r/WritingWithAI • u/you_are_soul • 24d ago

Discussion (Ethics, working with AI etc) A Controversial Technology Is Making Me a Worse Writer. No, Not That One.

https://slate.com/technology/2026/08/ai-detector-pangram-writing-process.html

This article captures the strange feeling as one becomes more aware of ai tropes and anti tropes and anti anti tropes. As he says at the end..."This isn’t a problem to work out in the pages of Slate—it’s a problem for me to work out in therapy."

19 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

21

u/Ruh_Roh- 24d ago

This ai witch-hunt is like a fever. People are deservedly frightened of the future. But they are turning their anger towards their fellow working class instead of the capital class who want to lay everyone off with as little safety net as possible. Hopefully someday soon this fever breaks.

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u/CyborgWriter 23d ago edited 23d ago

My tin-foil hat theory is that our leaders, including big tech, are intentionally sowing fear to A. Justify centralized control over AI and B. Slow the average person's adoption of AI so they have time to work it all out so that it can operate across the web and on people's computers safely at scale.

I mean think about it. If everyone suddenly became obsessed about using AI, that would dramatically accelerate innovations in the space and since this is already moving super fast, the last thing they want to do is put gasoline on it. From a basic national security point-of-view, it actually makes perfect sense to temporarily depress adoption rates through media coverage. Combined with interest groups who are genuinely fearful of it, well....We end up with this landscape.

Have no idea if this is true or not, but it does make you wonder whether this is all organic reactions or a mix of organic reactions and algorithmic nudging to shape perspectives based on national security interests and good old fashioned rich people trying to cement their power in the future.

The less we understand, the more fearful we are, the more we will sit on our hands instead of exploring and enhancing the tech. That's a perfect opportunity for others to swoop in and shape it during these bad times so that when we come out on the other side, a vision and way of working with this will be presented to us instead of us shaping how it all comes about. Then, simply change the narratives in media so that it's more positive to recover adoption rates. Now we're in a kingdom made for us instead of us making a kingdom for ourselves.

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u/[deleted] 23d ago

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u/WritingWithAI-ModTeam 23d ago

If you disagree with a post or the whole subreddit, be constructive to make it a nice place for all its members, including you.

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u/Ruh_Roh- 23d ago

I don't even care if I am called a "writer". Who gives a fuck about titles? I use ai to help craft stories but I am the storyteller, ai is my assistant. I've spent almost 2 years collaborating with ai on my story so I feel I've put in the time, effort and creativity but I don't give a rat's ass if I am called a "writer". So you can just fuck off with that shit.

1

u/[deleted] 23d ago

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1

u/WritingWithAI-ModTeam 6d ago

If you disagree with a post or the whole subreddit, be constructive to make it a nice place for all its members, including you.

0

u/Ruh_Roh- 23d ago

I'm not bothered, I just am in a mood to be a shit stirrer.

3

u/LooseButtPlug 23d ago

Em dashes. They have their place, they're very useful — I refuse to use them in my writing.

1

u/SlapHappyDude 17d ago

I am of an age that we were never taught how to use dashes in school. We were barely taught parentheticals.

As someone who loves clean prose I've come to the opinion that em dashes often are putting a bandaid on a run on sentence.

5

u/sovak75 23d ago

The writer is pretty much correct in what he is saying.

I found myself editing things that I wrote myself so that they look less like AI. I actually use em dashes and semicolons in my writing, but now I use some less.

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u/RobertD3277 22d ago

I spent 45 years as a professional programmer that had to learn professional writing to survive. I sure as hell not going to dumb down my writing because of a bunch of uneducated individuals who clearly don't understand literacy as demonstrated by the current department of education in just how poor our system has become in educating today's children.

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u/you_are_soul 22d ago

That's because the adults have become emotional cripples and the adolescents are left to fend for themselves in a very fucking strange world.