The Anticreativity Pandora’s Box of AI.

The only AI article I’ll ever write…probably.

Photo by Alex Knight on Unsplash

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I can tell when one of my commenters used AI about 95% of the time. There’s no trick to it, like looking for em dashes or tells. I’ve read so much human writing in my life that robot writing sticks out like a rotting thumb to me. If I’m ever on the fence, I’ll copy+paste into an AI detector.

I am always sad to see AI comments because there’s no reason for them other than insecurity about one’s writing ability. There’s no grade or job you’re trying to get. You want badly to engage with an article and to be seen engaging, but you’re scared to engage authentically.

I’m not going to fix that insecurity with this article. But I want to say that I’d rather struggle to read a comment and take it the wrong way and have you learn how to clarify your writing than read robot script. (I don’t see every comment response because notifications for comments are sporadic, but I do try my best to engage. If I just give a comment claps, it means I agree with you, but I have no brain left to comment back.)

Writing is hard and is meant to be hard. And one of the hardest lessons we need to ingest early on is that we need to permit ourselves to write steaming piles of shit.