So work is really going all-in on AI “tools” at the moment, including paying for a training that lets you feed your job role into it and then get ideas on using AI in your job, all powered by AI. Then there was an AI-written presentation in a meeting Monday that said a department’s role was to “hold the context” and listed part of their jobs as “invisible thinking–what’s happening mentally.” As opposed to visible thinking, I guess? And the kind of thing thinking doesn’t happen mentally?? What is this slop?!
That’s why I read this essay by Sam Kriss with particular glee: If you let AI do your writing, I will come to your house and kill you.
Kriss and I have the same reaction when we see AI writing:
…the main thing the incipient superintelligence seems to be doing is replacing all meaningful language with reams and reams of genuinely meaningless drivel. I hate it. I find it viscerally disgusting; a cold shudder like someone’s poured jelly down the back of my neck.
And while I might not go as far as hunting down people using AI to write, I too can always tell. Always.
However bad a writer you think you are, you are not worse than AI. But you still keep letting it do your writing for you, as if I won’t be able to tell. Listen: I can tell. I can always tell. You think I won’t notice, but I will. There’s no hiding from me. If you let AI do your writing I will find out, and I will kill you.
