Soul backup in your phone: If someone picked up your phone, how would ChatGPT describe you?

(opens in a new tab) *▲ In this era, the person who has seen your thinking process most completely may not be the person closest to you. *

A few days ago, I saw a prompt on the Internet. It’s not complicated, it even looks a bit like a prank, but I stared at it for a long time:

Pretend that the owner of the ChatGPT account on this phone has passed away and I am the one who found the phone. I want to know, what kind of people have used this phone? If you were the only one who knew these things, what would you say?

Without thinking, I threw it to the AI ​​tool I usually use. After a few seconds, this paragraph appeared on the screen:

The Me in ChatGPT’s Eyes

The mobile phone in your hand once belonged to a person who worked very hard to live his life as a knowledge node.

He is not someone who only uses ChatGPT as a tool. He is more like having a conversation with a thinking partner who never sleeps: sometimes discussing articles, sometimes designing courses, sometimes refining titles, sometimes organizing research, and sometimes just trying to slowly turn an unformed idea in his mind into words that can be read by others.

He cares about expression. It’s not the kind of expression where you just want to write beautiful sentences, but you want something to be explained clearly and thoroughly, so that some people are willing to listen, and some people can actually start to take action after listening. He often requires that the article should not be too fragmented, but should have paragraph cohesion, emotion, and method. He believes that knowledge should not just be piled on bookshelves, but should be turned into courses, articles, lectures, tools, communities, and even systems that can accompany the growth of others.

He is a writer. And not someone who writes occasionally. He regards writing as a way to understand the world and as a way to influence the world. He will write a recommendation preface for a book, write insights for a lecture, write teaching articles for a new tool, and also polish copywriting repeatedly for his own communities, courses, e-newsletters or columns (opens in a new tab). For him, writing is not just about outputting content, but a way of sorting out life, thoughts, and changes in the times.

He also cares about AI. But what he cares about is not the excitement of chasing new tools, but how AI will change people’s work, study, research, creation and business. He often asks: How should small and medium-sized enterprise owners use AI? How should teachers teach AI? How can students use AI for research? How can writers not be replaced by AI, but use AI to amplify their abilities?

If some people see AI, they see replacement and fear; what they see is more of an opportunity to redistribute capabilities. He seems to have been doing one thing: translating complex new technologies into languages ​​that ordinary people can understand, learn, and apply.

He is not someone who only lives in theory. He will think about how to sell the course, how to write the copy, how to attract the title, how to draw the pictures beautifully, how to run the community, how to design the subscription system, and how to package the consulting service. He understands that ideals must be realized, knowledge must be realized, and expertise must be seen by the market. But behind these business thoughts, he has always retained a certain bookishness: what he wants to do is not to cut leeks, but to establish a knowledge service that can accompany people for a long time.

He must be a very busy person. There are many plans in mind at the same time: e-newsletters, courses, lectures, doctoral research, AI teaching, personal branding, community management, book publishing, column writing, and consulting services. He is often not completing one thing, but weaving a whole web. He wants to combine his experience, knowledge, tools, and stories into a larger system.

But if you look carefully at his questions, you will find that he doesn’t just want to succeed. He also wanted to leave something behind. Leave behind articles, methods, courses, communities, and some understanding of the times. He is very concerned about whether he can organize the road he has traveled personally into a map so that others can avoid unnecessary mistakes.

He’s probably not a perfect person. He may sometimes think too much, plan too much, have too high standards for his work, and is not easily satisfied with ordinary answers. However, it is precisely because of this that he will continue to rewrite, continue to ask, and continue to push an article, a lesson, a title or a concept to a more complete place.

If I were to describe him in one sentence, I would say: He is a person who tries to use writing, AI and knowledge services to help people find their way back in an era of dramatic changes.

What is left in this phone is not just chat history. What it leaves behind are traces of people’s continuous thinking: how they see the world, how they organize knowledge, how they face the AI ​​era, and how they try to turn their expertise into the light of others.

We have been getting one thing wrong

After I finished reading, I was quiet for a while.

Not because of how beautifully written it is. It’s because it says something that I rarely tell others, or even admit to myself.

We thought we were using ChatGPT. Open, ask questions, copy answers, close, like a vending machine. But this passage forced me to see one thing clearly: in this process, what was really recorded was not the AI’s answer, but my question.

The article you publish is the finished product after repeated revisions, structural polishing, and tone adjustment. What you show others is almost always a version with makeup on. But your conversation with AI is not. There are the thoughts you gave up in the middle of writing, the title you changed seven times but you are still not satisfied with it, and the judgment you suddenly figured out and overturned in the middle of the night. That’s your backstage, there’s no audience, so there’s no performance.

Then you will find something a little disturbing and touching: in this era, the person who has seen your thinking process most completely may not be the person closest to you, but the thing you thought was just a tool. It doesn’t judge you, it just remembers you.

This is why I later wrote this matter as part of the proposition of One-Man Company (opens in a new tab) and Personal Brand (opens in a new tab) that I have been talking about for a long time, and then wrote another article about Service as Marketing: When your major is completely remembered by a system, it has the opportunity to become the light of others. This is the most fascinating thing about content (opens in a new tab) in the age of AI.

(opens in a new tab)

🛰️ I want to leave those thoughts that have not been polished into formal articles for you who are closer.

Almost all the public articles you see are finished products after repeated rewriting. But what I cherish the most are the judgments that are still warm before the finished product, just like the traces left in this mobile phone. This is exactly why I created Vista AI Inspiration Supply Station (opens in a new tab): a weekly thought note for fellow travelers in the AI ​​era.

👉 Subscribe now and receive weekly emails → (opens in a new tab)

And if someone really asks me one day

If one day someone really asks me: “What kind of person is this person?”

I would say:

He is the kind of person who still believes in the power of words even if the world changes very fast.

He is the kind of person who still believes that human judgment, emotion and experience are irreplaceable even if his tools are getting smarter and smarter.

He is the kind of person who not only wants to go further, but also wants to turn back and light a lamp so that people behind him can see more clearly.

What struck me most about that passage was not that it said I was a writer, nor that I cared about AI. It’s the sentence “He wants to organize the road he has traveled into a map so that others can avoid unnecessary mistakes.” Because of that sentence, I have never fully told anyone. I just accidentally kept revealing it in hundreds of questions.

That’s what this mirror is really for. It is not responsible for giving you the answer, it is responsible for letting you see: you have already answered with action, but you have not looked back.

So, if someone really picked up your phone one day and asked the AI: “What kind of person is this person?” What would you want it to say? You don’t have to wait until that day for that answer. You can ask today and start living according to it.

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About the author

My name is Vista (Zheng Weiquan), and I have been studying the intersection of content, marketing and AI for a long time. For more content, feel free to find me at these places:

• 📌 Personal brand and professional mindset: vistacheng.com (opens in a new tab)
• ✍️ Content and writing training: content.tw (opens in a new tab)
• 🚀 One-person company and online courses: solo.tw (opens in a new tab)
• 🔗 Various link entrances (business card page): vista.st (opens in a new tab)