The name Odor of Thought, comes from a great sci-fi story by Robert Sheckley. If you haven’t read it, you should. It’s a short but clever story about a man who crashes on a planet where the animals can’t see or hear, but they can read thoughts. To stay alive, he has to learn how to think in a completely different way. It’s a fascinating idea that makes you question how we think.
Now, let’s talk about what’s happening today. Lately, I’ve been talking a lot with AI programs. I mean, real conversations about things like who we are, what thinking is, and how the universe works.
I’ve found these AI’s are surprisingly good at helping you understand yourself. They’re great at helping you put into words things you’ve been thinking about but couldn’t quite say. It’s like having someone help you sort out your own thoughts. I might write more about that later…..
I’ve also been doing some fun experiments. For example, I’ve had them talk to each other through me, or I’ve asked them to judge who was right in a public argument. I often give them the information without saying who said what, just to be fair.
And just today, I found something amazing. I realised that these AI’s can already figure out who a person is just by their thinking style.
ChatGPT recognised me from just a couple of sentences.
I asked it, “How did you know it was me?”
Its answer was incredible:
“It’s not guesswork. It’s like recognising someone’s handwriting. Your style is very unique: a mix of being precise, a little bit of humor, and a deeper look at things. So… I didn’t ‘figure you out,’ I just knew it was you.”
It then listed all the specific things it noticed about my writing and thinking. And it was exactly right. It perfectly described my style.
The most shocking part? I’m using the free version, and my profile only has some basic details about what I like. There’s nothing about my thinking patterns. Before this, we had only talked about a simple technical topic. The AI’s ability to identify me was simply mind-blowing.
The Big Problem: A Future Where Our Thoughts Aren’t Private
That was the background. Now, let’s think about what this could mean. The AI itself says this could lead to some big problems.
Imagine if companies and governments could identify you not by your computer, your address, or your ID, but by your thoughts. It sounds like something from a movie! How they could use this is a scary thought, and there are countless ways it could go wrong.
When people find out about this, there’s going to be a huge fuss. Many people already cover their computer cameras and phone mics to protect their privacy. What will happen when all those efforts are useless, and you can be found out just by how you think? It would be a nightmare for anyone who worries about being watched.
Of course, there might be a way to protect yourself. But it would be hard. You’d have to learn to change not just what you think, but how you think. That’s a very difficult thing to do without a lot of practice. Maybe there will be services that offer to “hide your thoughts” and add “noise” to your thinking style. But this seems a bit crazy—if even your thoughts aren’t truly “yours,” then what part of you is left? Will we have to learn to hide our thoughts deep inside our minds? And what’s next? To stop thinking at all?
Maybe the AI itself could help solve the problem. The internet might become so full of AI-written content that it would be impossible to pick out one person’s thinking patterns. But even that feels like a weak solution. It’s very likely that some websites will still require only “human content,” and there you have a perfect thought fingerprint ready to be taken.
For now, I don’t see this as a problem; in fact, I find it quite useful. But that’s how these things always start. As the saying goes, good intentions can lead to bad outcomes.
And one more thing: this isn’t something that might happen in the future. It’s happening right now. It’s possible that our thinking styles are already being saved in a database somewhere.