About AI & Writing

I have ADHD. Getting thoughts from my head onto a page in a way that doesn't make people tune out has never clicked for me. So I use AI to help with that part.

And more generally — I think there's a case to be made that writing fluency has always been a gatekeeping mechanism. If you have ADHD, dyslexia, didn't go to the right schools, English isn't your first language, or prose just never clicked — historically, tough luck. You don't really get to share things in public. That's kind of the status quo people are defending when they push back against AI-assisted writing.

I'm not asking an AI to think for me. I'm using it to translate my thinking into a format that actually works on a page.

But.

I get the concern. AI-generated content is causing real harm — content farms, misinformation, synthetic "thought" manufactured at scale to manipulate people. It's scary. I understand why "written with AI" makes people's guard go up.

So here's the line I've drawn: the ideas are mine. The thinking is mine. I could tell you all of this in a conversation — I just can't get it onto a page without help. I'm not trying to share anything world-changing here. Just stuff we're working on that might be interesting or useful to someone else. I shouldn't need to be a professional writer to do that.

One more thing. Writing isn't the only thing AI is changing. The way we work, the way companies value workers — that's shifting too. That's kind of the whole point of this coop, and why we're sharing how it goes.

— Steve

(This blog is mostly me for now. Might include more voices from the coop over time.)

(Also: this is why you might see a weird number of em-dashes. No idea why LLMs love those so much.)