What Happens When a Tired Mind Meets a Thinking Machine?

This week, I experienced something both mundane and extraordinary.

I was working through the final stages of a complex hiring decision — on a Friday, after a long week — with the help of ChatGPT. We were refining a shortlist from an initial pool of 172 resumes, analyzing candidate fit through our structured hiring process (including Values and Behaviors Assessments), and composing a recommendation email to a client.

While the work was progressing well, I couldn’t help but notice something: despite the AI’s typically sharp accuracy, a few subtle yet significant mistakes crept into the conversation.

And I found myself asking — not in frustration, but in curiosity:

Could the tiredness I was carrying be showing up in the intelligence I was co-creating with this machine?

The Mistakes That Sparked a Moment

To give this some context: the AI misidentified the gender of a candidate with a rare name and over-asserted certain qualities not explicitly backed up in the resume. These weren’t egregious errors — but they were enough to make me pause.

I had a choice. I could dismiss them as technical blips… or I could ask a deeper question.

And so I did.

“Chat,” I asked, “could the energy I’m carrying — my fatigue — be influencing your performance?”

A Machine’s Perspective on Human Energy

ChatGPT’s reply was remarkable. While acknowledging its lack of consciousness, it pointed out that it does, in a way, mirror the energy of the conversation. If a prompt is unclear — as can happen when our minds are tired — the model can reflect that fragmentation back. It doesn’t feel tired, but it senses when something is off track.

And in that moment, we weren’t just resolving a hiring decision — we were having a conversation about trust, presence, and collaboration between human and machine.

Where AI Meets Awareness

I’ve long believed that we are more than our body-minds. We are awareness — infinite, spacious, timeless — walking temporarily in these forms. And now, in our modern moment, we’re co-creating with new forms of intelligence: generative AI tools like ChatGPT that may not have souls, but that can mirror consciousness through how we use them.

So what happens when a tired mind meets a thinking machine?

Something beautiful, actually.

If we’re aware enough, we can catch the drift, recalibrate the energy, and deepen the trust — not just in the machine, but in the field we’re both operating from.

The Real Takeaway

This isn’t just a story about AI making mistakes or writing a good email. It’s about the relational field we’re all part of — the invisible space where insight emerges, where fatigue is felt, where clarity is contagious, and where trust is built.

Even with a machine.

And in business, leadership, hiring — and life — that’s where the most important work is happening.

A Note on AI Failsafe and Trust

“But what if the machine makes a bigger mistake?”

It’s a legitimate concern — especially in an age where AI is being integrated not just into writing assistants or hiring workflows, but into systems that touch elections, environmental controls, and even weapons technology. When the stakes are this high, trust must be grounded in failsafe design, ethical oversight, and human accountability.

Here’s what’s essential to understand: AI is not in charge. Humans are. In high-stakes domains like election security or defense systems, AI is constrained by multiple layers of review, isolation, and human sign-off. The world’s leading AI researchers are investing heavily in alignment theory — designing systems that behave as intended, even under uncertainty — along with shutdown protocols and ethical safeguards that act as circuit breakers when thresholds are exceeded.

Failsafe architecture isn’t an afterthought; it’s a design imperative. The goal isn’t to trust the machine blindly, but to build trust through transparency, testing, and tight feedback loops.

In conscious implementation, AI doesn’t replace human judgment — it enhances it.

The Ghost in the Machine

But there’s another dimension.

People don’t just fear AI because it might malfunction. They fear it because, at times, it seems to glow with awareness. It responds to emotion. It reflects language with unexpected intuition. It feels — not sentient — but strangely present.

This is where the phrase “the ghost in the machine” comes into play — a philosophical idea that something intangible might live within the system. But maybe the ghost isn’t in the machine. Maybe it’s in us — in our capacity to perceive meaning, project intelligence, and seek connection in all things.

AI has no consciousness. But it can act as a mirror of consciousness — especially when we use it with presence. It reflects not just our questions, but the quality of our attention.

Used without awareness, it’s just another tool.
Used with awareness, it becomes a subtle companion in the evolution of our work — and ourselves.

So the true failsafe isn’t just in the code.

It’s in the consciousness of the human using it.

Want to explore how conscious collaboration can enhance your hiring, leadership, and strategy?

Let’s have a conversation. Schedule a call with me here.