AI Writing: Why It's Bland, Obvious, and How to Avoid It

The Blandness of AI Writing

• 💡 AI writing often appears bland, uninspiring, and one-dimensional because it smooths out all idiosyncrasies and adopts a median tone.
• 🎭 Even when asked to adopt a specific tone, AI's output is inevitably derivative.
• ⚠️ Using AI writing transparently can be a signal of incompetence and disrespect to the reader, suggesting corners are being cut.

AI's Use Cases and Limitations

• 📧 AI can be useful for tasks where the goal is to erase personality, such as writing professional-sounding emails, but it still requires a human touch.
• 🔍 AI serves as a useful research tool for aggregating and distilling information, and constructing arguments.
• 📚 It can function as an undergraduate-level research assistant for summarizing chapters or retrieving specific information from loaded documents.

The Increased Value of Human Creativity

• 🚀 AI has replaced the need for lower-tier communication, thereby radically increasing the value of individuals who can write above that baseline.
• ✍️ In creative domains like artwork or complex tasks, human ingenuity and creativity, even when assisted by computers, will likely outperform AI in the near to medium term.
• 🎭 Art is fundamentally an expression of the human experience, which AI can only mimic, not truly create.

Red Flags and Public Service Announcements

• 🚩 AI-generated content is becoming increasingly obvious and ubiquitous, appearing in published books and ad copy.
• 📉 Skepticism is warranted regarding AI's fundamental flaws preventing it from being a trustworthy delegation tool, despite its potential.
• 🚫 Public service announcement: Stop using ChatGPT excessively for writing; it's obvious, diminishes respect for the author, and can be a sign to find another profession if it's outperforming you.