AI EXPERT SHARES WHAT SILICON VALLEY KNOWS ABOUT CHATGPT THAT YOU DON'T

Newsweek Exclusive Feature

Catherine Goetze has gone viral after saying what Silicon Valley insiders know about AI's future—and why it changes everything.

An AI whiz who calls herself "CatGPT" on social media has offered her take on the real purpose of the technology—and, spoiler alert, it is not to make humans more efficient.

Catherine Goetze, a tech professional and social media educator specializing in AI, gave her insights in a TikTok video posted on November 16. The ChatGPT expert's viral monologue, which she filmed in the heart of California's Silicon Valley, provided an insider's glimpse into what the epicenter of technological innovation knows about artificial intelligence that the rest of us might be missing.

The video, which has received more than 52,000 likes to date, gained viral attention with its provocative message about how Silicon Valley professionals view the transformative potential of AI .

"Our value as individuals has always been defined by our intelligence—our ability to think, to create, to solve, to understand," Goetze, who is based in California, told Newsweek. "Human progress has been a direct function of human cognition, and until now, cognition has been something that only we possessed."

"Every scientific breakthrough, every cultural renaissance has been built on the foundation of human minds working at the edge of what was possible, but with AI, that foundation is shifting beneath us," she continued.

Catherine Goetze in a headshot. Credit: @CATGPT

During a visit to Silicon Valley, Goetze, who uses the online handle @askcatgpt, was struck by how differently AI professionals there perceived the technology. She said the development of AI had led to a world where intelligence was no longer something that belonged exclusively to us as a species.

"It is something we can externalize, something we can scale, something we can generate at will," she added. "This is not just a tool that extends human capability—it is a force that challenges the very premise of what it means to be capable at all."

The post—which she captioned, "The air is different here and this is why"—quickly went viral as Goetze outlined how AI in Silicon Valley was seen not as a tool for incremental improvements but as a force redefining the nature of human progress.

"AI is not about making humans more efficient," she told viewers. "AI is about rethinking entirely what the role of the human even is."

"I am reminded that the hype about AI is very much still alive here," Goetze said, adding, "I thought it would be worth taking a moment to articulate why."

She delved into a core question surrounding AI's rapid rise: What happens when machines surpass human cognitive abilities? For millennia, she said, human progress was tied directly to the unique capabilities of the human mind and what it could make possible. AI changes that equation by externalizing and scaling intelligence.

AI is not only about creating more efficient systems but also about fundamentally shifting the structure of human worth and contribution, Goetze said after seeing how the technology was discussed in Silicon Valley.

Her two-minute video framed AI as a challenge to humanity's historical role as the sole source of creativity and problem-solving. In the Silicon Valley mindset, AI is a force multiplier, with researchers there understanding better than anyone how close we are to a future where machines perform cognitive tasks faster and more effectively than people.

"If you want to ask yourself, How is AI going to change the world? Ask yourself how the world we are living in today would be different if a hundred years ago every inventor, every teacher, every thinker, every writer, every creator, every entrepreneur, every investor, every politician had 100 times the brain power and 100 times the time," Goetze said in the video.

While AI's growth has sparked concerns, Goetze emphasized that it also represents an opportunity to redefine the human role. As AI takes over tasks that require creativity, strategic thinking and decision-making, humans must lean into their distinctly human traits: judgment, emotion, ethics and intuition.

"AI does not diminish humanity—it heightens the importance of distinctly human qualities," she said. "AI can generate infinite solutions, but it does not yet know which problems are worth solving."

She added that the role of humans in an AI-powered world is not to compete with machines but to transcend them by asking better questions and guiding the technology toward meaningful outcomes.

"We are moving from being the doers to being the definers," she said. "From being the workers to being the architects."

Still, Goetze acknowledged that this transition would not be easy. Humanity has long been conditioned to measure worth by productivity and output—whether physical or intellectual. According to Goetze, AI forces a reevaluation of what truly matters in human life.

"We have spent centuries defining ourselves by our ability to labor," she said. AI forces us to let go of that identity and ask something much harder: "What is our purpose when work is no longer a necessity?"

Goetze's video has resonated with viewers on social media, where the ChatGPT expert has recently gained influence in how AI is discussed online.

"I make non-pretentious, non-patronizing AI education on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube," she said, adding that her platforms had amassed 400,000 followers and more than 24 million views in six months. "I actually have been writing a paper on this topic called 'The Last Human Job,'" she said.

Goetze was confident that AI's alignment with human goals beyond efficiency or profit could work.

"The future belongs to those who can ask the right questions, who can see beyond efficiency and into impact, who can lead not with brute force or even brilliance, but with vision because that is the last truly human job," she said. "And the future of AI is not just about what machines can do, it is about what humans will choose to become."

THANK YOU FOR READING

COVER IMAGE: GETTY IMAGES

READ THE FULL STORY HERE: https://www.newsweek.com/ai-expert-shares-silicon-valley-secrets-2028799