Do it right if you’re going to do it.

When I was in high school we had to give speeches in Japanese for Japanese class. One classmate had a Japanese homestay look over their speech before delivering it. The homestay then duly went ahead and basically rewrote the speech.

True to form, the Japanese was too good and the classmate failed to deliver the speech well as a result. Had the classmate written the speech themselves, using language they understood, but perhaps augmented with the help of their homestay, they would have done a much better job. Sure the speech wouldn’t have been as good as it could have been, but the delivery would have been much better. More importantly, the classmate would have grown more as a result.

AI is similar. We can use AI to write essentially anything these days. But as other people call it, it is all AI slop. If you’re a good writer, you have standards. AI writing fails these standards more often than not, and is therefore useless to most.

However, we can use AI to help us organise our ideas. We can get AI to put our ideas into bullet points for us to flesh out ourselves, for example. This maintains our writing standards while bringing in some of the efficiencies AI allows. AI can also give you feedback. However, if you get AI to rewrite things for you, well, you’re headed for trouble like my classmate.

The lesson is simple. You need to be doing as much as you can by yourself. Otherwise you’re losing opportunities to grow. By all means use AI to help your writing, but know that, depending on how much you rely on it, it comes with potential risks.