I can’t stand AI-assisted writing anymore. It’s all on Substack. It’s in my LinkedIn replies. it’s everywhere. Like a disease is slowly infecting our literary consciousness. I see it even from people who I am Know Not a bad writer. For example, a prominent figure in the wealth management field recently posted the following:
Your dollar has lost 53% of its purchasing power over the last 30 years.
This is not an anomaly.
This is the system.
Inflation is not just a number – it is a silent thief.
There is nothing wrong with this message (I agree with it), but it is clearly written by an AI. The “it’s not X, it’s Y” motif is especially the most obvious gift of AI-assisted writing. When that motif is repeated one after anotherThe message may also say “This is not human, this is AI,”
But here’s the strange thing – even people who complain about AI are using it in their writing! I was recently reading an article from a history professor about how all of his students use AI to write their essays. As he said:
I get roughly 400 variations on the same essay. The wording, structure, transitions, tone, even the concluding sentences are largely similar.
but then absolutely next line Reads:
This is not about some students cheating. It is about the collapse of the entire educational model. Mass lectures, take-home prompts, standardized rubrics – it’s all built for a world that no longer exists.
What AI has done has not only made fraud easier; This has made my entire form of evaluation obsolete.
This is the classic “this is not X, this is Y” motif followed by a list of three items with an em-dash (another AI writing strategy) and finally concluding with one more The “It’s not X, it’s Y” style line.
Excuse my language, but what the hell is going on?
If the history professor complaining about AI-assisted writing is claiming AI-assisted writing as his own, we’re in. If the ultra-successful wealth management professional can’t help but use AI (or his social media team uses AI), we’re done.
Don’t get me wrong, it is not correct to use the “it’s not X, it’s Y” style. Always Hint of AI-assisted writing. But when you see it so many times in the same piece, it’s obvious. Why do people post things like this? Do they think no one will notice?
I’m not here to bash anyone in particular (which is why I haven’t linked the original post above). However, I am disappointed by how much AI has infiltrated the writing field.
Natural bodybuilders must have felt the same way when anabolic steroids appeared on the scene. AI is a performance-enhancing drug for mediocre writers. And, like bodybuilders on steroids, it leaves visible traces when used.
But using AI is not the main issue. How do people use AI? The root of the problem is that no one wants to do it Thinking now and. They want to outsource their thinking to machines. And, once you start doing it, it’s hard to stop.
Trust me, I know the feeling. Beginning in 2023 I used AI to help me write about various topics for SEO purposes. And it worked! My search engine traffic increased 6x since the beginning of 2023.
But, within a few months I had to stop. As I publicly admitted, writing for a search engine was soul-killing work. I wasn’t writing for myself, I was writing for an algorithm. To get my passion back for writing, I had to start thinking about myself again.
I know how tempting it is to have AI write an entire article for you. After all, writing is cognitively demanding. It would be much easier to just “push the AI button” and watch it do its thing. But you have to fight that urge. Because once you cross that line, your writing is over. And your soul dies with it.
More importantly, you have to fight back because this is the last edge you will have. As more and more people outsource their knowledge to AI, what do you think is going to happen? Do you think they would be smarter? Do you think they would be more knowledgeable?
No chance. In fact, the opposite is already happening. A scandal recently surfaced at UC San Diego (UCSD). it was revealed The number of students whose math skills are below the middle-school level has “increased nearly thirtyfold, to nearly one in eight members of the entering group.” Shockingly, 25% of students in UCSD’s remedial mathematics course got the following question wrong:
Fill the box: 7 + 2 = ☐ + 6
This is 3. There is no mistake here. 7 + 2 = 3 + 6.
If this is happening at UCSD, which is a great school, imagine what is happening elsewhere.
However we don’t need to imagine as the data paints a clear picture. As new York Times recently reportedHigh school seniors’ reading scores were the worst since 1992 and math scores were the worst since 2005. Many possible reasons for thisAnd heavy reliance on AI isn’t helping.
College students in particular use AI at extremely high rates. this chart From Sherwood News This shows how ChatGPT usage drops off when college students leave school for the summer (early June) and then picks up again when they return (late August):
Using ChatGPT is not a problem in itself. but when a lot of teachers are complaining It is about the rapid decline in cognition among college students.
I’m not saying this to complain about the next generation. I say this because it foreshadows what could happen to the rest of us if we’re not careful. The more we rely on AI to perform our cognitive functions, the more we will become mentally impaired.
Unfortunately, there is no substitute for thinking.
This will be as true today as it will be a decade from now. While AI tools will become “smart” at various tasks, outsourcing everything to them will leave you more vulnerable. As American journalist Sidney J. Harris once said:
The real danger is not that computers will start thinking like humans, but that humans will start thinking like computers.
This is why thinking is the last end we have. Because while everyone else is having AI draft their emails, write their code, and plan their lives, who is still daring to do it? Some? Mental hard work will automatically lead to victory.
As the saying goes, “In a land of the blind, the one with one eye is king.”
Thank you for reading.
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This is post 479. Any code I have related to this post can be found here with the same numbering: https://github.com/nmaggiulli/of-dollars-and-data
