Public Service Announcement: Don't Say You Use AI for Writing

I think the argument is misguided, even if I agree with the principle: it is based in the effort one puts in and how it's similar to a sport.

I don't care whether my favorite author sweated for months facing a typewriter, of he effortlessly dictated the final form of the book in one sitting to a secretary while sipping mojitos.

I think my issue with AI has more to do with the signal it sends: reading takes effort, particularly literature, and I use the author's name as a proxy to judge whether to invest that effort myself. Nothing bad in selling dollar store crap, but it's bad to put 'Nike' on it.

Your individuality is what you sell as an author. I can get access to the LLM without you.

I want to read Ray Bradbury and Jack Vance, not Claude's output based on a prompt from a barely literate would-be.

I want to read code by Abrash, Peyton Jones and Karpathy, not Claude's output based on a prompt from a third rater.

If you send me AI generated writing, I will have my AI agent read it and respond to it.

Meanwhile I will use my limited human time to engage with humans and human created content.

The problem lies with people trying to claim credit without doing the work: writing. AI is a fantastic tool that catches flow errors, grammar problems and punctuation misuse, just like a copywriter. But copywriters don't get bylines.

My line is clear, if you use copy paste the AI output that's not your writing. I am okay with AI collaboration - it detects the errors, you decide what to do with them.

I would never use AI for something where I need my own voice, say a blog post or a personal letter.

But I'm not ashamed to say that I used it last week in a chat conversation with a recruiter to turn this:

    1. I just said I'm hard of hearing and prefer text.
    2. If it's only two minutes you can darn well send email.

into this:

    As I mentioned, I'm hard of hearing and phone calls are difficult for me —
    I find I miss things and it's frustrating for both sides. If it's just a
    couple of minutes' worth of information, an email works great and I can
    give you a thoughtful response. Happy to go from there!

I'm not ashamed, I think I'm right, and I'll do it again. This recruiter didn't deserve my authentic voice or my personal toil, not for this task.

If it makes James Bach think I'm a liar, that's a price I'm willing to pay.

When I write something heavily edited by AI - I mention that I use AI assistance (not AI led thinking). I will probably remove that because the perception is quite different. Its like applying one applying to an engineering job but write "a pychic, a medium" in a corner of their resume.

It is very common to see that any interesting thought gets immediately tagged like AI slop and the real AI slop wins. Try an A/B test and you shall see that AI actually wins because of the people who hate AI. Most people cannot distinguish between a human and a AI written post and yet those same people want to be judgemental. And the people who are against AI and say "its just the next token generator and I don't use it" and yet use autocomplete on their mobiles are just duplicit. And yes AI is the next-token-generator, we have no proof that most humans were not brainwashed to become the same.

AI could have helped the author write what he's trying to say in one three word sentence: don't use AI.

Because in his view, if you use AI and don't disclose it, you're a liar. And if you use AI and disclose it, he won't trust you anyway.

> My policy is that I never let AI draft anything for me that has my name on it. Not one sentence. Nothing. Ever.

> If AI deeply collaborates with you to write something, why am I saying you shouldn’t say you used AI? Because all I have is your word for it that you did any work at all.

So using author's logic, I should not trust them when they say they never use AI for writing, because all we have is their word.

> “I’m a skilled liar. I frequently tell lies. But don’t worry, I wouldn’t lie to you!”

Interesting how saying you used any amount of AI instantly labels you as "a skilled liar" to the author.

ghostwriter says not to use ghostwriter

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