You use AI to edit, and yet I found a lot of this essay repetitive, as well as ignoring the main concerns about AI usage. You assume everyone who doesn't want to engage with AI is doing so because they think the work is worthless, but plenty of people understand that there are applications of AI that can be used as tools to assist creative work that still don't want to engage with AI. That's hardly the point people want to make when noting something as "AI-generated."
What most people critique is the theft from artists and the "productivity grindset." Using AI tools for removing repetitive statements and working through thoughts is entirely different from using a generative AI tool for creating a new image out of prompts. Generating images or music using AI is combing other people's work to create it, mostly without their knowledge. Yet the response to that is that it's simply another, newer technology.
The fact is: the calculator didn't steal formulas to be produced. Writing doesn't require stealing words from other's mouths. A synthesizer, while often using recorded sounds, still does not write a full song, and sampling work requires credit to be uploaded to streaming sites without risk of legal action. Collaboration requires credit. There's a reason why copyright law states it will only issue copyrights to original contributions and not any solely-AI generated work.
People are allowed to be interested in productivity and efficiency, but the desire to generate as much as possible using AI is not everyone's interest. It doesn't make them lesser than people who choose to use it, and it doesn't make them jealous of other's success with AI. This piece, which critiques people for thinking they're superior for not using AI as an editor and processor, clearly expresses a superiority of using it as such. It suggests near the end that others don't edit to remain authentic, which is simply not true.
If AI is helping you do your work better, it simply isn't ringing true here. You included subpar images created by midjourney, created circular arguments, threw in references to Plato and Buddhist thought out of context with little to connect them to your argument, and didn't have a rebuttal for the valid critiques of AI work. You didn't even touch on its impact on climate or online communities that have built their creative businesses only to have algorithms flooded with poorly designed midjourney art products. I'm glad you're proud of the creativity you express with AI tools, but publishing work pieced together by generative AI isn't cheating: it's theft.
I think its very telling that this is a comment she did not respond to. You hit the nail exactly on the head!
The issue is not Ai as a tool, its the fact that Ai literally cannot create anything new. It is not reasonable to compare this "tool" to the invention of a camera or calculator. Ai is skimming the internet 24/7 to learn and steal bits and pieces of others work. It is highly unethical (not to mention the devastating environmental effects), and no, it is not the same as getting inspiration from someone or piggybacking off of anothers idea. There is a reason college professors now run student essays through plagiarism and Ai detectors.
Personally, her essay read as more arrogant to me than any of the anti Ai posts I've seen.
While this is true, I think there is a fundamental difference that lies in the human aspect. When a person creates art, they are usually aware of their influences and what traditions, styles or bodies of work they are borrowing from. Plus, if credit is due, a human can very easily add sources to their work.
Sure this doesn’t happen every time, but I think there is an inherent beauty in the way we interpret, transform, and add to each others’ ideas, it’s almost collaborative. AI simply scours the internet and regurgitates whatever suits the prompt best. A human has to actually spend time reading or watching what other people have put out there, internalize it, find meaning in it, to have bits and pieces of other media that they love in their works.
This of course excludes any instances of plagiarism.
Firstly, I just want to say I love that this conversation is happening as it is important and thank you @Stepfanie for writing this post. Secondly, "Got it, whenever I help you edit your writing and reference or draw from a literary work, I’ll provide a source for it (author, title, publication year, and, if possible, edition or link)"- Chatgpt.
Sorry, that's just not how AI works at all (at least right now). Take, for example, the common argument that AI cannot be sentient because it simply chooses the highest-probability next word based on the previous ones. The millions of texts used in training each give incredibly tiny nudges to these probability calculations, so unless you tell an AI to intentionally mimic a certain author's style, the text it generates can't be attributed to any one source. Of course, that does raise the question of how much, and how meaningfully, this process differs from that of a human improving their writing skill by reading over a lifetime...
Seeing this response was funny because I thought about this while writing my comment.
But I would argue that yes, the brain is capable of creating new ideas. Multiple brains may come up with the same idea, but your brain can create new ideas nonetheless.
The creation of the lightbulb, the car, the plane, sliced bread, peanut butter, a purse, the phone or computer you are writing this from, were all ideas someone created in their head. The ideas may have stemmed from a problem or inspirational source of some kind, i.e "Im tired of my oil lantern going out all the time, there must be a better way" (speculation, I don't know what caused him to create a lightbulb lol) but the brain recognized an issue and created an idea to solve it. Maybe it was multiple brains together solving issues and growing ideas. But these brains were not regurgitating exact ideas it stole from someone else on the internet.
this is a great point! we do not live in a vacuum and thus our thoughts and ideas will never be fully original, but inspired by everything that came before us. however i find that there is a difference between living life and finding inspiration to continue a conversation or a new piece of art and using a machine that has been fed the art and thoughts of others for the sole purpose of using it to create on the backs of those ideas without credit. corporations are changing terms and conditions to be able to use artists’ work for their own gain and that is entirely different from a human being seeking out ideas and concepts.
No. Interesting humans create new things all the time. That is what makes them interesting. Sure, there is almost always a connection to the past in some way, but that doesn't get in the way of true creativity and innovation. When someone is copying things, we lose interest eventually, without even realizing why. We are naturally good at noticing an imposter. This is why people who don't know what to look for in AI text generation, almost always feel something is "off" after a while.
There was and always will be only one Ozzy Osbourne. AI could never in a million years invent that person, the life he lived, and the things he (co)created, if he had never existed in the past. Many such cases.
agreed. using AI and publicizing your work to everyone is betraying in a sense that it not only discredits the origins of where the generated data/information came from, but combined with earning praise over something that isn’t your own (knowing that this person became viral over something they didn’t technically create)
None of this fear is justified. Also, her content is extremely well designed for her purposes. Those poor quality images got exactly the reaction she wanted... From you!
Keep shaking your fist at the sky, dinosaur, the robots will make your tea.
"thank you for being honest! i am personally not interested in engaging with creators who use tools to think better, write faster, and navigate complexity more efficiently. i prefer my content artisanal, inefficient, and ideologically pure." xo
no one said writing has to be optimized for efficiency. but the idea that it shouldn’t be—that clarity, iteration, or increased output are somehow bad—is just gatekeeping dressed up as virtue
What if you actually listened to the nearly 100% commentary coming at you - from real humans - telling you our motives? All of us are saying something else. Why do you know you're right, and we are wrong, about our own minds?
I'd just rather follow people who aren't using these tools and are doing the painstaking work of writing and creating without them, like myself. Even the creators of AI are terrified of what it will do the human psyche and society, but yeah, this is totally just another case of baseless fear toward new technology. Only commenting because this post didn't offer any reason to dislike it other than jealousy, false nobility, or needless abstinence.
“And your last question is asked in the form of a lie - you're assuming that I believe that inefficiency is morally superior, you assume that because I don't value efficiency like you, I must therefore value inefficiency.” This was all they needed to see. Good words mate
I would have to break down my entire worldview to answer your questions. I think there are millions of things to value more than efficiency, as most of the problems in modernity have been created by an underlying myth that our issues are mechanical and can be solved through more efficiency, which they cannot. And your last question is asked in the form of a lie - you're assuming that I believe that inefficiency is morally superior, because you assume that I because I don't value efficiency like you, I must therefore value inefficiency. My moral concerns with AI have little to do with efficiency, and far more to do with the fact that this is a novel technology that its proponents claim will upend the world in unpredictable ways. As we didn't understand how social media was impacting our minds as we adopted it, we don't know how AI will impact our minds: the unreality it might create. And AI is more powerful than social media in that it has the ability to accelerate everything - including and especially the processes/tech/systems we know to already be problematic.
When I said I would rather follow people who are putting the real work in, it's not about me valorizing inefficiency - it's about me valuing artists and art and the craft of writing. It's about me understanding how hard it is to write, and that allowing AI in even to help write an essay is a slippery slope toward a world where novels are made through AI, films are made through AI, etc. There's a reason the art world is in agreement that this technology is inappropriate. Humans have made decisions again and again to not use certain tools because we understand that the cost is not worth it. There are appropriate technologies and inappropriate technologies. That's how many of us feel about AI.
She won't read any of this because her is dead because she asks AI to do all of it branding it as "efficiency". Maybe put this in a chat gpt format and probably she'll see it . Won't retain any information tho
Yes there is, art is about going through the process, going through it you learn, your brain evolves, you develop. Using AI takes you out of having to go through the process, you don't learn shit and you don't actually do anything. You're not cool, you're not "efficient" you're not "ugh stop being the purity police" you just sound like a lazy b who doesn't actually create but rather mushes generated shit together and calls it "efficient". You're not fooling anyone, you're not a pioneer, you're not revolutionary, you're just lazy and stealing from other artists
You don’t have one single clue about how good thought or creation happens. What you call inefficiency is actually the space that often allows for an idea to become a better idea.
Creativity isn’t supposed to be “efficient”. That is the most robotic and ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Creativity is magical and beautiful and can be wildly inconsistent, but it’s authentic. I want to see art by humans. That has been made through experiences, through love and joy and sorrow. If a robot did it I couldn’t care less. I also thoroughly believe you cannot call yourself an artist in any universe if you have not made your art. You also didn’t even touch on how AI steals from genuine artists and creators AND does irreparable environmental damage just to make the mediocre mass produced word vomit that you call writing. Use it for efficiency - for menial tasks, for logistics, for anything else but creativity. Creativity shouldn’t be cold and robotic. It needs a beating heart.
Safe to say from your comment that you clearly don’t understand having a creative process then. It’s not meant to be efficient sweetheart. It’s meant to be honest, not carbon copied. Anyone using AI to write… doesn’t get to call themselves an artists. Efficiency is for resumes and LinkedIn bullets.
I’d argue the dedication to individually craft and the ability to input time and effort, is itself noble and speaks to the craft of creativity entirely. There is nothing creative about using AI
Lol. Weren't you the one that said "taste is the new intelligence"? If that's so, congrats you have become tasteless. This was pure tackiness and vitriol towards your own insecurities. And the AI images have the same vibe as 2014 "boss" imagery. Ew.
Yeah I couldn’t disagree more with the whole sentiment of this piece. While I agree that policing people’s use of AI is certainly annoying, and the puritanical overtones that the policing can exhibit is insufferable, it is simultaneously true that AI is eroding our connection to art.
At one point you mention that AI helped you bring to life songs that you had written. While i find it admirable that you seek to involve yourself in multiple forms of art, the act of utilizing AI to make up for your lack of technical mastery over an instrument is just lazy. Art is not just the fruits of our labor; it’s the whole process that we take to get there. Instead of using AI to make up for your lack of musical talent why not take the time to learn the instrument? would that not also be a more rewarding experience anyways?
One of your comments suggests that you see the utilization of AI as a means increasing efficiency. I agree. But the current widespread utilization of AI isn’t being implemented in a way that’s meant to help artists efficiency, rather it’s doing the opposite by replacing them, which is an existential threat to the many mediums of art that we engage in.
people feel the need to “police” people’s use of AI because many of us do believe this attempt to normalize the use of AI is antithetical to the whole act of creation. You are comfortable living in the “grey”because I think you understand that you can’t claim a label if you’re not putting in the work to earn it.
AI is trained on many other artists work, so no, you can’t claim that the work wholesale came from you.
appreciate the passion, but calling it “lazy” to use tools that help translate fully formed creative ideas into tangible output isn’t just elitist, it’s historically illiterate
by that logic, we should all go churn our own butter and learn violin before we’re allowed to express emotion through sound
art isn’t a hazing ritual (as i mentioned in this essay). it’s not made sacred by how inefficiently it’s created—it’s made sacred by what it conveys
i spent years writing those lyrics, journaling melodies, feeling the emotional shape of each song before tech caught up to let me share it. what you’re calling “lazy” is actually the culmination of a decade-long internal process. i didn’t skip the art by any means
and no, i don’t need to spend another decade learning Ableton or classical piano to satisfy your idea of what “counts.” that’s like telling someone with vision but no camera they’re not a real photographer until they build the lens from scratch
as for the broader “AI is replacing artists” claim—respectfully, the people being replaced weren’t making irreplaceable work. real artists don’t vanish because a tool showed up. they adapt. they evolve. they create anyway
AI isn’t the death of art. it’s the death of the gatekeeping that pretends struggle = virtue
On the topic of musical ventures - I agree it's a moot point to expect someone who wants to produce an album to learn all of the tools (both digital and physical in most musical cases.) The process would be valuable to you and would likely improve the outcome of your work, but it often takes years to master instruments and audio mixing.
However, why didn't you seek out artists who do have these years of expertise to work with? You could have supported their ventures financially and you and your work would have benefited from the fruits of collaboration and organic feedback loops.
It's so frustrating reading these replies because we all know you're just using AI to write your responses. So it feels like everyone's just arguing with a robot lol
i take care not to label myself as anything in life—bc i am many things and no one title defines me
but to answer your question: i didn’t train traditionally, and i don’t play instruments. but i did write the songs. the melodies lived in my head for years. i directed the emotional tone. i chose the sounds, the pacing, the vibe
so maybe i’m not a “musician” in the classical sense—but i am the reason those songs exist
i’m comfortable living in the grey. i don’t need a title to know the work came from me
As a music producer who does use AI for various aspects of workflow in and out of music, but who also prefers to know how to do the work on my own… I’m really curious because I read the piece and this comment, both in which you say the melodies lived in your head for years. A melody is a rhythmically organized sequence of single tones. Did you truly provide actual melodies as part of your prompting of Suno or Udio or whatever platform you used?
We're emotionally invested because you clearly lack human emotion with supporting a new technology that wastes so many resources we're already low on and also creating toxic fumes with dirty energy sources. You want to add to that for what? So you can write some shitty EP and busk on the subway with an AI voiceover tool?
you could easily pay someone to produce your music for you though? nobody is asking for you to create from scratch, just to not steal from other creators and put that effort into real artists rather than using stolen melodies because it's 'more efficient'
This article should have been you arguing that your use of ai did not impede your individualism in your creative process. Instead, you weirdly chose to claim all detractors are jealous of you. It was very weird and reads very self-consciously. You have an argument, just stick to it?
Also, are we seriously claiming that presidents in hoodies "opened up conversations about formality, accessibility, and how we relate to power that wouldn't have happened otherwise."? Like come on.
Also, I encourage everyone to check out their newest posts on X! It really details their creative output.
Hoping to engage in this discussion by leading with some assumptions of my own: I understand how historically tech/ innovation has allowed for efficiencies that were initially viewed as ‘the undoing’ of process, but proven to be incorrect. But, right now, I am very much against AI. I know it can be integrated into a creative process for some but it can also bypass so many important steps which allow a creative to learn and evolve. This concerns me as AI is not a distinct innovation but a way to shorten or bypass traditional processes, and i can’t see it claiming its own realm of artistry like painting to photography or film to digital.
Jane Jacobs speaks on how forgetting tradition and process historically is to blame for cultural dark ages, and I guess I also share this concern.
I also want to inquire why AI generated content should be exempt from critique (or policing as you say) by others, as thats how all writing and art evolves and stays relevant.
i appreciate the thoughtfulness here, truly. but i think you’re misreading what AI does in practice for many of us. i’m not bypassing process—i’m accelerating access to it
there’s this false binary being floated that either you struggle manually, or you’re skipping growth. but growth doesn’t come from formatting footnotes by hand or memorizing Adobe workflows—it comes from engaging your own thinking more deeply and consistently. and AI lets me do that at scale
as for the idea that AI can’t claim its own artistic territory: that’s simply premature. photography wasn’t seen as an art form at first either. neither was collage, or film, or jazz, or the synthesizer. every new medium feels “lesser” until someone with vision proves otherwise
and re: critique—i never said AI work shouldn’t be critiqued. critique is welcome. reductionism isn’t. people aren’t engaging with the work, they’re just trying to sniff out whether it was “too good” to be human. it’s a purity test, not literary analysis
lastly, the whole “artists should struggle” thing i reject completely. romanticizing suffering is one of the most spiritually bankrupt defaults in modern creative culture and i'm not sure why people are so drawn to do it tbh
i’m confused — AI isn’t formatting your footnotes or making Adobe workflows, it’s writing passages of the piece right? how does writing the piece fall under the category of “grunt work” in writing?
if a writer needs AI to get to a complete piece because they struggle to articulate it themselves, then has writing actually become more accessible to them? if anything i feel like acquiring writing skills becomes less accessible if you prevent yourself from practicing them / start to believe you don’t have to. once the model gets paywalled or the model weights degenerate (both things that can and do happen to these corporate LLMs) then that access gets lost
Hey, Carrie. I read through this presentation and was very intrigued--I even shared it with my sister. I haven't scoured your publication yet (on mobile, in transit), but I did want to leave a comment and see if you've posted anything that goes into more depth on this/similar topic(s) you might share, or if you had a written version of your thesis that I could preferably read (and if so, my email address is bre.ransome@gmail.com). I didn't even realize there was literature on this topic and am happy to have discovered there is.
Thats it! It was an oral presentation and you’ve read the visual component. IIRC there wasn’t a written component but I might have the audio tape of the oral if you want?
wow. you could not beat this level of lazy and pathetic out of me. holy shit. even at my absolute lowest, i had more self-respect in my pinky nail than this. the fact that you're not life-alteringly humilitated to have written this, let alone publish this, is disturbing.
AIs environmental impact alone should make one despise it, especially that of image and video generation. Generating an image using a powerful AI model takes as much energy as fully charging your smartphone. And the waste of water (https://oecd.ai/en/wonk/how-much-water-does-ai-consume)! We live on a finite planet with finite resources in the thick of a climate crisis.
Next, previously one would have to either create the art themselves or pay artists to create one's vision. If you're a writer, you're an artist – don't you want to be paid for doing your art? So do our fellow visual artists. You want to make a series about presidents in hoodies? Learn to draw or pay someone who does.
Machines should do our hard labour not create our art. "I want Al to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for Al to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes." Author and videogame enthusiast Joanna Maciejewska.
this is the kind of comment that sounds like it’s rooted in moral clarity but is actually just aesthetic LARPing in the language of ethics
not to mention, the moral panic around AI’s environmental impact is wildly selective. do you apply the same outrage to video games? to TikTok servers? to Netflix streaming?
you’re condemning AI for using electricity… on a publishing platform that uses electricity… from a device that uses electricity… while linking me to a website that uses electricity
unless you’re sending handwritten letters by candlelight, miss me with the performative asceticism
Ah yes, the classic "you critique x yet participate in x" deflection. As a massively influential species on this planet, it is our collective responsibility to take care of it.
Supporting the use of AI is abhorrent for the data centers which contribute to environmental racism and degradation alone. The shear amount of energy and new infrastructure it requires is extremely destructive, especially on our Black communities in the south of the US. It is imperative that we give a fuck and actively work against that harm by refusing to participate in the product that drives it.
(Not to mention it removes your voice from a piece by replacing it with an algorithmic assumption of what is the most consumable content.)
Nowhere did you even acknowledge your contribution to data centers’ ecological impact. All your hot takes are enabled by THE SAME data centers and have a carbon cost. Internet, social media and streaming platforms have orders of magnitude more users. If all cause data center demand and ecological damage, why is 8ne necessary and the other a moral failing? Why is substitutible entertainment worth the cost?
There’s a few things going on with AI that people don’t want to admit, especially when it comes to writing.
First: AI is democratizing the creative process. Full stop.
Historically, if you didn’t have an editor, a publisher, or the right connections, your words never made it past your notebook. You had to “look the part,” play the game, or have institutional backing. A lot of brilliant voices were buried under that system (thanks Substack for being the change!).
ChatGPT changed that too. It’s a high-level editor, available to anyone. And the output still reflects the input. If you don’t know what you’re doing, it shows. But for sharp thinkers who just needed support getting their work out? It’s a legit gift.
Second: AI threatens people who’ve coasted on fluff for years.
Writers who built platforms on meandering prose and social clout are panicking because now the field is leveling and they actually have to .:gasp:. ELEVATE. The gatekeeping is breaking. And the writers who were always good but lacked access now have tools to help them execute.
That’s the real threat: execution.
And I’m tired of hearing, “Well I can just tell it’s AI.”
No dude, you can tell when someone didn’t try. That’s not the same thing.
AI slop exists. So does non-AI slop. Spammy engagement bait written by people chasing dopamine metrics isn’t new. AI didn’t invent that but it just made the copy-paste grifters more obvious. So where’s the accountability for them?
Slop is slop. It’s tool-agnostic and that’s the real problem with the “AI = cheating” crowd. They’re acting like writing is governed by some elite standard like a professional sports league with performance benchmarks and oversight.
But writing isn’t that. Not anymore.
Anyone with a phone can hit “publish.” You don’t have to earn it. You don’t have to train. You don’t even have to try. So people need to stop pearl clutching and treating AI usage like it’s doping in sports. In sports, cheating matters because everyone’s already elite. They’re all trying. That’s not true here.
In writing? Most people aren’t even trying. That’s what people are picking up on when they see “AI slop.” They’re not detecting the tool. They’re detecting laziness and I agree that’s it’s offensive. THAT doesn’t deserve to be read and slop is slop whether it’s AI-assisted or not.
So let’s be honest: AI is exposing the writing world, not breaking it like the doomers believe. They said the same about every other tool, much like you outlined beautifully in your piece.
Honestly, the biggest “tell” for me isn’t fluff but the actually clarity.
If I read something that’s structured, concise, and tonally tight? I assume they used tools to refine it and that’s a good thing! It means they respected the reader and they cut the fat. It means they actually care about impact.
We need less performative writing and less literary self-indulgence. People don’t want musings, they want direction, instruction, clarity. AI helps with that. And if the people using it are also talented? Game over.
Saying someone isn’t a writer because they use tools is lazy. It’s the literary version of fake gangsta energy like suffering for your art makes it more real. It doesn’t. It just makes it harder to get to the point.
AI can’t culture code, calibrate tone, check theological context, format your voice, or cure your perfectionism and make you hit publish but it can help you think more clearly and clarity is the new flex IMO
We’re watching the old guard panic while diverse, sharp, creative voices finally get their shot. That’s the future. I see no problems here.
The more tools a person uses to refine their writing, the more they are outsourcing their independence of thought. It takes time to develop a writing tone and style, and original thinking, and using AI is driven more by performance and self-indulgence than not using AI. Reading is about human minds connecting. AI makes those minds less sharp, and less creative.
You’re assuming everyone has time, training, or access to refine tone manually. And if they don’t? Then they’re not allowed to write? Where does it end? Who set this standard?
That’s the gatekeeping problem all over again.
For marginalized voices, non-native speakers, working parents etc
AI isn’t indulgence to them. It’s a legitimate a bridge. It gives them a shot at clarity, and clarity is discipline. That’s what the reader deserves.
And not for nothing but with how much society talks about “neurodivergence” I’m seeing this crowd benefit the most. OCD before AI meant endless loops and never being able to launch. OCD with AI means building and scaling with structures in place.
This is a positive thing and we can’t confuse access with decline.
That’s just elitism in new shoes.
And we’ve had enough of that but this is what’s coming with AI. The new class politics. Those who use vs those who don’t when in reality everybody is missing the key ingredient here: human interaction.
Whether you do or don’t use AI your ability to bring people together into a physical space and deliver something dope is the future.
Your assumption is that thinking and writing are not the same process, but as a matter of fact, as anyone will discover once they try to do it, thinking and writing feed into each other and are much the same process. So when AI is shaping your sentences, it’s also shaping your thoughts and you lose the authenticity of the conversation you could be having with yourself. Sure, for lots of kinds of writing that won’t matter, some won’t care either way. But those people shouldn’t call themselves writers.
Marginalized voices, working parents, and non-native speakers deserve ears, attention, time, and respect. But I see your point, it’s like a plow that allows them to till fields and harvest more, grow more. It’s like a prosthetic limb that give an amputee opportunity to compete. It provides mobility or corrects blurred vision. Still, I often think of this line delivered by Edward James Olmos in Wolfen: “You got your technology but you lost. You lost your senses.” There is a risk of decline in quality. As mass production outsources craftsmanship to mechanical reproduction, LLMs outsource original thinking to digital reproduction. There’s a quality of authenticity and trust based on real things, hand-made and with another person in mind, which applies to writing too, and that’s quite the opposite of elite.
When have writers been at the top of the agenda for ‘elitists’ that need to be taken down a notch? (Seriously?) I imagine if we weren’t so focus on maximising time, then people wouldn’t have such long work hours, they could spend time dedicated to cultivating their unique voices. Isn’t your anger unbelievably misplaced here? Stop using marginalised voices to credit something that you believe. Have you really heard anyone say this? Non-native speakers, single parents have and will learn and find the time if they have passion, voice drive. Sylvia Plath woke up every morning at 4am before her children were awake to write her poetry. When these people do learn, the experience, the dedication, the uniqueness to their voice is apparent, it diversifies and opens up the literary world. But the reality is, you can’t skip the process and when you do, there is no point.
I just can’t subscribe to this belief that writing can be improved in any way by ‘efficiency’. It’s ridiculous, Hemingway worked to ‘cut the fat’ for years (that’s where your quote is from, did you know? Or did ChatGBT offer it to you, with no reference), and still, his work had the insight of unique human experience, it still tangled and wound itself up. Published books have been taking on this ridiculous style, of ‘saying it plain’ (O’Hara) and manipulating that so that language can’t infringe on story at all. That’s not the point. Literature, poetics, imperfections, they are the focus, to push against the boundaries of your ability — Of what you do and can know, that is the satisfying aspect of writing and of reading. AI will continue- the plain writing, the conciseness, the measured sentences with no cadence, no tone, sound. AI will never be able to imagine the feel of ‘t’, catching on their tongue. It will never be able to create from impulse or from the skin.
Look, if you read to maximise the efficiency and effectiveness of your brain, or read to learn about ultimate processing systems or whatever you nutjobs are interested in then be my guest. Read your AI books with an AI summarising tool, in fact listen to an AI voice read it to you so can maximise your time at the gym, lifting weights that feel of nothing, feeling absolutely nothing. Literature has never, and will never be about time management, and I’m afraid that you and OP are wasting your life away in your capitalist micro management.
That’a quite an assumption. AI reflects. If a mind isn’t sharp, it shows. If a mind is sharp, that also shows.
If someone avoids cognitive challenge, it isn’t because they are using AI. It is because they brought their avoidance to a technology that reveals that.
It’s clearly not just a tool. That is why we are being told it will replace so many jobs; why it’ll revolutionize our lives; why the valuations for companies working on AI are through the roof. If it were a tool, it would not replace doctors, lawyers, etc. Similarly in writing. You suppose the test is ‘can you tell it’s AI?’ It is not. It’s why would you care what someone says to you when they’ve just created it with a prompt? Why not just send them the prompt you used? If you suppose it’s just ‘a first draft’, well, great, then it’s simply the mean of what other people have written about that topic. It’s like those AI summaries we know get because search engines are crap.
In time, because AI can simply cut and paste in a highly sophisticated matter, it’ll just be consuming its own vomit. No one will have a clue whose views they represent; whether it says something true and why it even means. We just won’t bother reading it. Why would we? No one will know how to write; a few maybe. We will not be able to express ourselves without aid and that ‘aid’ will degenerate from eating its own vomit.
Enjoy your tool. Brought to you by the very same people who brought us the internet with promises of bringing all the knowledge of man at our fingertips. Look at how that turned out. We attached sewer pipes to our home and now our schools, businesses and government won’t let us disconnect. Meanwhile, it’s become a complete dumpster fire and no one is more educated than they were before. Don’t worry though: the same folks have a new product to sell us.
Thanks Natasha! It’s a contentious topic but the conversations need to continue. Inherent bias and fear is running the convo right now. That’s gotta change!
Someone on here said that AI is helpful if you already know what you’re doing Or know your subject matter.
That’s a great way of thinking about it.
For example AI helps me edit articles I’ve written about topics I know a ton about.
If I asked it to generate a script for a sitcom it probably would look like trash because I have no idea how to write sitcoms.
I do wanna push back on this person’s assertion that Substack has leveled the playing field… It has certainly helped but a lot of of stuff on here is Astroturf and the algorithm has gotten more and more suspicious over the past six months…
Thank you for this. This is a very helpful critique. I think the importance of this conversation can often get lost in broad generalization. One of the scripts I hear often sounds like AI is no different than a hammer, followed by; but its the most important hammer ever made, and if we reject it then we have lost our only subversive tool against a ruling class or essentially lost an arms race. A Ouija board is only wood after all, but corruptible. Its the input that I wonder about especially when fed by a generation that was raised on reddit. Like all things it takes discipline, humility, and agency. I doubt my own proficency but not all use cases are life and death, regardless of what side someone comes down on. Still landing the plane on if im going to walk out into the proverbial woods or hack into the matrix to destroy the bots. Though my context and use case is very different using within a healthcare setting. May your writing be as gangsta as Toupac. Blessings.
Yo, this is hands down the best thing I’ve read today. You cut through all this nosiness with clarity, humility, and real intellectual curiosity. That’s rare in this whole AI conversation.
Nothing is all good or all bad.
It depends.
Mathis told James Bond the older one gets, the more mixed up the heroes and villains get.
When we’re young, we think everything’s black and white. But that’s not how the world works. It’s a dope line and he was right.
Like anything else, it depends on the person, the use case, and the intent (which only God can judge).
And honestly? It depends on whether we’re mature enough to use the thing without worshipping it or fearing it. We’ve shown we have a problem with that.
I’ve seen AI help people who couldn’t get their words out before.
Just like I’ve seen it amplify laziness.
That doesn’t make AI good or bad.
It makes it a mirror of the writer and of civilization.
So I appreciate your comment, heavy. Reminds me why this platform is still great Blessings right back to you.
Lord knows iv responded unchartiably to other posts and that was probably last week! Iv been searching for a metaphore but keep finding myself empty handed. AI is more potent than a toaster, though I'm certain someone somewhere has strangled their mother in law with a toaster oven. I honestly dont know If AI is an inflated customer service chat or an atomic bomb, or something in between. I am more certain that all that potency can only finds it's telos in subservience to Christ. Who is the means, the goal, and the reward of anything that resembles humility or discipline.. I think Marry Harrington restacked your post commenting that the ends of the impact is the reader, or in my case patient care.
We’ve been discussing this at work ALOT. We’ve basically come to the conclusion that it’s still “garbage in garbage out.” It’s a great tool! It saves time and we love that! AND You still need the knowledge, experience & understanding to feed it and review what it gives you, or its slop.
Seriously thank you for this. I get it. This topic is contentious and AI is going to become the new class war.
But your comment is one of the few that’s actually getting it. A few here do too! Garbage in is garbage out, period. Most people do not know how to use the tool properly. The operator will make the difference!
This resonates. I’ve seen several pieces lately were too long for their point, circular in the reasoning and repetitive with their statements. I thought they were AI generated but they seemed anti-AI in sentiment, so whether or not it was used they just seemed low quality.
I hope you’re mostly right. It’s a pretty rosy picture. Although, I don’t think the primary goal of all writing is quality and direct communication. For the types of writing where that is the goal, AI will undoubtedly be an enormous boon to people who use it that way.
I also fear that democratization is often a coded way of saying something is getting innovated and refinanced by the tech industry at a higher interest rate. That being said, I am by no means “anti AI.” I use it constantly and recently got a fellowship to build a startup technology with it.
Martin Gurri wrote a great book (Revolt of the Public) about how the internet has had a devastating effect on institutions because people can vaguely gesture at them and talk about gatekeeping to easily dismantle the places resources use to accrue and be hoarded. Whether this is good or bad (I think) depends on which institutions we’re talking about.
I think we’re still seeing this experiment play out. It will be interesting to see how and whether AI generally (1) accelerates institutional demise, and/or (2) plays a role in the creation of newer, better institutions. It will also be interesting to see whether AI remains “democratic,” or suddenly gets more exclusive and expensive once the market for it has been thoroughly enough established.
AI is not democratizing writing - it’s monopolizing everyone’s creativity into tech companies who are going to end up charging you increasing prices for what used to be free (both in cost and independence).
It’ll also create a situation where more knock-off writing exists than before. And to escape from the noise, people will turn to editors and select writers etc. creating a less democratized process where certain elite writers (with money for the right PR etc.) and brands will be revered more than everyone else.
Why would anyone bother to spend time reading, listening, or looking at something you couldn't be bothered to take the time to create yourself? Holy yap. Did ChatGPT write this drivel for you too?
You use AI to edit, and yet I found a lot of this essay repetitive, as well as ignoring the main concerns about AI usage. You assume everyone who doesn't want to engage with AI is doing so because they think the work is worthless, but plenty of people understand that there are applications of AI that can be used as tools to assist creative work that still don't want to engage with AI. That's hardly the point people want to make when noting something as "AI-generated."
What most people critique is the theft from artists and the "productivity grindset." Using AI tools for removing repetitive statements and working through thoughts is entirely different from using a generative AI tool for creating a new image out of prompts. Generating images or music using AI is combing other people's work to create it, mostly without their knowledge. Yet the response to that is that it's simply another, newer technology.
The fact is: the calculator didn't steal formulas to be produced. Writing doesn't require stealing words from other's mouths. A synthesizer, while often using recorded sounds, still does not write a full song, and sampling work requires credit to be uploaded to streaming sites without risk of legal action. Collaboration requires credit. There's a reason why copyright law states it will only issue copyrights to original contributions and not any solely-AI generated work.
People are allowed to be interested in productivity and efficiency, but the desire to generate as much as possible using AI is not everyone's interest. It doesn't make them lesser than people who choose to use it, and it doesn't make them jealous of other's success with AI. This piece, which critiques people for thinking they're superior for not using AI as an editor and processor, clearly expresses a superiority of using it as such. It suggests near the end that others don't edit to remain authentic, which is simply not true.
If AI is helping you do your work better, it simply isn't ringing true here. You included subpar images created by midjourney, created circular arguments, threw in references to Plato and Buddhist thought out of context with little to connect them to your argument, and didn't have a rebuttal for the valid critiques of AI work. You didn't even touch on its impact on climate or online communities that have built their creative businesses only to have algorithms flooded with poorly designed midjourney art products. I'm glad you're proud of the creativity you express with AI tools, but publishing work pieced together by generative AI isn't cheating: it's theft.
I think its very telling that this is a comment she did not respond to. You hit the nail exactly on the head!
The issue is not Ai as a tool, its the fact that Ai literally cannot create anything new. It is not reasonable to compare this "tool" to the invention of a camera or calculator. Ai is skimming the internet 24/7 to learn and steal bits and pieces of others work. It is highly unethical (not to mention the devastating environmental effects), and no, it is not the same as getting inspiration from someone or piggybacking off of anothers idea. There is a reason college professors now run student essays through plagiarism and Ai detectors.
Personally, her essay read as more arrogant to me than any of the anti Ai posts I've seen.
Curious - can’t it also be argued that the human brain is incapable of creating anything entirely “new”?
Isn’t everything at least a little bit derivative?
While this is true, I think there is a fundamental difference that lies in the human aspect. When a person creates art, they are usually aware of their influences and what traditions, styles or bodies of work they are borrowing from. Plus, if credit is due, a human can very easily add sources to their work.
Sure this doesn’t happen every time, but I think there is an inherent beauty in the way we interpret, transform, and add to each others’ ideas, it’s almost collaborative. AI simply scours the internet and regurgitates whatever suits the prompt best. A human has to actually spend time reading or watching what other people have put out there, internalize it, find meaning in it, to have bits and pieces of other media that they love in their works.
This of course excludes any instances of plagiarism.
Right. "Aware" stood out to me as the key word here. Awareness is an affective trait, something which AI, by definition, can never have.
I hadn’t thought about that, but you’re absolutely right.
Firstly, I just want to say I love that this conversation is happening as it is important and thank you @Stepfanie for writing this post. Secondly, "Got it, whenever I help you edit your writing and reference or draw from a literary work, I’ll provide a source for it (author, title, publication year, and, if possible, edition or link)"- Chatgpt.
Sorry, that's just not how AI works at all (at least right now). Take, for example, the common argument that AI cannot be sentient because it simply chooses the highest-probability next word based on the previous ones. The millions of texts used in training each give incredibly tiny nudges to these probability calculations, so unless you tell an AI to intentionally mimic a certain author's style, the text it generates can't be attributed to any one source. Of course, that does raise the question of how much, and how meaningfully, this process differs from that of a human improving their writing skill by reading over a lifetime...
Seeing this response was funny because I thought about this while writing my comment.
But I would argue that yes, the brain is capable of creating new ideas. Multiple brains may come up with the same idea, but your brain can create new ideas nonetheless.
The creation of the lightbulb, the car, the plane, sliced bread, peanut butter, a purse, the phone or computer you are writing this from, were all ideas someone created in their head. The ideas may have stemmed from a problem or inspirational source of some kind, i.e "Im tired of my oil lantern going out all the time, there must be a better way" (speculation, I don't know what caused him to create a lightbulb lol) but the brain recognized an issue and created an idea to solve it. Maybe it was multiple brains together solving issues and growing ideas. But these brains were not regurgitating exact ideas it stole from someone else on the internet.
this is a great point! we do not live in a vacuum and thus our thoughts and ideas will never be fully original, but inspired by everything that came before us. however i find that there is a difference between living life and finding inspiration to continue a conversation or a new piece of art and using a machine that has been fed the art and thoughts of others for the sole purpose of using it to create on the backs of those ideas without credit. corporations are changing terms and conditions to be able to use artists’ work for their own gain and that is entirely different from a human being seeking out ideas and concepts.
ai reforms the original idea, humans can reshape it into something authentic
No. Interesting humans create new things all the time. That is what makes them interesting. Sure, there is almost always a connection to the past in some way, but that doesn't get in the way of true creativity and innovation. When someone is copying things, we lose interest eventually, without even realizing why. We are naturally good at noticing an imposter. This is why people who don't know what to look for in AI text generation, almost always feel something is "off" after a while.
There was and always will be only one Ozzy Osbourne. AI could never in a million years invent that person, the life he lived, and the things he (co)created, if he had never existed in the past. Many such cases.
agreed. using AI and publicizing your work to everyone is betraying in a sense that it not only discredits the origins of where the generated data/information came from, but combined with earning praise over something that isn’t your own (knowing that this person became viral over something they didn’t technically create)
My thoughts exactly: using AI to create art or music is stealing work from artists who didn't consent to it.
🎯 and yet, crickets!
How does one repost a comment. You articulated and encapsulated all my thoughts so well. You’re a beautiful writer.
oh you can share it by sharing the link at the three dots, and clicking “notes” for where to share
this is very kind, thank you! i think you can share a link to the comment by using the three dots, but idk how to share it otherwise 🤷🏽♀️
incredibly telling that your comment has more support than this entire essay
Thank you for articulating my thoughts perfectly!
None of this fear is justified. Also, her content is extremely well designed for her purposes. Those poor quality images got exactly the reaction she wanted... From you!
Keep shaking your fist at the sky, dinosaur, the robots will make your tea.
wow
Ding ding ding, we have a winner.
Thank you for being honest! I am personally not interested in engaging with creators using ai at this time, so, good to know!
"thank you for being honest! i am personally not interested in engaging with creators who use tools to think better, write faster, and navigate complexity more efficiently. i prefer my content artisanal, inefficient, and ideologically pure." xo
Not every single thing in this world has to be optimized for maximum efficiency. Least of all writing.
no one said writing has to be optimized for efficiency. but the idea that it shouldn’t be—that clarity, iteration, or increased output are somehow bad—is just gatekeeping dressed up as virtue
What if you actually listened to the nearly 100% commentary coming at you - from real humans - telling you our motives? All of us are saying something else. Why do you know you're right, and we are wrong, about our own minds?
Your reply is written using AI, which is part of the entire problem.
Girl stfu, you're not an artist. You steal from other artists and try to brand it as “efficiency” no one's falling for that. Entitled b
That is an insane response!!
The delusion here is top shelf
So you're telling me that you are not capable of thinking better without a tool that steals from other artists? wow
you have a linkedin view of writing. the fact is ai isnt even that good at it
Art is not about efficiency. xo
So glad to see this update! I was wondering how you felt.
Disappointing and lacks inspiration
This wasn't a post about inspiration. Thanks for reading.
I didn’t say it was about inspiration, if you could engage your full brain without AI you’d know I meant that your writing is uninspired
“If you could engage your full brain” 😮💨😮💨 you ate and left no crumbs I fear
LOL you have a good one, Ana. xo
Your comment invites comparison to your Substack but you should not invite comparison to your Substack.
Why not? Are we not here to compare thoughts?
Ana thank you for making me LOL - Your comment is also disappointing and lacks inspiration
I guess this is what you consider inspirational?
https://substack.com/home/post/p-163877308
Pretty disappointing if you ask me 😂
LOL, Brian you're delightfully diabolical.
Sure Cole, I’ll get on that right away! You trolls crack me up. Go write something with substance instead of just lurking in the comments.
Oh how sad... he can't think for himself...
I'd just rather follow people who aren't using these tools and are doing the painstaking work of writing and creating without them, like myself. Even the creators of AI are terrified of what it will do the human psyche and society, but yeah, this is totally just another case of baseless fear toward new technology. Only commenting because this post didn't offer any reason to dislike it other than jealousy, false nobility, or needless abstinence.
as i mentioned in the post, there is nothing noble about suffering through an inefficient creative process
but to each their own, i suppose
Efficiency is a tremendously dangerous thing to value over other concerns.
“And your last question is asked in the form of a lie - you're assuming that I believe that inefficiency is morally superior, you assume that because I don't value efficiency like you, I must therefore value inefficiency.” This was all they needed to see. Good words mate
why? why is being efficient dangerous? what should you value more than efficiency? what makes being inefficient morally superior?
I would have to break down my entire worldview to answer your questions. I think there are millions of things to value more than efficiency, as most of the problems in modernity have been created by an underlying myth that our issues are mechanical and can be solved through more efficiency, which they cannot. And your last question is asked in the form of a lie - you're assuming that I believe that inefficiency is morally superior, because you assume that I because I don't value efficiency like you, I must therefore value inefficiency. My moral concerns with AI have little to do with efficiency, and far more to do with the fact that this is a novel technology that its proponents claim will upend the world in unpredictable ways. As we didn't understand how social media was impacting our minds as we adopted it, we don't know how AI will impact our minds: the unreality it might create. And AI is more powerful than social media in that it has the ability to accelerate everything - including and especially the processes/tech/systems we know to already be problematic.
When I said I would rather follow people who are putting the real work in, it's not about me valorizing inefficiency - it's about me valuing artists and art and the craft of writing. It's about me understanding how hard it is to write, and that allowing AI in even to help write an essay is a slippery slope toward a world where novels are made through AI, films are made through AI, etc. There's a reason the art world is in agreement that this technology is inappropriate. Humans have made decisions again and again to not use certain tools because we understand that the cost is not worth it. There are appropriate technologies and inappropriate technologies. That's how many of us feel about AI.
She won't read any of this because her is dead because she asks AI to do all of it branding it as "efficiency". Maybe put this in a chat gpt format and probably she'll see it . Won't retain any information tho
you want that to be true so desperately.
You’ve articulated similar thoughts I had so well. Thanks for your eloquence and cogency (if that’s a word!)!
perfectly said!
Beautifully said!
Yes there is, art is about going through the process, going through it you learn, your brain evolves, you develop. Using AI takes you out of having to go through the process, you don't learn shit and you don't actually do anything. You're not cool, you're not "efficient" you're not "ugh stop being the purity police" you just sound like a lazy b who doesn't actually create but rather mushes generated shit together and calls it "efficient". You're not fooling anyone, you're not a pioneer, you're not revolutionary, you're just lazy and stealing from other artists
You don’t have one single clue about how good thought or creation happens. What you call inefficiency is actually the space that often allows for an idea to become a better idea.
Good things come inefficiently
It is only by pushing through inefficiency in the early stages of our learning processes that we can truly become efficient and competent.
Creativity isn’t supposed to be “efficient”. That is the most robotic and ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Creativity is magical and beautiful and can be wildly inconsistent, but it’s authentic. I want to see art by humans. That has been made through experiences, through love and joy and sorrow. If a robot did it I couldn’t care less. I also thoroughly believe you cannot call yourself an artist in any universe if you have not made your art. You also didn’t even touch on how AI steals from genuine artists and creators AND does irreparable environmental damage just to make the mediocre mass produced word vomit that you call writing. Use it for efficiency - for menial tasks, for logistics, for anything else but creativity. Creativity shouldn’t be cold and robotic. It needs a beating heart.
Safe to say from your comment that you clearly don’t understand having a creative process then. It’s not meant to be efficient sweetheart. It’s meant to be honest, not carbon copied. Anyone using AI to write… doesn’t get to call themselves an artists. Efficiency is for resumes and LinkedIn bullets.
I’d argue the dedication to individually craft and the ability to input time and effort, is itself noble and speaks to the craft of creativity entirely. There is nothing creative about using AI
this is actually the most ignorant comment i’ve ever read
If anyone is wondering about what they said about AI leaders being terrified of what they’ve created, check out my substack on AI 2027! https://open.substack.com/pub/jocieosika/p/sooo-ai-will-cause-human-extinction?r=5p0jqe&utm_medium=ios
Lol. Weren't you the one that said "taste is the new intelligence"? If that's so, congrats you have become tasteless. This was pure tackiness and vitriol towards your own insecurities. And the AI images have the same vibe as 2014 "boss" imagery. Ew.
how's your 1 subscriber doing?
How come you attacked the person's subscriber count & not defend yourself on the critque of being "tasteless"?
uhm fuck you
Yeah I couldn’t disagree more with the whole sentiment of this piece. While I agree that policing people’s use of AI is certainly annoying, and the puritanical overtones that the policing can exhibit is insufferable, it is simultaneously true that AI is eroding our connection to art.
At one point you mention that AI helped you bring to life songs that you had written. While i find it admirable that you seek to involve yourself in multiple forms of art, the act of utilizing AI to make up for your lack of technical mastery over an instrument is just lazy. Art is not just the fruits of our labor; it’s the whole process that we take to get there. Instead of using AI to make up for your lack of musical talent why not take the time to learn the instrument? would that not also be a more rewarding experience anyways?
One of your comments suggests that you see the utilization of AI as a means increasing efficiency. I agree. But the current widespread utilization of AI isn’t being implemented in a way that’s meant to help artists efficiency, rather it’s doing the opposite by replacing them, which is an existential threat to the many mediums of art that we engage in.
people feel the need to “police” people’s use of AI because many of us do believe this attempt to normalize the use of AI is antithetical to the whole act of creation. You are comfortable living in the “grey”because I think you understand that you can’t claim a label if you’re not putting in the work to earn it.
AI is trained on many other artists work, so no, you can’t claim that the work wholesale came from you.
appreciate the passion, but calling it “lazy” to use tools that help translate fully formed creative ideas into tangible output isn’t just elitist, it’s historically illiterate
by that logic, we should all go churn our own butter and learn violin before we’re allowed to express emotion through sound
art isn’t a hazing ritual (as i mentioned in this essay). it’s not made sacred by how inefficiently it’s created—it’s made sacred by what it conveys
i spent years writing those lyrics, journaling melodies, feeling the emotional shape of each song before tech caught up to let me share it. what you’re calling “lazy” is actually the culmination of a decade-long internal process. i didn’t skip the art by any means
and no, i don’t need to spend another decade learning Ableton or classical piano to satisfy your idea of what “counts.” that’s like telling someone with vision but no camera they’re not a real photographer until they build the lens from scratch
as for the broader “AI is replacing artists” claim—respectfully, the people being replaced weren’t making irreplaceable work. real artists don’t vanish because a tool showed up. they adapt. they evolve. they create anyway
AI isn’t the death of art. it’s the death of the gatekeeping that pretends struggle = virtue
On the topic of musical ventures - I agree it's a moot point to expect someone who wants to produce an album to learn all of the tools (both digital and physical in most musical cases.) The process would be valuable to you and would likely improve the outcome of your work, but it often takes years to master instruments and audio mixing.
However, why didn't you seek out artists who do have these years of expertise to work with? You could have supported their ventures financially and you and your work would have benefited from the fruits of collaboration and organic feedback loops.
It's so frustrating reading these replies because we all know you're just using AI to write your responses. So it feels like everyone's just arguing with a robot lol
would you call yourself a musician then for having put those songs together despite their use of AI?
i take care not to label myself as anything in life—bc i am many things and no one title defines me
but to answer your question: i didn’t train traditionally, and i don’t play instruments. but i did write the songs. the melodies lived in my head for years. i directed the emotional tone. i chose the sounds, the pacing, the vibe
so maybe i’m not a “musician” in the classical sense—but i am the reason those songs exist
i’m comfortable living in the grey. i don’t need a title to know the work came from me
As a music producer who does use AI for various aspects of workflow in and out of music, but who also prefers to know how to do the work on my own… I’m really curious because I read the piece and this comment, both in which you say the melodies lived in your head for years. A melody is a rhythmically organized sequence of single tones. Did you truly provide actual melodies as part of your prompting of Suno or Udio or whatever platform you used?
to be clear, you're doing exactly what this article was about
the real question isn’t whether i am a musician—it’s why are you so emotionally invested in policing whether i am or not?
maybe reflect on that before responding.
We're emotionally invested because you clearly lack human emotion with supporting a new technology that wastes so many resources we're already low on and also creating toxic fumes with dirty energy sources. You want to add to that for what? So you can write some shitty EP and busk on the subway with an AI voiceover tool?
you could easily pay someone to produce your music for you though? nobody is asking for you to create from scratch, just to not steal from other creators and put that effort into real artists rather than using stolen melodies because it's 'more efficient'
This article should have been you arguing that your use of ai did not impede your individualism in your creative process. Instead, you weirdly chose to claim all detractors are jealous of you. It was very weird and reads very self-consciously. You have an argument, just stick to it?
Also, are we seriously claiming that presidents in hoodies "opened up conversations about formality, accessibility, and how we relate to power that wouldn't have happened otherwise."? Like come on.
Also, I encourage everyone to check out their newest posts on X! It really details their creative output.
their claim about the presidents in hoodies “opening up conversations” is ludicrous because it was so obviously written by AI lol
Hoping to engage in this discussion by leading with some assumptions of my own: I understand how historically tech/ innovation has allowed for efficiencies that were initially viewed as ‘the undoing’ of process, but proven to be incorrect. But, right now, I am very much against AI. I know it can be integrated into a creative process for some but it can also bypass so many important steps which allow a creative to learn and evolve. This concerns me as AI is not a distinct innovation but a way to shorten or bypass traditional processes, and i can’t see it claiming its own realm of artistry like painting to photography or film to digital.
Jane Jacobs speaks on how forgetting tradition and process historically is to blame for cultural dark ages, and I guess I also share this concern.
I also want to inquire why AI generated content should be exempt from critique (or policing as you say) by others, as thats how all writing and art evolves and stays relevant.
i appreciate the thoughtfulness here, truly. but i think you’re misreading what AI does in practice for many of us. i’m not bypassing process—i’m accelerating access to it
there’s this false binary being floated that either you struggle manually, or you’re skipping growth. but growth doesn’t come from formatting footnotes by hand or memorizing Adobe workflows—it comes from engaging your own thinking more deeply and consistently. and AI lets me do that at scale
as for the idea that AI can’t claim its own artistic territory: that’s simply premature. photography wasn’t seen as an art form at first either. neither was collage, or film, or jazz, or the synthesizer. every new medium feels “lesser” until someone with vision proves otherwise
and re: critique—i never said AI work shouldn’t be critiqued. critique is welcome. reductionism isn’t. people aren’t engaging with the work, they’re just trying to sniff out whether it was “too good” to be human. it’s a purity test, not literary analysis
lastly, the whole “artists should struggle” thing i reject completely. romanticizing suffering is one of the most spiritually bankrupt defaults in modern creative culture and i'm not sure why people are so drawn to do it tbh
i’m confused — AI isn’t formatting your footnotes or making Adobe workflows, it’s writing passages of the piece right? how does writing the piece fall under the category of “grunt work” in writing?
if a writer needs AI to get to a complete piece because they struggle to articulate it themselves, then has writing actually become more accessible to them? if anything i feel like acquiring writing skills becomes less accessible if you prevent yourself from practicing them / start to believe you don’t have to. once the model gets paywalled or the model weights degenerate (both things that can and do happen to these corporate LLMs) then that access gets lost
I've been writing for over 30 years. I'll be okay. Thank you so much for your concern though.
I don’t think they were suggesting you learn the alphabet, sis
I love how people who don't understand AI assume you can just plug some magical prompt into an LLM and one-shot an entire essay. It's really cute.
i’m a phd student in computer science and robotics. the first time i saw GPT was on arxiv so can you be civil lol
Kill shot. No response
Nearly everyone here understands the situation better than you, it appears.
OK! Very telling last sentence!
You don't know why people are so drawn to artistic suffering? Then you sure ain't like the rest of us here.
Here's my graduate thesis about studies connecting artistic madness and genius. The scientific backing is very thick. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LBBiP_32tQoRxUj28YG_ac2q1dRccQ-Y/view?usp=sharing
Did AI not tell you about that?
Here's why: AI cannot judge for you, it can only perform.
You are the judge. You asked the wrong questions.
Thank you for posting your gradute thesis!! I look forward to reading it :]
Hey, Carrie. I read through this presentation and was very intrigued--I even shared it with my sister. I haven't scoured your publication yet (on mobile, in transit), but I did want to leave a comment and see if you've posted anything that goes into more depth on this/similar topic(s) you might share, or if you had a written version of your thesis that I could preferably read (and if so, my email address is bre.ransome@gmail.com). I didn't even realize there was literature on this topic and am happy to have discovered there is.
Thats it! It was an oral presentation and you’ve read the visual component. IIRC there wasn’t a written component but I might have the audio tape of the oral if you want?
Would LOVE the audio if possible.
Hell yeah, let me try to find :)
It sounds like your stuff would be great for another AI to read and summarize for people.
But I don’t think a human should be expected to take the time to read the entirety of something you couldn’t be bothered to write the entirety of.
ETA: I expand on this argument here: https://open.substack.com/pub/yourmagpie/p/if-you-use-ai-to-write-your-stuff?r=2eu6lk&utm_medium=ios
absolutely remarkable commentary and brilliant argument
wow. you could not beat this level of lazy and pathetic out of me. holy shit. even at my absolute lowest, i had more self-respect in my pinky nail than this. the fact that you're not life-alteringly humilitated to have written this, let alone publish this, is disturbing.
AIs environmental impact alone should make one despise it, especially that of image and video generation. Generating an image using a powerful AI model takes as much energy as fully charging your smartphone. And the waste of water (https://oecd.ai/en/wonk/how-much-water-does-ai-consume)! We live on a finite planet with finite resources in the thick of a climate crisis.
Next, previously one would have to either create the art themselves or pay artists to create one's vision. If you're a writer, you're an artist – don't you want to be paid for doing your art? So do our fellow visual artists. You want to make a series about presidents in hoodies? Learn to draw or pay someone who does.
Machines should do our hard labour not create our art. "I want Al to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for Al to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes." Author and videogame enthusiast Joanna Maciejewska.
this is the kind of comment that sounds like it’s rooted in moral clarity but is actually just aesthetic LARPing in the language of ethics
not to mention, the moral panic around AI’s environmental impact is wildly selective. do you apply the same outrage to video games? to TikTok servers? to Netflix streaming?
you’re condemning AI for using electricity… on a publishing platform that uses electricity… from a device that uses electricity… while linking me to a website that uses electricity
unless you’re sending handwritten letters by candlelight, miss me with the performative asceticism
Ah yes, the classic "you critique x yet participate in x" deflection. As a massively influential species on this planet, it is our collective responsibility to take care of it.
Supporting the use of AI is abhorrent for the data centers which contribute to environmental racism and degradation alone. The shear amount of energy and new infrastructure it requires is extremely destructive, especially on our Black communities in the south of the US. It is imperative that we give a fuck and actively work against that harm by refusing to participate in the product that drives it.
(Not to mention it removes your voice from a piece by replacing it with an algorithmic assumption of what is the most consumable content.)
Nowhere did you even acknowledge your contribution to data centers’ ecological impact. All your hot takes are enabled by THE SAME data centers and have a carbon cost. Internet, social media and streaming platforms have orders of magnitude more users. If all cause data center demand and ecological damage, why is 8ne necessary and the other a moral failing? Why is substitutible entertainment worth the cost?
Who's purity testing now?
coulda just said you’re not in it for the love of the game and left it at that
There’s a few things going on with AI that people don’t want to admit, especially when it comes to writing.
First: AI is democratizing the creative process. Full stop.
Historically, if you didn’t have an editor, a publisher, or the right connections, your words never made it past your notebook. You had to “look the part,” play the game, or have institutional backing. A lot of brilliant voices were buried under that system (thanks Substack for being the change!).
ChatGPT changed that too. It’s a high-level editor, available to anyone. And the output still reflects the input. If you don’t know what you’re doing, it shows. But for sharp thinkers who just needed support getting their work out? It’s a legit gift.
Second: AI threatens people who’ve coasted on fluff for years.
Writers who built platforms on meandering prose and social clout are panicking because now the field is leveling and they actually have to .:gasp:. ELEVATE. The gatekeeping is breaking. And the writers who were always good but lacked access now have tools to help them execute.
That’s the real threat: execution.
And I’m tired of hearing, “Well I can just tell it’s AI.”
No dude, you can tell when someone didn’t try. That’s not the same thing.
AI slop exists. So does non-AI slop. Spammy engagement bait written by people chasing dopamine metrics isn’t new. AI didn’t invent that but it just made the copy-paste grifters more obvious. So where’s the accountability for them?
Slop is slop. It’s tool-agnostic and that’s the real problem with the “AI = cheating” crowd. They’re acting like writing is governed by some elite standard like a professional sports league with performance benchmarks and oversight.
But writing isn’t that. Not anymore.
Anyone with a phone can hit “publish.” You don’t have to earn it. You don’t have to train. You don’t even have to try. So people need to stop pearl clutching and treating AI usage like it’s doping in sports. In sports, cheating matters because everyone’s already elite. They’re all trying. That’s not true here.
In writing? Most people aren’t even trying. That’s what people are picking up on when they see “AI slop.” They’re not detecting the tool. They’re detecting laziness and I agree that’s it’s offensive. THAT doesn’t deserve to be read and slop is slop whether it’s AI-assisted or not.
So let’s be honest: AI is exposing the writing world, not breaking it like the doomers believe. They said the same about every other tool, much like you outlined beautifully in your piece.
Honestly, the biggest “tell” for me isn’t fluff but the actually clarity.
If I read something that’s structured, concise, and tonally tight? I assume they used tools to refine it and that’s a good thing! It means they respected the reader and they cut the fat. It means they actually care about impact.
We need less performative writing and less literary self-indulgence. People don’t want musings, they want direction, instruction, clarity. AI helps with that. And if the people using it are also talented? Game over.
Saying someone isn’t a writer because they use tools is lazy. It’s the literary version of fake gangsta energy like suffering for your art makes it more real. It doesn’t. It just makes it harder to get to the point.
AI can’t culture code, calibrate tone, check theological context, format your voice, or cure your perfectionism and make you hit publish but it can help you think more clearly and clarity is the new flex IMO
We’re watching the old guard panic while diverse, sharp, creative voices finally get their shot. That’s the future. I see no problems here.
Great write-up!
The more tools a person uses to refine their writing, the more they are outsourcing their independence of thought. It takes time to develop a writing tone and style, and original thinking, and using AI is driven more by performance and self-indulgence than not using AI. Reading is about human minds connecting. AI makes those minds less sharp, and less creative.
That’s a narrow view.
You’re assuming everyone has time, training, or access to refine tone manually. And if they don’t? Then they’re not allowed to write? Where does it end? Who set this standard?
That’s the gatekeeping problem all over again.
For marginalized voices, non-native speakers, working parents etc
AI isn’t indulgence to them. It’s a legitimate a bridge. It gives them a shot at clarity, and clarity is discipline. That’s what the reader deserves.
And not for nothing but with how much society talks about “neurodivergence” I’m seeing this crowd benefit the most. OCD before AI meant endless loops and never being able to launch. OCD with AI means building and scaling with structures in place.
This is a positive thing and we can’t confuse access with decline.
That’s just elitism in new shoes.
And we’ve had enough of that but this is what’s coming with AI. The new class politics. Those who use vs those who don’t when in reality everybody is missing the key ingredient here: human interaction.
Whether you do or don’t use AI your ability to bring people together into a physical space and deliver something dope is the future.
Your assumption is that thinking and writing are not the same process, but as a matter of fact, as anyone will discover once they try to do it, thinking and writing feed into each other and are much the same process. So when AI is shaping your sentences, it’s also shaping your thoughts and you lose the authenticity of the conversation you could be having with yourself. Sure, for lots of kinds of writing that won’t matter, some won’t care either way. But those people shouldn’t call themselves writers.
Marginalized voices, working parents, and non-native speakers deserve ears, attention, time, and respect. But I see your point, it’s like a plow that allows them to till fields and harvest more, grow more. It’s like a prosthetic limb that give an amputee opportunity to compete. It provides mobility or corrects blurred vision. Still, I often think of this line delivered by Edward James Olmos in Wolfen: “You got your technology but you lost. You lost your senses.” There is a risk of decline in quality. As mass production outsources craftsmanship to mechanical reproduction, LLMs outsource original thinking to digital reproduction. There’s a quality of authenticity and trust based on real things, hand-made and with another person in mind, which applies to writing too, and that’s quite the opposite of elite.
When have writers been at the top of the agenda for ‘elitists’ that need to be taken down a notch? (Seriously?) I imagine if we weren’t so focus on maximising time, then people wouldn’t have such long work hours, they could spend time dedicated to cultivating their unique voices. Isn’t your anger unbelievably misplaced here? Stop using marginalised voices to credit something that you believe. Have you really heard anyone say this? Non-native speakers, single parents have and will learn and find the time if they have passion, voice drive. Sylvia Plath woke up every morning at 4am before her children were awake to write her poetry. When these people do learn, the experience, the dedication, the uniqueness to their voice is apparent, it diversifies and opens up the literary world. But the reality is, you can’t skip the process and when you do, there is no point.
I just can’t subscribe to this belief that writing can be improved in any way by ‘efficiency’. It’s ridiculous, Hemingway worked to ‘cut the fat’ for years (that’s where your quote is from, did you know? Or did ChatGBT offer it to you, with no reference), and still, his work had the insight of unique human experience, it still tangled and wound itself up. Published books have been taking on this ridiculous style, of ‘saying it plain’ (O’Hara) and manipulating that so that language can’t infringe on story at all. That’s not the point. Literature, poetics, imperfections, they are the focus, to push against the boundaries of your ability — Of what you do and can know, that is the satisfying aspect of writing and of reading. AI will continue- the plain writing, the conciseness, the measured sentences with no cadence, no tone, sound. AI will never be able to imagine the feel of ‘t’, catching on their tongue. It will never be able to create from impulse or from the skin.
Look, if you read to maximise the efficiency and effectiveness of your brain, or read to learn about ultimate processing systems or whatever you nutjobs are interested in then be my guest. Read your AI books with an AI summarising tool, in fact listen to an AI voice read it to you so can maximise your time at the gym, lifting weights that feel of nothing, feeling absolutely nothing. Literature has never, and will never be about time management, and I’m afraid that you and OP are wasting your life away in your capitalist micro management.
Gatekeeping is not a problem. It's a solution.
That’a quite an assumption. AI reflects. If a mind isn’t sharp, it shows. If a mind is sharp, that also shows.
If someone avoids cognitive challenge, it isn’t because they are using AI. It is because they brought their avoidance to a technology that reveals that.
Fucking B I N G O
Editing is many things, outsourcing independence of thought isn’t one of em
It’s clearly not just a tool. That is why we are being told it will replace so many jobs; why it’ll revolutionize our lives; why the valuations for companies working on AI are through the roof. If it were a tool, it would not replace doctors, lawyers, etc. Similarly in writing. You suppose the test is ‘can you tell it’s AI?’ It is not. It’s why would you care what someone says to you when they’ve just created it with a prompt? Why not just send them the prompt you used? If you suppose it’s just ‘a first draft’, well, great, then it’s simply the mean of what other people have written about that topic. It’s like those AI summaries we know get because search engines are crap.
In time, because AI can simply cut and paste in a highly sophisticated matter, it’ll just be consuming its own vomit. No one will have a clue whose views they represent; whether it says something true and why it even means. We just won’t bother reading it. Why would we? No one will know how to write; a few maybe. We will not be able to express ourselves without aid and that ‘aid’ will degenerate from eating its own vomit.
Enjoy your tool. Brought to you by the very same people who brought us the internet with promises of bringing all the knowledge of man at our fingertips. Look at how that turned out. We attached sewer pipes to our home and now our schools, businesses and government won’t let us disconnect. Meanwhile, it’s become a complete dumpster fire and no one is more educated than they were before. Don’t worry though: the same folks have a new product to sell us.
And, quite on-brand, you had AI write this note.
Wow! This is thought-provoking and more nuanced than like 99% of the takes I see
Thanks Natasha! It’s a contentious topic but the conversations need to continue. Inherent bias and fear is running the convo right now. That’s gotta change!
Someone on here said that AI is helpful if you already know what you’re doing Or know your subject matter.
That’s a great way of thinking about it.
For example AI helps me edit articles I’ve written about topics I know a ton about.
If I asked it to generate a script for a sitcom it probably would look like trash because I have no idea how to write sitcoms.
I do wanna push back on this person’s assertion that Substack has leveled the playing field… It has certainly helped but a lot of of stuff on here is Astroturf and the algorithm has gotten more and more suspicious over the past six months…
"clarity is the new flex" yum.
Amen!
Thank you for this. This is a very helpful critique. I think the importance of this conversation can often get lost in broad generalization. One of the scripts I hear often sounds like AI is no different than a hammer, followed by; but its the most important hammer ever made, and if we reject it then we have lost our only subversive tool against a ruling class or essentially lost an arms race. A Ouija board is only wood after all, but corruptible. Its the input that I wonder about especially when fed by a generation that was raised on reddit. Like all things it takes discipline, humility, and agency. I doubt my own proficency but not all use cases are life and death, regardless of what side someone comes down on. Still landing the plane on if im going to walk out into the proverbial woods or hack into the matrix to destroy the bots. Though my context and use case is very different using within a healthcare setting. May your writing be as gangsta as Toupac. Blessings.
Yo, this is hands down the best thing I’ve read today. You cut through all this nosiness with clarity, humility, and real intellectual curiosity. That’s rare in this whole AI conversation.
Nothing is all good or all bad.
It depends.
Mathis told James Bond the older one gets, the more mixed up the heroes and villains get.
When we’re young, we think everything’s black and white. But that’s not how the world works. It’s a dope line and he was right.
Like anything else, it depends on the person, the use case, and the intent (which only God can judge).
And honestly? It depends on whether we’re mature enough to use the thing without worshipping it or fearing it. We’ve shown we have a problem with that.
I’ve seen AI help people who couldn’t get their words out before.
Just like I’ve seen it amplify laziness.
That doesn’t make AI good or bad.
It makes it a mirror of the writer and of civilization.
So I appreciate your comment, heavy. Reminds me why this platform is still great Blessings right back to you.
Lord knows iv responded unchartiably to other posts and that was probably last week! Iv been searching for a metaphore but keep finding myself empty handed. AI is more potent than a toaster, though I'm certain someone somewhere has strangled their mother in law with a toaster oven. I honestly dont know If AI is an inflated customer service chat or an atomic bomb, or something in between. I am more certain that all that potency can only finds it's telos in subservience to Christ. Who is the means, the goal, and the reward of anything that resembles humility or discipline.. I think Marry Harrington restacked your post commenting that the ends of the impact is the reader, or in my case patient care.
We’ve been discussing this at work ALOT. We’ve basically come to the conclusion that it’s still “garbage in garbage out.” It’s a great tool! It saves time and we love that! AND You still need the knowledge, experience & understanding to feed it and review what it gives you, or its slop.
Seriously thank you for this. I get it. This topic is contentious and AI is going to become the new class war.
But your comment is one of the few that’s actually getting it. A few here do too! Garbage in is garbage out, period. Most people do not know how to use the tool properly. The operator will make the difference!
This resonates. I’ve seen several pieces lately were too long for their point, circular in the reasoning and repetitive with their statements. I thought they were AI generated but they seemed anti-AI in sentiment, so whether or not it was used they just seemed low quality.
There’s a lot of this on both sides of the fence
I hope you’re mostly right. It’s a pretty rosy picture. Although, I don’t think the primary goal of all writing is quality and direct communication. For the types of writing where that is the goal, AI will undoubtedly be an enormous boon to people who use it that way.
I also fear that democratization is often a coded way of saying something is getting innovated and refinanced by the tech industry at a higher interest rate. That being said, I am by no means “anti AI.” I use it constantly and recently got a fellowship to build a startup technology with it.
Martin Gurri wrote a great book (Revolt of the Public) about how the internet has had a devastating effect on institutions because people can vaguely gesture at them and talk about gatekeeping to easily dismantle the places resources use to accrue and be hoarded. Whether this is good or bad (I think) depends on which institutions we’re talking about.
I think we’re still seeing this experiment play out. It will be interesting to see how and whether AI generally (1) accelerates institutional demise, and/or (2) plays a role in the creation of newer, better institutions. It will also be interesting to see whether AI remains “democratic,” or suddenly gets more exclusive and expensive once the market for it has been thoroughly enough established.
AI is not democratizing writing - it’s monopolizing everyone’s creativity into tech companies who are going to end up charging you increasing prices for what used to be free (both in cost and independence).
It’ll also create a situation where more knock-off writing exists than before. And to escape from the noise, people will turn to editors and select writers etc. creating a less democratized process where certain elite writers (with money for the right PR etc.) and brands will be revered more than everyone else.
It’s undoing what the internet started.
“If I read something that’s structured, concise, and tonally tight? I assume they used tools to refine it”
Insult of low expectations; how sad. Skill > “tools”
That’s an odd take. I’m not lowering expectations or insulting skill.
I’m pointing out the reality: in digital spaces, clarity is rare.
When I see it, I assume the writer respected the reader enough to refine it considering the reality of writing in digital spaces.
Why would anyone bother to spend time reading, listening, or looking at something you couldn't be bothered to take the time to create yourself? Holy yap. Did ChatGPT write this drivel for you too?
i did create it myself.
the thinking, the structure, the argument—that’s all mine. the tool supported the work, it didn’t replace it
if you read something and assumed i couldn’t be bothered to make it, that’s not a reflection of my effort
that’s a reflection of how uncomfortable it makes you to see someone use new tools well
love when someone accuses you of not writing your own work and then blocks you before you can respond—very bold. very brave. very allergic to dissent.
The AI generated white girl with braids is the perfect encapsulation of this piece and how you view the world
is this satire?
sure.
The Tommy Wiseau / Brad Podray move, nice.