No Way Out? Or Just the Wrong Way In?
AI isn’t the problem. Maybe the way we look at it is.
One of the sad tendencies of our time is to confuse excess with boldness — and nuance with weakness. That’s exactly what I felt while reading an article written and shared on LinkedIn by a journalist at Fast Company. One of those pieces where the prose seems more concerned with sounding smart than shedding light.
In it, the author criticizes those who use AI to write. For him, it’s a betrayal of the reader:
“Presenting a friend or colleague with a note an AI wrote is like inviting them over for dinner and microwaving a Stouffer’s. An AI post on LinkedIn is bringing that same microwaved dinner to a potluck. You should be embarrassed in either case!”
The metaphor is clever. Maybe too clever. It creates the illusion of clarity — while sidestepping the real issue.
Yes, there are soulless, shallow AI-generated posts. We’ve all seen them. And yes, they’re exhausting. But let’s be honest: that kind of content didn’t start with ChatGPT. Long before AI, the internet was already full of platitudes.
AI doesn’t make people dull. It makes them visible.
The problem isn’t the tool. It’s how we use it — or more precisely, the intention behind its use.
The question we need to ask isn’t “should we use AI?” It’s “what are we trying to do with it?”
Like any young technology, generative AI is going through loud, clumsy, sometimes even grotesque beginnings. But we’ll learn. We’ll filter. And those who misuse it will naturally lose credibility — no need to panic.
What that kind of criticism ignores — or deliberately overlooks — is everything else.
The people for whom AI is not a shortcut, but a stepping stone.
The ones who never quite had the words, but always had the ideas.
The ones who use it not to go faster — but to go elsewhere.
Not to produce more, but to think better.
It’s them I was thinking of while reading that moralizing take.
So I asked the journalist a simple question:
“If someone uses AI and ends up spending 5 hours crafting something they would’ve written in 1 hour on their own, does that make it less valuable… or more?”
His answer was still in the same line: yes. It would still be inauthentic. I would have simply wasted my time.
But what about those who slow down — using a tool designed to speed things up?
There’s another way to write with AI. A demanding way. Sometimes tedious.
Used by those who test, refine, rewrite. Not to bypass the work — but to deepen it.
Not to automate — but to dig.
Sometimes, what matters is the detour. Especially when it starts where you least expect it. Because slowing down with a tool built for acceleration can be an act of resistance. It opens up a different kind of attention. Less linear. More fertile.
I noticed, re-reading some of my own writing, that certain pieces felt more inhabited, more alive. I wanted to understand why. They all had one thing in common: I had written them at night. Curious, I asked Claude AI:
“Why do we sometimes write better at night?”
The answer (in short): “Because ideas have more space.”
And that struck me. Maybe respecting the reader isn’t just about the time you spend — but the space you allow yourself. A softer kind of attention. A freer one.
And that — do we ever talk about it?
Maybe that’s already a different way of writing. And maybe, it invites a different way of reading, too. Not repeating what we know how to do — but stepping into what we didn’t know we could.
Generative AI is not a dead end. What is? Our old reflexes. As long as we cling to outdated ideas of authenticity, we’ll keep staring into the rearview mirror. And if all we do is turn our backs to AI — we’ll end up going in circles.
MD