"The point of text is as much to be written as it is to be read"

This wasn't written with AI, let alone by AI. It's just me. Typing, no less, not even dictating like all the cool kids do.

My line of work is being significantly re-shaped by AI, but one of the hard lines I continue to draw for myself is that the writing I publish remains written by me. Not because I think AI is all hype. It isn't! But I do believe it's substantially misguided, buoyed by nonsensical economics, driven by shallow incentives, and unleashed with poor taste on a bunch of exhausted people.

See, I had fun writing that sentence. It's a bit much, sure. It draws attention to itself. But maybe that's what makes it stand out? These sorts of considerations are the heart of the process. The more I do it, the more I realize the pursuit of better writing is the pursuit of a more satisfied reader. It's an act of care.

And that remains a uniquely human contribution. AI can stir the pot, but only we can provide that ingredient. That’s what makes it mean something.

Spencer R. Scott recently captured this perfectly:

I can’t deny that AI might give you untold riches, might help you conquer the world; all I know is that, once you have it, you will not care for it, and it will not care for you.

OK, so I don’t write this with AI. But I also want to be clear about what this (fairly arbitrary) line I’m drawing doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean I don’t use AI every day, or that I don’t spend most of my professional life trying to figure out how the technology underneath the products can be applied in beneficial ways. And whether it should be.

Chris Butler’s asking good questions in this post about what it means to involve AI in your work and why thinking about it in binary terms doesn’t do justice to the issues at hand.

Here's what I highlighted:

The concerns driving these declarations—about labor, creativity, and corporate power—are legitimate and urgent. But I believe these blanket embargoes make the wrong point in the wrong way. By drawing hard lines against entire categories of tools, we’re mistaking the means for the problem itself, and in doing so, we’re limiting our ability to shape how these technologies integrate into creative work.

This is a complicated subject that deserves more than binary thinking. It requires us to examine what automation has historically meant for creative professions, to grapple honestly with the ethical dimensions of how we use these tools, and to distinguish between the technology itself and the systems of power and economics that surround it.

The craft of design was never about the mechanics of blades or brushes, nor is it now about keyboards and mice. Drawing a red line between the two would have limited graphic design to a form of craft that was always lesser than what the best designers can envision in their minds. Digital tools offered graphic designers the experience of layout they’d always wanted. That’s progress.

Designers who must also deliver what they imagine on a canvas will be exposed to a new level of detail that cannot be unseen. It will work backward, informing their imagination and making the fruits of it more functional. Does that mean that designers suddenly have two jobs—designing and building? I suppose that’s one way of thinking of this, just as a designer might have said that desktop publishing “forced” their one job to become many: typesetting, layout, paste-up, correction, imagery, and so on. I think integration is a better word for this, and it’s better than the opposite.

I think that in most cases, these red-lines aren’t being drawn to preserve specific tasks and processes—a specific culture of work—they’re being drawn to signal objection to job loss, the unrestrained greed of a few corporations and their CEOs who have cast aside the social contract, and the capitulation of democracy to the power of money in any currency. I’m not just deeply sympathetic to these concerns. I think they’re very real, and important.

It's not that I would consider publishing a purely generated essay and act of deception—though I understand that perspective—it's that I would consider it a waste. The point of text is as much to be written as it is to be read.

A writer who publishes purely generated text as their own work is making a different choice than one who uses AI as a thinking partner and editor while maintaining authorship over their ideas and voice. These distinctions matter more than blanket prohibitions.

Discernment in practice means asking: Am I using this tool to extend my own capabilities or to replicate someone else's work? Am I shaping the output or simply accepting what's generated? Does this use serve my creative vision or just expedite a result? These aren't always easy questions, but they're the right ones.

The real ethical questions aren't about the tools themselves but about the systems surrounding them: How do we ensure that automation serves human creativity rather than displacing it? How do we hold corporations accountable for training data and environmental impact? How do we create economic structures that distribute the benefits of productivity gains rather than concentrating them at the top? How do we preserve the intrinsic value of making—the importance of the creative process itself, not just its outputs?