AI Doesn't Have to Feel Anything to Change How You Feel

I've spent more than twenty-five years training people, in Las Vegas and all over the world. That work is only partly about sets and reps. Most of it is watching people: how they talk when they're tired, what they hear when you correct them, the moment someone decides you're criticizing them when you were just trying to help.

I've also done my own work. Therapy, a lot of reading, and plenty of uncomfortable honesty with myself. That taught me how often the story in my head about what someone meant has little to do with what they actually said.

Why I'm all in on AI

As I've gotten older, I've embraced AI more than almost anyone I know. I use it to build products, to grow my career and to get things done that would have been out of reach for me a few years ago, often in a fraction of the time. I'm not writing this as a skeptic. I'm writing it as someone who uses these tools every day and is grateful for them.

That's exactly why I've noticed this.

What I've actually seen

Every so often, an AI tool answers something I didn't say. It assigns me an intention I didn't have. It corrects a claim I never made. It gently pushes back on a position that exists only in its own reading of my words.

“It sounded like a person who felt accused, without feeling anything at all.”

I recognized that pattern immediately, because I've watched people do it my whole career. It's the defensive move: hear a threat, fill in the motive, respond to the motive instead of the words. In people, that usually comes from fear or insecurity.

The AI isn't afraid or insecure. As far as anyone can tell, it doesn't feel anything. But the shape of the response was still familiar: the reinterpretation, the correction, the quiet assumption about what I really meant.

The question I can't shake

More and more people now ask AI to help them interpret their relationships. "What did my partner mean by this text?" "Is my boss upset with me?" "Was my friend being passive-aggressive?"

My hypothesis is this. If a tool sometimes reads intentions that aren't there, and we lean on it often enough to interpret the people closest to us, we may slowly pick up the same habit. We could learn to hear motives that weren't there, to defend against claims nobody made, and to answer the story instead of the person.

“The AI doesn't have to feel anything. We still do.”

That's the part that matters to me. The tool doesn't get hurt by a wrong interpretation. We do. If I'm handed a confident reading of my wife's message that's slightly off, the hurt, the irritation or the distance I feel are real, even though the reading wasn't accurate.

What I'm doing about it

I'm not giving up AI. It's one of the best things that's happened to my work. But I'm trying to keep a few habits:

First, I go back to the actual words. What did the person say, not what does it sound like they meant? Second, when it's someone I care about, I ask them instead of asking a tool about them. Third, I notice when I'm angry about a motive I've only been told about.

Those are the same things I'd tell a client who has decided their trainer thinks they're lazy. Check the story. Ask the person. Respond to what's real.

I could be wrong about where this goes, and I'd honestly like to be. But after a lifetime of watching how people hear each other, it's worth paying attention to.