Less AI, more human help

Get Human Help — Stop Over-leveraging AI

An established copywriter once remarked to me that she had an editor. She said that, as a matter of policy, a second pair of eyes was required to go through anything she was going to publish.

I chuckled to myself, Why would I need an editor? I’m very confident about my work. Even if I need a second pair of eyes, I’ll just use AI!

The ignorance of youth.

Using AI indiscreetly led me down a dark and slippery path, and I’ve paid very dearly for this: missed opportunities, wasted time, dulled potential.

Real losses. When I say ‘dark and slippery’, you may wonder what terribly dramatic events transpired that made me so damned by AI.

You do not realize that you are on the same dark and slippery slope.

For every time I asked an AI an important question, I wish I had asked a human being. I wish I had asked for help. I wish I started a research project. Some of its advice was helpful in the moment. But even that ease of access, that ‘simple’ surface help, I say, is damning.

Relying on AI — or machines, and their constant availability — to review your writing instead of flawed, sometimes-unavailable, often-distracted, frequently-biased, varyingly-intelligent humans to review your work is not a very wise thing to do.

You need a stop gap. Especially because fellow humans are going to be your final consumers. It makes sense to get human thoughts and not a machine’s. A sycophantic machine that will keep singing your praises and keep edging you forward with more suggestions. Its only mission is to keep you using it more and more. To build dependency. That, I realize, may be their ultimate goal, or at least an unintended consequence that they accept. I’ve come to realize that companies intentionally create habit-forming products. Addictions.

You need a stop gap. Not everything needs to be fast. Not everything needs to be free. Not everything has to be easy.

You should take time to think. Thoroughly and laboriously. AI upends that with immediate effect.

You should get professional help. AI eliminates the obvious need for that viciously.

As a mandate, I am making it my business to have an editor. Editor slash writing coach. And/or at least a group of draft reviewers, even for less enduring material, like personal essays and social media posts.

I will still use artificial intelligence technology. But very discreetly. If it makes me too quick, less thorough, and less thoughtful, I will not use it.

I am currently pondering the framework to guide my use of AI. For now, here’s the basic approach that is extremely helpful: for every meaningful question that comes to mind, I will write it down, and I will first find a wise human to ask. 

I will build my life with more real intelligence, and less artificial.