Gradual disempowerment

Substack has added an AI-detection tool readers can trigger to get an AI estimate of AI use. They don’t ban AI use, but I like that they’ve added this window. Honestly, I’ve been losing my desire to write. For the newsletter I’ve been feeding my ideas into the AI, letting it set up the article based on a template, and then editing the output. I’m in the loop, but the article comes out reading more like AI than myself. I’ve been telling myself it doesn’t matter since the newsletter is just a preview. But obviously it does matter because today is Friday, and I only finished this week’s post today. The thrill is gone.

Today I was ready to post the AI version but I stopped. The AI detection tool gave me just enough incentive to put in a bit more effort. I rewrote the article from the ground up so I could get the human-authored merit badge, and I enjoyed the process a lot more.

This is one thing I knew I had to watch. When you can get good output for cheap, the incentive to do the hard work drops, especially if you feel like no one is really looking.

There are still ways to use AI to empower what I do, but I have to be vigilant not to optimize away everything I care about.