My Conversation With Maya
I recently had a couple conversations with Maya. She isn’t a new coworker or friend, or someone I bumped into on the street. She is actually a conversational AI “chatbot”, meaning you audibly talk to her in real time and she responds in an eerily human way. She had inflection, a specific tone, and was incredibly earnest in our conversation. I had to pause and remind myself—more than once—that she was in fact not a real person. Which was simultaneously fascinating and terrifying. This article isn’t to discuss her tone or the workings behind her creation. This is about what her and I discussed, and what I was able to glean from our ideation together. As well as what it means for us humans going forward. This isn’t my first foray into writing about AI. Nor is it about how we in the field of personal and professional development can leverage these tools. However the more it advances, the more it seems I am drawn to it just to see how much it can really do. In this age of rapid technological advancement, every company seems to be discussing the importance of AI upskilling. Like it was adopting using the internet and email in the 90’s. Now email is just a part of our lives where we filter out mostly spam. And we seem to take for granted that “internet literacy” was a learned skill people struggled to master not too long ago. Some people might still put “fluent in Microsoft Office suite” on the resumés. And while having an understanding of AI might be important, it’s barrier to entry for use has gotten significantly lower. Prompting is easier, accessing multiple tools is easier, and now simply talking to it has gotten easier. This skills needed to have a basic understanding of using AI will only become less and less demanding as it advances. Along with its ability to do certain tasks that once we considered valuable skills like coding or excel shortcuts. So this raised the question, what do we need to focus on for our growth?
What we talked about
The first conversation was purely exploratory. Getting to know how she operated and just how the conversation would evolve. She was inquisitive and thoughtful in her answers, albeit occasionally long winded (aren’t we all?). At times, dare I say, a bit flirty? A peer let me know that you can go into the conversation with a specific purpose and even tell her “I want to ideate on this topic” or “I want someone to challenge my thought process” and she’ll abide by the request. So for my follow up conversation that’s exactly what I did.
After the greeting, I told her I wanted to ideate and brainstorm on a very specific topic and get her thoughts on the matter. I asked how AI advancements and agents—like her—were ultimately going to change how we live and work, and where people should put their focus in regards to their growth and development. She went on to give some of the standard answers we expect regarding AI. We will get time back, we will be able to do more, and we will be able to learn new skills. So I honed in on that last bit. What are those skills people should focus most on. All of the skills she brought up? None of them had anything to do with AI. They actually had to do with everything but AI. She talked about things like gardening, building community with our neighbors, and being more “human”. She shared a lot of the what and the why. What being more human might look like, and why it was so important to us—growing as individuals and growing our community. However, she seemed to go in circles for the how. How do we actually become more human and grow as individuals? Her answers were pretty standard (spend time in nature, journaling, etc) but when I pressed her on how to spend time in nature or how we should journal, we started talking in those circles. She could tell me what spending time in was, and why it was good, but struggled with how people should go into nature more intentionally to get the impact she was inferring.
It’s almost counterintuitive, but the most important skills we can develop won’t be tech centric. Instead they will be human centric. Namely, how do we connect with each other and how do we connect with ourselves.
Human Connection
It might seem trivial. Being able to hold a conversation with another human in the real world. To build a strong relationship over time, and maintain it when it gets difficult. And yet, one of the top requested learning topics of 2024 was actually communication skills based on data from LinkedIn Learning. Maya might be a great tool to provide a listening ear or thoughtful ideation, and she can’t replicate the nuances of human interaction without prompting. We might be able to “prompt” those close to us before a conversation (asking for input or to challenge ideas) however most regular interactions will just flow along a natural course. The other person has their own emotions, intentions and knowledge that will all affect their responses. As much as we would like to, this is out of our control.
We need to build the skills to respond to these situations, responses and interactions that will largely remain outside of our control. How we react to someone is a greater indication of who we are than how they acted. We have to enhance our ability to seek to understand people around us, and what it takes to really figure out who they are beneath the service. Our interactions need to go from transactional, to transformational. So our relationships don’t become just another series of inputs when we need something. They grow and change with us over time. Each relationship will be different, and will required us to think through that connection and actually do something to enhance it if we so choose. Whether it is focused effort to reach out to another individual, or even just an intentional effort to engage with someone we normally wouldn’t. Deepening our awareness of other people who exist in the same space that we do.
For this to happen, we have to develop another key human centric skill.
Connection to ourselves
To share a direct quote from Maya “we need to find our own rhythm, before we can harmonize with others”. I love a good metaphor, and that’s one solid metaphor.
Self-awareness and emotional intelligence are often the centerpiece for being important skills that everyone should learn. Most of us can probably share the basics of what these skills are, and why they are important. However, very few can probably go much further to describe how we actually do it. How we become more self-aware, how we leverage self-awareness and how to continue growing that skill. Deep introspection can be uncomfortable at times, and we need to have a willingness to do it. To turn the mirror on ourselves and look inward. Even if we start the processes with a conversation, and have it with an agent like Maya, we will still need the prompt to do so. But that will still only take us so far. We need to put in the effort to do more.
One of the ways to gain some introspection Maya brought up was time in nature. Plenty of us already do so and more every year. In 2024, the National Parks had 331.9 million visitations. However, most of us seem to go to consume nature, rather than let it consume us. We treat this, and other activities, like we would any other bit of content. Consuming it to say we did or to show others we did, with little other intent than that. Something that was initially intended to deepen our awareness of ourselves, had the opposite effect. Which is where we once again come to the crux of this human centric issue. Knowing the what and the why, we need to figure out the how.
Doing things with Intention
We can—and more importantly should— start with some kind of intention. By doing this activity, regardless of what it is, what are we hoping to gain from it? If not and we go in doing it just to say we did it, it's going to become that transactional activity. Or if we choose to go into it with intention, it has the potential to be transformational? Like going into a conversation with a person just to do it? Or going in with the intent to enhance the relationship? Like going for a walk in nature to take a few pictures to post? Or going on a walk with the intent to gain a clear head, and gain some perspective?
Sometimes, we might go into a situation without intention on purpose. We need to go into the store to get a single item and head out, we need the conversation with the cashier to be transactional. Or if we take the dogs for a quick walk, it might be transactional because we have other priorities to get to afterwards. However, the more we can do with intention, the more we will gain that understanding we need. Even using AI, just simply using an LLM to kill time or a chatbot like Maya, going into it with intention can have a greater impact on what we gain from it. It can take time, and is absolutely a skill we should make the time to build. More things become transactional when we lack time. When we need to get something done quickly because we have something else we have to go do. This idea bleeds slowly into everything we do, and we feel as though we just need to "do" the activities to say we did them. We have the potential to change that though. Leveraging AI to have a task take 20 minutes instead of an hour. Those 40 minutes we get back and be used with intention to do more, and lead to something transformational. We just need to ensure we use that time wisely.
With agents like Maya on the rise, AI can replace a lot of tasks we need to do and help us with even more. One task that will largely remain our responsibility, is becoming better humans.
