This really resonated with me. I use AI regularly, but I have become increasingly conscious of the danger of allowing it to polish away the very things that make writing ours.
For me, the answer is not simply teaching AI to imitate my voice more accurately. It is making sure the original thought, experience and conviction still come from me. AI can help me sharpen an idea, challenge it and communicate it more clearly, but it should not decide what I believe or manufacture emotion I have not felt.
This matters enormously in education too. We should not only teach students how to make AI sound human. We must teach them when their own unfiltered voice needs to come first.
Perhaps the real goal is not writing that nobody can detect as AI-assisted. It is writing that could only have come from you.
Hey man, thanks for the comment, first of all, really appreciate it. Second, I do believe that in our modern AI era, we have to differentiate ourselves from everyone else and the only way to do that with writing is to keep your own voice. And of course, it's not making sure that AI sounds more human, it is to make sure that we start from something original, coming from us and enhance our writings with these powerful tools.
That's a really great set of instructions. I tried writing in this style for a while too, but I didn't get any results at all, even when I asked it to take my own experiences and turn them into an article. Then, when I started reading posts in this style again, meaning AI or AI-assisted ones, I realized that while the intended meaning gets across very well, there's no emotion. And without emotion, there's no hype. That's why I'm currently trying to learn how to write all my posts myself. I'm eagerly looking forward to your upcoming post about your data and the results you got.
Well, I agree with you that it kind of feels unemotional sometimes, you can expect it to feel something.
I believe that AI writing is powerful for more technical and productivity related stuff. If you’re using it for creative writing I believe that you need to instruct it in a different way of what I described here.
You mentioned that editing an AI generated piece is a losing battle. I agree whole hartedly that it's the wrong approach to have. Your system is very close to the one I use.
The biggest thing I've found to keep the clanker voice away is to free write draft zero. This is where I brain dump everything I have in my mind onto the page. From there I bring that zero draft into my AI assisted editing "workshop" to help me clean it up for publishing.
Doing this provides me with the speed of the LLM and keeps the piece human (and my own).
Yes, I always read it over again and change anything that I think I would not write myself. Sometimes the AI takes more liberty in changing the words than I’d like. I probably need to make my workflow instructions more explicit.
This really resonated with me. I use AI regularly, but I have become increasingly conscious of the danger of allowing it to polish away the very things that make writing ours.
For me, the answer is not simply teaching AI to imitate my voice more accurately. It is making sure the original thought, experience and conviction still come from me. AI can help me sharpen an idea, challenge it and communicate it more clearly, but it should not decide what I believe or manufacture emotion I have not felt.
This matters enormously in education too. We should not only teach students how to make AI sound human. We must teach them when their own unfiltered voice needs to come first.
Perhaps the real goal is not writing that nobody can detect as AI-assisted. It is writing that could only have come from you.
Hey man, thanks for the comment, first of all, really appreciate it. Second, I do believe that in our modern AI era, we have to differentiate ourselves from everyone else and the only way to do that with writing is to keep your own voice. And of course, it's not making sure that AI sounds more human, it is to make sure that we start from something original, coming from us and enhance our writings with these powerful tools.
That's a really great set of instructions. I tried writing in this style for a while too, but I didn't get any results at all, even when I asked it to take my own experiences and turn them into an article. Then, when I started reading posts in this style again, meaning AI or AI-assisted ones, I realized that while the intended meaning gets across very well, there's no emotion. And without emotion, there's no hype. That's why I'm currently trying to learn how to write all my posts myself. I'm eagerly looking forward to your upcoming post about your data and the results you got.
Well, I agree with you that it kind of feels unemotional sometimes, you can expect it to feel something.
I believe that AI writing is powerful for more technical and productivity related stuff. If you’re using it for creative writing I believe that you need to instruct it in a different way of what I described here.
Yeah, that's so true. I figured it's much better to get your hands dirty in this situation.
You mentioned that editing an AI generated piece is a losing battle. I agree whole hartedly that it's the wrong approach to have. Your system is very close to the one I use.
The biggest thing I've found to keep the clanker voice away is to free write draft zero. This is where I brain dump everything I have in my mind onto the page. From there I bring that zero draft into my AI assisted editing "workshop" to help me clean it up for publishing.
Doing this provides me with the speed of the LLM and keeps the piece human (and my own).
That’s great that we’re aligned on these things! Do you find yourself editing it afterwards meaning after you asked AI for assistance?
Yes, I always read it over again and change anything that I think I would not write myself. Sometimes the AI takes more liberty in changing the words than I’d like. I probably need to make my workflow instructions more explicit.
I agree, ultimately it's about adding more constraints to your agent and giving more example of how you like your writing to be