An admission. Lynne Wardle asked how much of my recent writing is actually me, and how much is ChatGPT. Join the conversation on LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/antlerboy_i-read-scott-odells-island-of-the-blue-activity-7460599789932548096-BFTs?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAACuq-oBecVFDW6PCf3lkoG-peMeuLBeoho
An admission. Lynne Walley asked how much of my recent writing is actually me, and how much is ChatGPT. Honestly: more than I would’ve admitted a year ago. Maybe 75% me, 25% AI on average. Though it varies hugely.
A recent post started as a WhatsApp conversation with my mum about a book she’d reread and apologised for giving me when I was five because she’d suddenly realised it was absurdly complicated for a child.
I used Google and ChatGPT to remind myself of names and plot points.
Turned the chat into notes, identified what I wanted to say.
Asked ChatGPT to reshape it into a LinkedIn-post-shaped thing.
Then rewrote large chunks because it got repetitive, sentimental, and sounded alarmingly like ChatGPT.
Which is increasingly what my workflow looks like.
I don’t really experience this as ‘AI writing for me’. It’s more like another component in a cognitive ecology that already included:
– Roam Research database
– old blog posts
– slides
– search engines
– books!
– my own archives (including my ‘80% done’ book draft)
– the LinkedIn algorithm.
And now language models. A kind of cybernetic relationship.
What unsettles me is that some of the things I thought I was pretty good at – synthesis, pattern-spotting, connecting ideas – are exactly the things these systems are surprisingly good at. And (sub)editing – but not wisdom, not judgement, not actually writing and redrafting anything longer.
At the same time, whenever I really care about meaning, I still end up doing the final integration myself.
What I like is when AI helps people become more themselves, do synthesis that wouldn’t otherwise have happened. What deadens me is the flattened ‘ChatGPT voice’ – which, horrifyingly, one can slowly begin to acquire oneself.
And underneath all this sits the bigger thing: the accelerating river of content, which I am obviously contributing to too.
Anyway. Mild mea culpa – but I’m happy to have this out there!
And NB this post was based on my response here:
https://lnkd.in/eVaMtz6p …with AI assitance!
chosen path 