You aren't meant to use AI like this

I’m slowly coming out of a funk from a long list of life’s little challenges.

Like a million paper cuts across the back of my hand, complete with a spritz of lemon juice followed with a dash of sriracha hot sauce, the slow burn combined with the pain of it all has dulled me to the point where I just want to hide for days. Life throws these monkey wrenches at you. Ones you are ready for, but not willing to face.

But here’s one of the biggest realizations I’ve had recently as I’ve contemplated what it all means while I’m facedown in the dirt…

Sharpening the sword

I’ve been using AI to provide feedback and tighten my writing, my flow, and improve on my delivery of my ideas. It’s been amazing. Wonderful. Exhilarating. Humbling.

There’s just one problem.

It feels saggy.

It’s like I tried to stuff myself into a cardboard cutout of a writer and attached an air pump to my nose in an attempt to “fill out” into the shape. I read the final edit that I got from my AI assistant on one of my recent pieces. It sounded structured. Tight. It had a punch.

I didn’t like it.

Sure, it was a great read, but it had no personal touch. It wasn’t me at all. But the AI assured me that it was “publish-ready”. I went back and read it again…and again…and again. Eventually, I realized that I needed to just let go and be myself. I hadn’t edited after the fact, so all of my recent work started to taste like a cupcake without the frosting or the sprinkles.

That’s the truth about being human. That’s what people want to consume.

The reality of using any tool

Yes, my work is wordy and has funny idioms and mixed metaphors. It lacks cohesion sometimes, like a Magic Eye that was run dropped in a puddle. AI can spot these things, but after I fix them, something strange starts to happen: the suggestions become repetitive and formulaic.

Don’t get me wrong, there are great ideas and tighter ways to express my thoughts, but they don’t sound they came from me. Verbosity and word economy do have their place, and there’s a certain rhythm to me that I don’t want AI to edit out. It feels like I went through a Panini press and came out the other side with less flavor. Or maybe a diet version of me?

So I ignore its suggestions past a certain point.

It whines and complains in subsequent revisions, but it’ll get over it (or not?).

No matter how wonderful it is to have a virtual assistant in the dead of night, don’t forget that your unique voice is one that needs to be heard, not filtered through a large language model that will dollar-cost average your work for mass consumption.

You must make a choice in the craft: bland, but palatable or spicy, but remarkable?

Above all else, remember this…

AI is supposed to help you—not BE you. (And yes, I chose to use that em dash…NOT AI.)

So if you’ve noticed that some of my recent work has been a bit sterile (neutered), then congratulations…you’ve caught something that I nearly forgot in my pursuit of quality writing. This piece (if you made it this far) is a “grilled cheese sandwich” approach to prevent that from happening in the future.

So tell me, have you discovered anything weird or amusing in your explorations of this technology?

P.S.

I’ll be submitting a version of this as a guest post…I’ll let you know how that goes!