Do not let AI rob you of your voice

My understanding from a recent newsletter I read, corporate types are generating impressive appearing reports they distribute. Unfortunately they are written entirely by AI. And they are often not brief; people thinking generating a 20 page report shows initiative and hard work.

Their attempt to impress falls apart when someone wants to discuss the report. It becomes apparent fast they did not write it, but only read it, and not even that sometimes.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with using AI to research a point. The writing though should be yours. There is nothing wrong with using it to write a particular dense portion, but only a paragraph here and there, and you should use it only as a guide; you should re-write it in your own voice. The same with using AI to comment on your writing, suggesting grammar changes etc. Make those changes based on its comments, not let it rewrite. You have a voice, and your readers recognize it. Do not lose it to AI.

So while I write here about AI and I am using it extensively, I will not write my blog and newsletter with AI.

That being said, there are places where allowing AI to write is appropriate and highly useful. In my post “Strategies for an imperfect memory”, I wrote about how I recorded doctor’s appointment and home vendor phone calls and then asked AI to generate a summary.

I anticipate we’ll see AI used to gather public information and generate meaningful reports about the data. There is nothing wrong with that in my view, as long as it is clearly and prominently labeled as generated by AI. And the source citations must be provided.

And it would not hurt to have a warning label such as this :

This document was written by Artificial Intelligence. AI can make errors and can hallucinate. Readers are urged to be skeptical of all material they read, including by people, and exercise critical thinking. Verify important points by reviewing the source material cited here.