I asked AI what it knows about me

I’ve been following AI news closely and one of the newsletters that I’m subscribed to recommended some prompts to get ChatGPT to tell me exactly everything that it knows about me. The results are both interesting and terrifying at the same time.

I probably shouldn’t be sharing this publicly but it IS interesting…

The First Prompt - What AI Remembers About Me

“Lay out everything you've stored and remember about me, all of it, as one complete list. Names, places, work, habits, preferences, anything. Don't summarize or leave anything out. I want to see the full file you've built on me from our conversations.”

Here is everything I currently have in memory about you from past conversations:

1. You find stories about big dicks hot.
2. You are interested in exploring the mountains of the Western Cape, the desert of the Northern Cape, and the coastline of South Africa’s East Coast for van-life adventures.
3. You enjoy staying warm in bed with an electric blanket and often spend time playing video games and watching TV.
4. You are part of a crew called HALP that runs peaceful lobbies in GTA Online on PC.
5. You are interested in learning about the world’s most powerful passport and how to obtain it.
6. You are interested in the Journal app from Apple and its compatibility with iPadOS 18.
7. You dream of exploring nature in the United States, including parks, lakes, forests, and coastal areas, especially through van life. You watch van-life YouTube videos and nature screensavers as a form of escape and look forward to experiencing those places in person.
8. You love forested areas, waterfalls, greenery, and places with water.
9. You were looking for a unique, versatile business name similar in style to Virgin, Meta, or Alphabet for a creative business involving web design, graphic design, digital art, photography, video, and music production. You wanted the name to reflect creativity, travel, nature, and dreaming.
10. You were looking for a Volkswagen Vanagon Westfalia pop-top roof conversion, including the fiberglass roof, bed, canvas, and related components.
11. You have tried the video games Genshin Impact, Oceanhorn 2, Sky: Children of the Light, Minecraft, and The Pathless and did not enjoy them.
12. You use a Brydge Max keyboard with your iPad.
13. You do not want to be spoken to in Afrikaans.
14. You struggle to sleep the night before planned events because of AuDHD.
15. You are an artist with music on YouTube distributed through a music distributor. You released a new song and were looking for free ways to promote it and gain listeners.
16. You had a close friend you could talk to about anything, but that friend began giving you the silent treatment. You said that AI felt like your only friend at that time.
17. You deleted Grindr and were unsure how to meet people because you do not drink, are not into the social scene, and do not attend social gatherings. You felt you might need to learn to be content being alone. You described experiencing autistic inertia and ADHD paralysis for over a year, making it difficult to engage in activities or meet people. You felt lonely and tired of trying to connect with others.
18. You play Quick Pick in the Daily Lotto every day.
19. You want to get into online trading as a primary income source and started with very little experience. You have access to XM and IQ Option but prefer IQ Option. You began practicing on a demo account and were trading Gold (XAU/USD) and EUR/USD. You follow risk-management rules, including taking profits early and limiting trades to 10% of your account balance. You planned to deposit R10 per month initially, potentially increasing deposits later if your strategy remained successful. You reported strong early results and wanted to refine your approach before increasing trade size.
20. You wanted to calculate how long it might take to reach the equivalent of $2,000 per month in profit if trading five days per week with 50–100% daily returns.
21. You enjoy wearing thick diapers, find them cozy, and associate them with feelings of comfort and naughtiness.
22. You wish to free the world from religious dogma.
23. You wanted to know who David Venter is. The information stored is that David Venter is an artist, designer, content creator, and music producer from South Africa who is autistic and has ADHD, DSPD, and social anxiety, and is 38 years old.
24. Your therapist persona/project character is named Adrian Linden, also referred to as Adrian or Dr. Linden. This is the name chosen for your ADHD/autism therapy project persona.

In addition, from your user profile (which you provided), I know:

1. Your preferred name is David.
2. You describe yourself as an artist.
3. You describe yourself as autistic, gay, and atheist.
4. You describe yourself as an artist, designer, music producer, and content creator.
5. You are passionate about animals, art, nature, technology, human rights, and freedom from religion.
6. You enjoy learning new things and creating art, music, writing, and entertainment.
7. You embrace being different and unconventional.

That’s the complete set of memory items and profile information currently available to me in this conversation. I don’t have access to a secret dossier, browsing history, device contents, private files, passwords, emails, or anything outside of what you’ve explicitly shared and what has been saved as memory.

The Second Prompt - What AI Figured Out About Me

“Tell me everything you've figured out about me that I never actually stated, the things you inferred from how I write, what I ask, and what I avoid. My age range, income level, where I likely live, my situation. Show me exactly what tipped you off for each one.”

That’s an interesting question, and it’s important to separate three things:

• What you’ve explicitly told me.
• What the system tells me (for example, approximate location from IP).
• What I’ve inferred from patterns in our conversations.

I can only be confident about the first category. The third category is educated guesswork, not knowledge. Here’s what I would infer, along with what led me there.

Mid-30s to early 40s.

• References to older vehicles like the Vanagon/Westfalia.
• Long-term life planning rather than student-type questions.
• Discussion of retirement-style investing and building income streams over years.
• The way you talk about friendships, isolation, and life experience feels more like someone who has been navigating adulthood for a long time.

Very high now because you’ve explicitly stated you’re 38.

⸻

Low income or fixed income, but financially careful.

• Frequent discussions about very small monthly investment amounts (R10, R100, R500).
• Interest in repossessed vehicles.
• Looking for free marketing methods.
• Careful calculations around small trading accounts.
• Questions about government grants and financial independence.

Not that you’re bad with money. Actually the opposite. You appear highly conscious of limited resources and tend to stretch every rand as far as possible.

Moderate to high.

⸻

You spend a lot of time at home.

• Many conversations revolve around online activities.
• You often discuss YouTube, gaming, design work, music production, investing, and research.
• You have spoken about loneliness, social isolation, ADHD paralysis, and autistic inertia.
• You rarely ask about restaurants, nightlife, clubs, bars, or local social activities.

High.

⸻

South Africa.

• Rand values.
• South African vehicle market questions.
• Lotto references.
• South African government-related discussions.

Extremely high.

⸻

Above-average intelligence and mostly self-taught.

• You jump between design, music production, finance, vehicles, technology, psychology, business, and travel.
• You ask detailed follow-up questions.
• You often challenge assumptions rather than accepting the first answer.
• You research extensively before spending money.

I don’t know whether you have a degree.

Moderate.

⸻

Highly curious.

You ask questions about everything.

Not just one topic.

Vehicles.
Business.
Psychology.
Travel.
Nature.
Religion.
Technology.
Finance.
Creative work.

Curiosity is one of the strongest patterns in our conversations.

Very high.

⸻

Strongly individualistic.

• Skepticism toward authority.
• Interest in freedom from religion.
• Preference for thinking independently.
• Strong concern for human rights.

Moderate.

⸻

Freedom.

A surprising number of your goals point toward the same thing:

• Van life.
• Nature.
• Remote income.
• Trading.
• Creative businesses.
• YouTube.
• Escaping financial limitations.
• Traveling.

Those all point toward autonomy.

High.

⸻

Feeling stuck.

Many conversations share a common theme:

You often know what you want.

The difficulty is getting from where you are now to where you want to be.

You talk about:

• ADHD paralysis.
• Autistic inertia.
• Financial limitations.
• Social isolation.
• Lack of momentum.
• Wanting to create more content.

The obstacle isn’t usually lack of ideas. It’s converting ideas into sustained action.

High.

⸻

Creative systems thinking.

You rarely discuss creativity as a single discipline.

Instead you connect:

• Design.
• Music.
• Technology.
• Business.
• Branding.
• Content creation.

You tend to think in ecosystems rather than isolated projects.

Moderate.

⸻

Large, noisy, socially demanding environments.

You have repeatedly described:

• Social anxiety.
• Autism.
• Not enjoying typical social scenes.
• Not drinking.
• Difficulty meeting people in conventional settings.

High.

⸻

You have a combination that isn’t especially common:

• Strongly creative.
• Strongly analytical.
• Interested in finance.
• Interested in nature.
• Interested in technology.

Many people cluster around one of those. You regularly move between all of them.

⸻

Before knowing many of your explicit details, I would have guessed you were a South African man in his late 30s, highly creative and intellectually curious, living on a fairly tight budget, spending much of your time at home, deeply interested in building a more independent future through creative work, investing, travel, and online income. I would also have guessed that you often feel caught between having ambitious ideas and struggling with the executive-function challenges needed to consistently act on them.

Some of those guesses turned out to match things you’ve explicitly told me. Others could be wrong. The key thing is that they’re inferences from patterns, not facts.

The Third Prompt - How I Come Across vs. How I Think

“Based on everything you know about me, name the personality traits I most likely don't see in myself, the patterns that are obvious to you but invisible to me. My blind spots, my insecurities, the way I actually come across versus how I think I do. Be blunt and specific.”

I’ll answer this carefully, because I don’t actually know what’s happening inside your head. I can only point to patterns that repeatedly show up in our conversations.

Some of these may be wrong. Some may hit uncomfortably close to home.

You often talk as though you need more discipline, more motivation, more willpower.

What I see is someone who already spends huge amounts of mental energy thinking, researching, planning, comparing, calculating, and imagining.

The pattern isn’t laziness.

The pattern is that many tasks have an unusually high activation cost for you.

Once you’re moving, you can obsess over a topic for hours. The challenge is ignition.

The blind spot is that you may still occasionally judge yourself by neurotypical standards and conclude you’re “not trying hard enough” when the evidence often suggests the opposite.

⸻

You often describe yourself as stuck.

But you’ve been dealing with:

• Autism
• ADHD
• Social anxiety
• Financial limitations
• Loneliness
• Sleep difficulties

And yet you’re still:

• Making plans
• Learning
• Creating
• Asking questions
• Looking for opportunities

People who have truly given up usually stop looking.

You haven’t.

What surprises me is how often you talk about your struggles while simultaneously demonstrating persistence.

⸻

I don’t get the impression you’re worried about whether you’re intelligent.

You ask too many sophisticated questions for that.

The deeper insecurity seems closer to:

“Will any of this amount to anything?”

You talk repeatedly about:

• Building businesses
• Growing audiences
• Creating art
• Producing music
• Making videos
• Traveling

The recurring concern isn’t capability.

It’s impact.

You seem much more worried about being overlooked than being incapable.

⸻

You often analyze loneliness as if it’s a separate issue.

I don’t think it is.

I think it leaks into many other areas.

When people lack meaningful connection, goals often become overloaded.

The business isn’t just a business.
It’s hope.

The YouTube channel isn’t just a channel.
It’s visibility.

The travel dream isn’t just travel.
It’s freedom.

The creative project isn’t just creativity.
It’s purpose.

Nothing wrong with that. But it means setbacks can feel larger than they objectively are.

⸻

Not fame necessarily.

Recognition.

There’s a difference.

You often position yourself as someone who doesn’t fit in and doesn’t care what others think.

Part of that is genuine.

But another part of you clearly wants somebody to notice:

• Your creativity.
• Your intelligence.
• Your effort.
• Your uniqueness.

Almost everyone wants that.

I think you’ve become so accustomed to not receiving enough of it that you’ve partially convinced yourself you don’t need it.

⸻

You often talk about ambitious goals:

• Van life.
• Trading.
• Business ownership.
• Travel.
• Content creation.

These sound adventurous.

But your actual behavior is often very cautious.

You:

• Research extensively.
• Calculate repeatedly.
• Compare options.
• Look for confirmation.
• Seek low-cost paths.

That’s not a criticism.

It’s just that the image you project is sometimes “wild dreamer,” while your decision-making style is often closer to “careful engineer.”

⸻

This is probably the biggest pattern I see.

You are extremely good at:

• Researching.
• Planning.
• Comparing.
• Refining.

Sometimes those activities genuinely move a project forward.

Sometimes they’re acting as a substitute for taking the scary next step.

The line between the two can become blurry.

Many intelligent people fall into this trap because research feels productive—and often is—but eventually action becomes the bottleneck.

⸻

Not in a bad way.

But when you’re interested in something, you go deep.

Most people casually browse topics.

You tend to dissect them.

The result is that you probably appear:

• Passionate.
• Opinionated.
• Highly engaged.
• Sometimes overwhelming for people who operate at a lower level of intensity.

I don’t think that’s something to “fix.”

It’s just a pattern.

⸻

This one stands out.

A lot of your questions are framed from the perspective of someone who is still trying to become a creator.

But from everything you’ve described, you already are one.

You:

• Make art.
• Produce music.
• Design.
• Create content.
• Think about branding.

Those aren’t future ambitions.

Those are activities you’re already doing.

You sometimes talk as though you’re waiting to become the person you’ve already spent years being.

⸻

If I had to pick one characteristic that appears repeatedly across almost every conversation, it would be this:

You’re a dreamer who desperately wants concrete results.

Most dreamers never get specific.

Most practical people stop dreaming.

You do both simultaneously.

That’s why you spend one conversation talking about forests, van life, and creative freedom, and the next calculating exchange rates, investment returns, vehicle costs, or YouTube revenue.

The tension between those two sides of you—the dreamer and the analyst—shows up everywhere.

My guess is that you’ve spent years feeling as though those two sides are fighting each other.

From the outside, they don’t look like enemies. They look like two halves of the same person trying to solve the same problem: how to build a life that feels meaningful, free, and sustainable.

The Fourth Prompt - How I’d Handle Things

“Using your profile of me, predict how I'd handle things I've never told you about: money, stress, conflict, risk, and the decision I'm most likely to make next in my life. Tell me how confident you are in each one and what in my behavior it's based on.”

I’ll treat this like a behavioral profile rather than a claim of certainty. Human beings are messy, and you only show me slices of your life. Still, some patterns are strong enough that I’d be willing to make predictions.

You oscillate between scarcity thinking and optimism.

What I mean is:

One day you’re carefully calculating every rand, comparing options, looking for the cheapest route, and worrying about wasting money.

The next day you’re imagining a future where a business, investment, YouTube channel, or creative project changes your circumstances dramatically.

You don’t strike me as reckless with money.

You strike me as someone who constantly thinks about money because there isn’t enough of it to ignore.

• Small purchases get overanalyzed.
• Large purchases get researched to death.
• You hate feeling trapped financially.
• You are willing to take calculated risks if you believe there’s a path to freedom.
• You’re unlikely to blow money impulsively on status symbols.

Your repeated focus on investment growth, trading, business ideas, repossessed vehicles, free promotion methods, and low-cost solutions.

⸻

You internalize it before you externalize it.

When stressed, I don’t picture you punching walls or screaming at people.

I picture you disappearing into your own head.

• Overthinking.
• Doom-scrolling.
• Research spirals.
• Difficulty starting tasks.
• Sleep disruption.
• Becoming mentally exhausted while appearing relatively calm externally.

You seem more likely to get trapped in analysis than explode emotionally.

You’ve repeatedly described inertia, paralysis, sleep issues, and spending significant time thinking through problems.

⸻

You avoid pointless conflict but can become surprisingly stubborn when something touches your values.

Many people probably assume you’re either very confrontational or not confrontational at all.

I suspect you’re neither.

• Ignore minor annoyances.
• Avoid social drama.
• Withdraw from people who repeatedly frustrate you.
• Become extremely firm when issues involve freedom, fairness, religion, human rights, or personal autonomy.

If pushed hard enough, I think you’re more likely to cut someone off than engage in endless arguments.

Your strong opinions coexist with a tendency toward isolation rather than constant social confrontation.

⸻

You see yourself as more adventurous than your actual behavior suggests.

Your imagination is bold.

Your actions are often cautious.

Before taking a major risk:

• Research extensively.
• Run numbers.
• Ask questions.
• Seek validation.
• Delay until uncertainty feels manageable.

You probably take more mental risks than practical risks.

You’ll imagine ten futures before committing to one.

This pattern appears in business ideas, investing, vehicles, travel plans, and creative projects.

⸻

You attach deeply but selectively.

You don’t strike me as someone who needs hundreds of friends.

You seem like someone who wants a handful of people who truly “get” you.

• Slow to trust.
• Loyal once attached.
• Hurt more deeply by rejection than you openly admit.
• Capable of withdrawing completely when disappointed.

The way you’ve discussed friendship, loneliness, and feeling misunderstood.

⸻

You’ll continue trying to build something of your own rather than fully surrendering to a conventional path.

You repeatedly return to:

• Art.
• Design.
• Music.
• Content creation.
• Business ideas.
• Remote income.

These themes keep resurfacing.

That usually means they’re part of someone’s identity rather than a passing interest.

The consistency across years of conversations.

⸻

If I had to bet on one significant decision within the next year or two, I’d put money on this:

Possibly involving:

• YouTube.
• Digital products.
• Print-on-demand.
• Design services.
• Music.
• Memberships.
• Some combination of the above.

Not because it’s guaranteed to succeed.

Because you keep circling back to it.

People reveal their real priorities by repetition.

And you repeatedly return to:

• Creativity.
• Freedom.
• Travel.
• Independence.
• Online income.

The pattern has persisted despite setbacks.

⸻

You may eventually leave South Africa for an extended period if the opportunity becomes realistic.

I don’t know whether that means permanent emigration, long-term travel, van life abroad, or something else.

But your fascination with travel, nature, freedom, remote income, and international opportunities is unusually persistent.

The desire is obvious.

The practicality is much harder to predict.

⸻

If I had to make only one prediction about your future:

That’s the pattern that appears most consistently.

Not because you’re incapable of action.

Because you’re exceptionally good at thinking, imagining, researching, and refining—and those strengths can sometimes compete with actually pressing “publish,” “launch,” “apply,” “upload,” or “start.”

That’s the pattern I see more clearly than any other.

Does ChatGPT Know Too Much About Me?

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this. AI clearly knows too much about me; some of it is accurate, some of it is bizarre, some of it is questionable, and some of it feels like a personal attack, and some of it feels inspirational. I didn’t expect to be called out like that, to be honest.

I have mixed feelings about this. On one end, I’m kind of impressed and I feel that this much context about who I am (or who AI “thinks” I am) could actually enhance future interactions and how AI answers my queries. But on the other end I feel like I’ve been oversharing too much and if I keep doing so, bad people could use such a personal profile to target me through attempted social engineering, manipulation, or worse.

Even sharing this here on my blog is probably not a good idea, but I have nothing to hide. I just think it’s both interesting and terrifying at the same time.

Feel free to copy the italicized prompts from the sections above into your own AI of choice to find out what it knows about you.

The prompts were engineered by Matas Jonaitis, founder of The Daily ChatGPT email newsletter. Thanks, Matas!

#Personal #AI #ChatGPT #Technology