was one that changed the course of this whole journey. At this point, maybe I would have been better off without having asked that question. However, I do have substantial reasoning why it could be the best decision I’ve ever made. That I leave entirely up whoever decides to follow this journey.
How do I know my resume is good enough for AI?
There was only one logical next step.
I chose an AI client.
I set the parameters of what I want with a prompt or two.
I fed it my resume.
And I let it generate a response telling me everything that was wrong with it from its point of view that I could fix that could get me noticed by employers.
But honestly, this wasn’t that impressive.
What was impressive was that it gave me a critique of my work history based on what employers are looking for.
But it didn’t recommend many changes.
A formatting point here. A duplicated mark there. Simple fixes.
Nothing broken.
But it helped.
I’ve started getting interviews. My resume is more organized.
My human input is largely unchanged.
But I still used it. Maybe it was just for a simple check, but I still used it. I did a majority of the legwork myself. I knew what I was doing prior to using this tool (and yes that’s especially something to keep in mind, it is a TOOL). How much have I actually needed a tool like that in my life though? It helped with an organizational task. It systemized something.
This was my thinking. I’m already a primarily structured human being. I build habits. I set routines. I systemize my work. Furthermore, I mentioned my degree was getting stale. Ideas started occurring to me. Maybe I could use this to refresh my degree. Or maybe I could take that a step further and just learn independently. After all, some of the greatest thinkers did their best work independently.
Nikola Tesla comes to mind…
How could I keep my degree relevant in an ever changing landscape that’s adopting AI?
I had no choice. I have to learn the technology that’s sneaking its way into our lives or be replaced by it.
Realistically I have 30 or more years still left in the workforce.
I thought about doing something about that too.
A lot of ideas and thoughts occur to you when you’re forced into survival mode. A lot of things can change very quickly, as AI is proving to us from the inside out. I think the question remains though:
How do we stay human in world that’s being swarmed by AI?
Well, first of all, that’s why you’re now reading this. In an attempt to remain human, I’ve decided to keep a blog that goes completely untouched by AI. I want to measure a number of things personally. Namely: how my views change, how my writing changes, how I organize my thoughts, how much AI helps, how much AI hurts. By the end of my journey here, maybe I’ll gain a significant viewership, maybe I won’t.
The goal isn’t viewership or number of clicks. The goal is documentation. And I know that sounds like a cheesy AI line, but whatever. It IS clarification. And it helps.
Regardless, this was my crossroads moment.
Do I pick it up and adopt it?
Or struggle to maintain any sense of agency in a rapidly evolving world?
More importantly. I had only loaded one prompt. I was ripe in mind with hobbies and questions and ideas. I didn’t exactly know where to start next. I uploaded my newly refined resume and let the algorithm do its thing after that. The application process continues either way. I’m still human. And so are hiring managers.
What was my second prompt going to be? What could it possibly do for me?
And that was it.
Why don’t I just ask it what else it can do for me first? So that’s what I did. Lo and behold, it generated quite a list of available things it could function as. And that was that. My creative juices were flowing. It presented the most important tool I’ve ever needed.
A way to organize all my thoughts, ideas, and projects in one place where they could grow.
So I created an account with ChatGPT
And thus Project Hermes was born. Named after the messenger god, I designed a specific chat and prompt in plain English of exactly what I intended to do with it.
Brainstorming.
And if one doesn’t know at this point, ChatGPT is excellent tool for brainstorming. And so my framework became organizing my hobbies into different active projects.
But this fractal’d. Once I was well satisfied that my hobbies were organized in each chat, I made a measure of what I could steer each chat towards. Each chat became a project unto itself with further development and by the end of week one, I already had 15 active projects with 5 chats already archived. This has already been a significant leap in use. But the ease of organization is what needs to be emphasized here. I simply told ChatGPT exactly what I wanted in plain English and I accomplished an organization goal that’s been holding me back for years.
I free’d up so much of my own time in the process of building projects in the beginning, that a thought occurred to me though.
Can I ask it how it’s built?
Or better yet.
Can I build my own?
I was seeing the use case. I was seeing the advantages. I was seeing an optimized workflow.
I started asking questions about building my own AI system and Project Theseus was born days later. I had an AI system tell me something was within my grasp, so I clung to that vision. And the very first thing we began doing was designing Theseus from the top down.
Everything fractal’d out from there.
We started building a design philosophy. Started saving documentation within GPT’s limits. And started creating a plan. The more we talked the more the plan developed. Before long, the Project chats eventually spiraled into a variety of planning phases. As I suggested more ideas and asked more questions, GPT provided answers and foundational ideas. Things I didn’t think were possible for me were suddenly emerging.
Project Theseus wasn’t the only initiative I wanted to push though.
I started doing something I didn’t think I’d ever do.
I asked it about potentially building my own business.
I don’t want to sound generic here, but it wasn’t that it laid out a solid plan to build a business, it’s that I already had an idea in mind and it made it seem achievable with my knowledge base. So Arasmas Labs was born and we began a planning phase for a website initiative to track my progress and all my projects.
Because this is an end of week one piece. I stayed committed for one week and so far this is where I’m at. Again we have to mention the 15 active ongoing projects under purpose built chats and 5 archived chats. I’ve downloaded other AI tools for further mentorship and capabilities testing. I have 12 named Projects that I’m actively updating. I have 8 different brand assets completed for my potential business. I’ve built architecture for 5 major systems to be used throughout my chat interface and beyond. I’ve accomplished roughly 20 significant milestones as far as learning web development with AI, among other accomplishments. I’ve started working on at least 10 more technical skills that can potentially be added to my resume later.
That’s a lot.
Not to mention the numerous generations of PDFs and image generations from hand drawn art to produce the logos. In short, I’ve been busy.
BUT
We must document EVERYTHING.
Without documentation, this entire journey is a complete waste of time.
But this is just the end of week one. The only limitation is me. I’m the only thing standing in my own way from using this tool as intended, as a tool to optimize workflow. Or to forsake it and try to make my way on my own.
I think I’ve made my mind up at this point. The writing stays human. The AI stays a tool. I’m already learning so much from it that it can be used as a mentor tool as well. It’s just a matter of how I use it in the coming days.
Eventually, I’ll move to updating this blog more regularly. For now, it’s just communication with the outside world while this project remains primarily solo. I have human contact outside of AI, so it’s not like it’s consuming my life. I also have dogs I need to be mindful of that are demanding of attention.
So as a week one summary, I can conclude that this will be an ongoing growth project. How much can AI teach me? How much can I teach it?
And most importantly,
Can I build my own platform that’s modular, personal, and private?
We shall see. For now, the journey is in my hands and I’ll steer the ship as we go.
We’ve got places to go and people to see.