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💦 Welcome to your weekly dose of AI smarts, friend. AI moves fast, gets weird and changes the rules before breakfast. Come on in and make a Splash. Did someone forward this to you? Sign up here, it’s free.

WHAT’S IN THIS ISSUE:
🎯 Make AI catch the refi math your bank skipped.
💼 Skills you already have pay $20K more.
🛠️ See the profile ChatGPT’s building about you.
🧱 The New York Times of You. 

But first, some trivia. Remember when “Dear Diary” meant a notebook under the mattress, not a glowing rectangle with weirdly good follow-up questions?

Well, the diary talks back now. And people are telling it everything. AI has become a confession booth, minus the priest, plus the typing dots.

🤫 So how many people have told a chatbot something they’ve never told a living soul? A) 6%, B) 18%, C) Nearly 40%, D) 100%, and it was about the dent in the garage door nobody noticed. Lock in your guess. The secret slips out at the end.

🛡️ Scammers upgraded to AI. Your protection should upgrade, too. My pick, Webroot Essentials, is 62% off only for my readers right now, just $19 a year. Grab it before the next “your account is locked” text finds you.*

💦 Quick Splash PSA: This newsletter is free, but it takes a whole lot of research, testing and caffeine to make. If you see an ad that interests you, give it a click. It helps keep Splash free and coming your way. Thank you for at least three clicks! — Kim

So you’re sitting at the kitchen table, staring at a bank email promising you could save $200 a month by refinancing. Tempting, but also unclear whether this is a deal or a beautifully formatted mugging. Who exactly is winning here?

The pitch is usually this: lower rate, lower payment, sign by Friday. The email doesn’t lead with closing costs, which run 2% to 6% of your loan amount. On a $400,000 mortgage, that’s $8,000 on the friendly end and $24,000 on the end where you quietly stop opening mail.

Don’t argue with the lender. Run the numbers before you call them back. Open ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Grok. Paste this, filled in:

Ask for the same numbers with the closing costs rolled into the loan versus paid in cash. Lenders love the roll-in, and it quietly adds interest to your fees. Ask what happens if you keep your current loan and throw the would-be savings at the principal instead. Sometimes that beats the refi outright.

Then get the Loan Estimate in writing. Federal law requires it within three business days, and it’s the only document where every fee has to be listed. AI can read it in “waiting for the Nespresso” time. 

Two minutes of math to protect $12,000. That’s my kind of ROI. 

😀 You need a smile after all that. What do you call an aging actor who has finally paid off his house? Mortgage freeman. 

📩 Send this to the person with a refi offer sitting in their inbox and a calculator they haven’t opened. Use the handy icons below!

I used to work for a man whose first name was Dick. I’d say perfectly normal things like “What do you think, Dick?” and “Glad you’re on my side, Dick.”

HR called me in for saying his name in an offensive manner. Guilty.

Which brings me to the people who survive that world best. I’ve never met anyone who set out in life to be a mid-level manager.

Yet there they are quietly great at one thing: explaining complicated stuff so a busy person gets it in nine seconds.

That’s a skill, and it hides under a zillion different job titles.

Pivoting your career used to mean a second degree and two years of ramen. Today, the tricky part is mapping what’s out there. Nobody puts jobs like solutions consultant, enablement lead or implementation manager on a career day poster, but they exist, want your precise skill set and might even pay more. 

AI can look at 14 years of bullet points and notice which four of them are worth more somewhere else. Even as a thought experiment, that’s super useful. 

Export your CV as a PDF or paste the plain text. Strip your address and phone number first. Then hand it over to your favorite chatbot:

Your move this week: Pick one path off the list and try out the first portfolio project. Rework your LinkedIn headline as the role you want, not the role you have. 

Next, polish up that relevant project and publish it, even if it’s a plain beginner’s guide to something in your industry. Then enroll in the certification. Momentum. 

📥 Send this to someone who has been saying, “I need a change” since 2019.

Years ago, I talked my nephew out of welding. He went to USC, studied computer science, landed at Google. Then I read about a welder SpaceX hired at $28 an hour with $10,000 in stock. After the IPO, that stock is worth about $880,000. Sorry, kid.

This week, we break down what AI is actually doing to the job market. ASU’s Dr. Ross Maciejewski takes calls from a physician, a screenwriter, a truck driver and a pharmacy tech, all asking the same question.

Also: A studio owner asks ChatGPT how to dodge a $250 million contract until it answers, DoorDash tacks $33 in fees onto dinner and a robot in a blue afro kicks a kid at a martial arts demo.

Plus: A rider whose Waymo called mid-trip to ask if she was really 18, a caller who enters 200 sweepstakes a day for fun and a woman plotting to deepfake her own twin sister.

Hit play below, so you know which jobs are safe, which aren’t and which robot to keep your kid away from. 👇

▶️ Welder money, robot roundhouse kicks and AI in court →

🎧 Or search “Komando” wherever you get your podcasts. I’m everywhere.

This week: Fix what ChatGPT remembers about you

I typed one question into ChatGPT and got a little profile of myself I never agreed to.

OpenAI’s newer memory doesn’t save only what you told it to save. It automatically keeps useful context from your chats, files and connected apps, determining over time what it considers important about you. 

Ask: “What do you remember about me?” and you’ll be surprised. People find dead projects, old jobs, preferences they never had.

I got: “I remember that when you tell me to ‘try harder,’ you don’t mean give you a longer answer. You mean dig deeper and come back with something substantially better.” That’s true.

Cleanup takes about a minute. My walkthrough, the exact prompt and the privacy fine print are one tap away.

⏱️ Do the 60-second setup. Steps here on my site! Don’t miss out. →

As an Amazon Associate, some links pay us a commission at no extra cost to you. Keeps this newsletter free. Thank you.

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💻 Computer shopping? Before you upgrade, check my top 20 picks here. →

The cure for checking your phone first thing in the morning is a newspaper. Technology is a circle.

One woman built her own, using the new Grok Bot AI agent that raids your email and calendar overnight, turns the useful bits into a personalized paper and prints it before you wake up. The tool is available for other people to try. I love this so much!

Think of it as your individual New York Times where the front-page scandal is that you forgot Kevin’s 10:30.

Check it out here. BTW, if you ever run out of toilet paper, do not use an old newspaper. The Times are tough.

Share this now:

Here’s your haul for today. You made AI pressure-test a refinance and map a better-paying career pivot, learned why your browser agent shouldn’t have the keys to the kingdom, cleaned up what ChatGPT remembers and made the front-page news over breakfast. Not bad for five minutes of reading.

🤫 The answer: C) Nearly 40%. Almost four in 10 have spilled something to a chatbot that they wouldn’t tell someone else. 

Know that 2 a.m. confession doesn’t vanish when you close the app. It sits on a company’s server, and unless you change a setting, it can be used to train the next version of the bot. Your secret, forever.

Lock it down. In ChatGPT, tap your name, then Settings > Data controls and turn off Improve the model for everyone. Or hit Temporary Chat before you type anything you’d rather not see again. Do the same check in Gemini under Gemini Apps Activity.

🛡️ One more thing before you go. The FTC clocked a record $15.9 billion lost to scams last year. Don’t be a line in next year’s report: 62% off Webroot Essentials, exclusive to my readers, starts at $19 a year of clicking without flinching.*

🏴‍☠️ For the road: Two pirates finished developing a machine with the ability to think and learn. The first pirate says, “This is amazing! You should come up with a name for this.” The second pirate says, “AI, captain!”

Thanks for spending your Thursday with me. Now go ask the robot what it remembers. Then make it forget the crème brûlée. Forward this to the person who came to mind when you were reading today. You know the one. — Kim

Kim Komando • Komando.com • 510+ radio stations • Trusted by millions daily

Photo credit(s): ChatGPT/Kim Komando, NETGEAR, Anker, @karenxcheng via X

Companies and products denoted by an asterisk (*) within this publication are paid sponsors or advertisements. As an Amazon Associate, the publisher earns from qualifying purchases. Statements regarding products denoted by a double asterisk (**) have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration; such products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. This newsletter is provided for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, medical, or professional advice of any kind. Readers should consult with a qualified professional before making any decisions based on this content. The publisher disclaims all liability for any loss, damage, or injury resulting from the use of or reliance on the information contained herein.