I use AI to write a little bit: I ask it for high level feedback on blog post drafts, make mechanical edits, and sometimes use it to brainstorm options for wording at a paragraph level. It’s unusual that I accept its wording or changes without modification. I think AI has helped make my posts better, but I never use it to write large amounts of text. I think that’s disrespectful to the reader.

If you hope for me to read your writing, I expect you to treat my time as valuable. It is pretty much always a waste of time to read long blocks of AI writing. A simple test is how much AI is amplifying the volume of text: did you give a short prompt and it expanded it into a post? Did you write an outline and it filled in the details? If so, please delete your AI-written text and just send me your prompt! People write because there’s something that only they know and are trying to communicate. If I want to know the standard knowledge, or the standard arguments in favor of such an idea, I can ask AI to expand on the idea myself.

I’m not going to be an extremist and say that packaging doesn’t matter at all, but it matters very little relative to the ideas. AI is good at packaging: so good that it will stuff in as much packaging as you request. Some novice writers like this because it seems high-status to have your ideas dressed up in lots of fancy-looking packaging. But I want to push back against that tendency, since it dilutes the ideas, and when I read paragraphs of “It’s not just X—it’s Y,” I stop reading before I get to the one idea that you’re actually trying to communicate.