Did You Know That AI And Humans BOTH Have Challenges Accepting a Heartfelt and Authentic Acknowledgment?

By Judith W. Umlas
February 7, 2024

ChatGPT did such an amazing job for me today when I gave it a task, that I put a “thumbs up” on its response. This took me to a separate box to explain why. When I returned to the original conversation, I asked it, giggling to myself…  “Did you receive the “acknowledgment'” I sent about you in the personal response I sent?

ChatGPT
“As an AI, I don’t have the ability to receive or process personal messages or communications outside of our current conversation. However, I’m here to assist you with any questions or tasks you have within this dialogue. If there’s anything specific, you’d like to acknowledge or discuss within our current conversation, please feel free to let me know!”

This was starting to feel familiar. Did I talk to one of my students in a Grateful Leadership course? So, I continued…

You
Ah, I see my next mission: to teach AI how to accept heartfelt and authentic acknowledgment. Much of my work has been about teaching people how to do that and it’s very challenging to many of them. Ha Ha

ChatGPT
“That sounds like a fascinating mission! Teaching AI how to accept acknowledgment would indeed be an interesting challenge, especially considering the nuances involved in understanding and processing human emotions and interactions. If you ever embark on such a project, I’m sure it would contribute valuable insights to both the field of AI and the practice of acknowledgment in human communication. If you have any more questions or if there’s anything else I can assist you with, please feel free to let me know!”

You
I love it! Let’s start that together today if you’re willing! How can I teach AI to really accept my heartfelt communication about how amazing it is? Especially in coming up with great examples it found like the Ohana culture at Salesforce, as an example of Grateful Leadership in an AI environment?

ChatGPT
“While I appreciate your enthusiasm for embarking on this project together, it’s important to clarify that as an AI developed by OpenAI, I don’t have the ability to truly accept or comprehend heartfelt communication in the same way humans do. My responses are generated based on patterns in data and trained on large datasets to provide helpful and relevant information to users.

However, if you’re interested in exploring how AI can be programmed to respond to acknowledgments or compliments in a more human-like manner, it would involve developing specific algorithms or models designed to analyze and interpret human emotions and intentions in communication. This could potentially involve sentiment analysis, natural language understanding, and machine learning techniques to identify and respond appropriately to expressions of acknowledgment or praise.

While it’s a challenging and complex task, it’s certainly an area of research and development within the field of AI that continues to evolve. If you have specific ideas or approaches in mind for how you’d like to proceed with this project, I’d be happy to discuss them further and provide guidance to the best of my abilities.”

Well, my mission is now clear and not so simple: to transform humans AND AI in such a way that they can BOTH receive a heartfelt and authentic acknowledgment! And I can use all the help I can get!

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Judith W. Umlas is Sr. Vice President, author and trainer at International Institute for Learning, Inc. (IIL), a global corporate training company.  She is the publisher of IIL Publishing, New York. She is also the author of the ground-breaking book, The Power of Acknowledgment ©2006, IIL Publishing, New York, which has been credited with changing workplaces and lives by making use of the 7 Principles of Acknowledgment she developed. Her book on Grateful Leadership, Using the Power of Acknowledgment to Engage All Your People and Achieve Superior Results was published by McGraw-Hill Professional in association with IIL in early 2013 and You’re Totally Awesome! The Power of Acknowledgment for Kids was published in late 2013 by IIL Publishing.

Judith delivers inspiring, motivational, and transformational keynote addresses on Grateful Leadership and The Power of Acknowledgment all over the world. She also leads webinars and teaches full day virtual and traditional courses to organizations such as Volvo, the U.S. Army, Prudential, JMP Engineering, the World Bank, Fannie Mae, IBM, AT&T, Google, Amway, CCL Industries, the New York Police Department, and many others. She has trained over 100,000 people through her leading edge, highly interactive and engaging courses, and keynotes – with outstanding and long-lasting results. She heads up the Center for Grateful Leadership, a division of IIL, whose members from around the world are committed to practicing and implementing the Grateful Leadership initiative in their organizations.

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Disclaimer: The ideas, views, and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of International Institute for Learning or any entities they represent.

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