I think the argument is misguided, even if I agree with the principle: it is based in the effort one puts in and how it's similar to a sport.
I don't care whether my favorite author sweated for months facing a typewriter, of he effortlessly dictated the final form of the book in one sitting to a secretary while sipping mojitos.
I think my issue with AI has more to do with the signal it sends: reading takes effort, particularly literature, and I use the author's name as a proxy to judge whether to invest that effort myself. Nothing bad in selling dollar store crap, but it's bad to put 'Nike' on it.
Your individuality is what you sell as an author. I can get access to the LLM without you.
And you can read a car maintenance book. That doesn't mean you can fix your car now.
The author vouched the LLM output using their experience, that's what you get. Unless you are as experienced in their domain, it will take you time to figure out if the output of your LLM prompt is correct or non-sense.
It doesn't work for me sorry, because you wouldn't accept a book by John, a friend of Hemingway, as a Hemingway book no matter how much he assisted in editing. Nor a Picasso museum exhibition is by Marie because Marie chose which paintings to display.
The problem lies with people trying to claim credit without doing the work: writing. AI is a fantastic tool that catches flow errors, grammar problems and punctuation misuse, just like a copywriter. But copywriters don't get bylines.
My line is clear, if you use copy paste the AI output that's not your writing. I am okay with AI collaboration - it detects the errors, you decide what to do with them.
I would never use AI for something where I need my own voice, say a blog post or a personal letter.
But I'm not ashamed to say that I used it last week in a chat conversation with a recruiter to turn this:
1. I just said I'm hard of hearing and prefer text.
2. If it's only two minutes you can darn well send email.
into this:
As I mentioned, I'm hard of hearing and phone calls are difficult for me —
I find I miss things and it's frustrating for both sides. If it's just a
couple of minutes' worth of information, an email works great and I can
give you a thoughtful response. Happy to go from there!
I'm not ashamed, I think I'm right, and I'll do it again. This recruiter didn't deserve my authentic voice or my personal toil, not for this task.
If it makes James Bach think I'm a liar, that's a price I'm willing to pay.
What was the value-add of AI here? Some modicum of undeserved politeness instead of the curt bullet points you prompted with? Or an intentional “fuck you” by sending something sloppy with AI tells?
It’s not that you are a liar, it’s that I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you are. Not just me, but also many other people will automatically discount whatever you say when they suspect they are talking to something not-you that bears your name.
Maybe it’s not your goal to be seriously? But if it is…
When I write something heavily edited by AI - I mention that I use AI assistance (not AI led thinking). I will probably remove that because the perception is quite different. Its like applying one applying to an engineering job but write "a pychic, a medium" in a corner of their resume.
It is very common to see that any interesting thought gets immediately tagged like AI slop and the real AI slop wins. Try an A/B test and you shall see that AI actually wins because of the people who hate AI. Most people cannot distinguish between a human and a AI written post and yet those same people want to be judgemental. And the people who are against AI and say "its just the next token generator and I don't use it" and yet use autocomplete on their mobiles are just duplicit. And yes AI is the next-token-generator, we have no proof that most humans were not brainwashed to become the same.
I don’t use autocomplete, either. But if I did that would not be hypocritical. Autocomplete does not operate on the level of key ideas.
The “humans are just as bad” argument holds no water. Humans have many infirmities, but you can form relationships of trust with people who earn trust and deserve it. You can hold people accountable, personally and publicly. With the exception of rare criminals and the severely mentally ill, you understand people and you can work with them.
Anyway, if you hire someone to pretend to be you, that’s fraud. That’s being a scammer. Don’t do that. For the same reason, don’t let AI write in your name.
Or if you do, remember that I warned you how your reputation would collapse and people would stop taking your work seriously.
It’s a perfectly reasonable position, though that may be because I share it.
If you’ve “written” something with AI, I have idea if you even read it, thus I have no idea if it even really reflects your thoughts. And I don’t care what a computer has to say, I care what a human has to say.
The problem we have now is determining if the person actually wrote it. It suddenly got a lot easier for people to get someone else to generate text. And there are a lot more lazy humans than skilled writers.
> If you’ve “written” something with AI, I have idea if you even read it, thus I have no idea if it even really reflects your thoughts. And I don’t care what a computer has to say, I care what a human has to say.
At a more fundamental level, if AI generated it then I have no trust it is actually true or reflects facts or matches reality. It's insulting to throw AI slop at us because you expect us to read something you didn't bothered to write or perhaps even read. The text is probably all wrong with a veneer of well sounding verbiage, and potentially is created to drive engagement instead of actually communicating useful information.
And the great gatsby can be summarized as “rich guy throws parties and then dies” - but sometimes saying something slowly is the point. Sometimes doing something slowly is the point too.
If you are serious, then AI has already begin to rot your brain.
My post was much more than saying “don’t use AI.”
I use AI. I even use AI adjacent to my writing. But with me, you always know that my written words are directly from me. They sound like me. I pretty much write how I talk, albeit more grammatically.
My post was about why you are taking a big risk with your reputation/brand if you let AI draft your written communication on your behalf.
You're right, but I don't think there's anything particularly insightful about the author's perspective.
People are allowed to set their expectations/standards but in 2026 taking the position that use of AI is lying (when not disclosed) and trust destroying (when disclosed) is basically going to set you up for a lot of disappointment. It's just unrealistic.
For better or worse, AI is being used everywhere and it's harder and harder to spot, especially when the use is "thoughtful". Your only real defense is to think critically about the content you're consuming to determine whether it's accurate and has value.
> it's harder and harder to spot, especially when the use is "thoughtful".
It's not, only suckers think otherwise. The more you consume, the easier it gets to spot them, and also you get bored of it quicker. Which is fine for an actual tool.
IMO: if you think it's problematic if people could spot AI tool marks, you're not actually viewing or using AI as a tool. Rocket scientists aren't ashamed of using high end 5-axis CNC or SLS laser metal 3D printers to make rocket engines. Good machinists can tell how they were made, and that should mostly inspire confidence. If someone thinks the tool marks for a specific type of a tool needs to be hidden for the artifacts to be trusted, there has to be something wrong somewhere with the tool or how it's used, or both. Likely both.
Anyone looking at a Boeing 787 can tell that it flies on a pair of turbofan engines, and it's cool. Most people looking at AI images can tell it's generated using AI, and some can even identify models used, and that is NOT cool. That should be a strong enough sign that something is wrong with AI.
This was on the front page for a while yesterday. A decent amount of discussion. I'm quite sure this was produced using AI.
I was the only person who mentioned it.
AI is really easy to spot if it's being used to do all the work. It's less easy to spot when it's being used as a starting point, for editorial passes, concept development, argument refinement, etc.
> People are allowed to set their expectations/standards but in 2026 taking the position that use of AI is lying (when not disclosed) and trust destroying (when disclosed) is basically going to set you up for a lot of disappointment. It's just unrealistic.
Better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.
Or you could engage with content critically, understanding that in this day and age, you can't be 100% sure of its provenance. Decide whether it's accurate, insightful, worth thinking about and researching further, etc. based on its substance, not who you think produced it and how.
You are asking many readers to do substantial amount of work for something nobody potentially put any effort into. This is the fundamental imbalance. Much like answering unknown numbers, reading articles from new sources has become a time wasting trap.
It is absolutely possible to produce an insightful article using AI. But it intakes skill and dedication few people have.
> You are asking many readers to do substantial amount of work for something nobody potentially put any effort into. This is the fundamental imbalance. Much like answering unknown numbers, reading articles from new sources has become a time wasting trap.
But AI is only the latest continuation of what you're describing. The internet has been full of slop (clickbait, SEO-bait, etc.) and propaganda/disinformation for many years before AI was even a thing. Social media gave every person on the planet with a heartbeat and internet connection a publishing platform over a decade ago.
The only realistic approach for dealing with this is to exercise critical thought when you consume content. And if the massive volume of content we're flooded with is problematic, narrow the sources from which you consume content and consume less of it. Get off social media. Disavow YouTube. Don't doom scroll the news. And so on.
I don't see this article as inconsistent with exercising critical thought. In a sense, this policy the author is describing is itself an exercise of critical thought. And it's one way of narrowing the sources from which they consume content. Exercising critical thought involves noticing patterns and developing heuristics and rubrics to judge things. That's entirely compatible with what the article describes.
Saying "if you use AI and don't tell me, you're a liar and if you use AI and tell me, I won't trust anything you write" is not critical thought. It's a sledgehammer filter and basically impossible to apply because there is virtually no way in 2026 to identify the provenance of any content you consume.
The likelihood that the author has consumed and trusted content that was produced using AI in some form, and not even realized it, is close to 100%. It's literally everywhere these days, and not everyone using it is using it to do all the work. But it leaves little hints that it was involved.
There are frequently posts that hit the front page of HN that have numerous AI fingerprints that produce discussion devoid of any comments questioning whether they were produced using AI. And HNers are probably one of the groups more likely than the general population to be able to identify AI content.
> Decide whether it's accurate, insightful, worth thinking about and researching further, etc. based on its substance
This is the part the original human poster is assumed to have screened as a first step, not the audience, particularly if the audience is unfamiliar with the subject (such as a guide, etc).
I literally came across a guide online from a user who wasn't a spammer, who disclaimed they haven't even read the very guide they posted as an article on their website, as it was LLM generated. At least that user put up a disclaimer but why would I trust such a guide, given my and others' extremely inconsistent experience with the veracity of LLM output and as someone coming to the guide to learn (ie: not a domain expert)? Overwhelmingly other users don't put up such disclaimers so we don't even get to know whether they've vetted anything.
Trust is the key thing. To continually erode reader trust means you're putting the burden at every step on the reader. Sure, one should always apply critical thinking to even human output but there is an implicit, baseline assumption that with human output they're at least familiar with what they've output (whether they're lying or telling the truth or ignorant but honest). LLMs meanwhile handle ground truths in a flaky way, such as when they'll hallucinate quotes from even articles they claim to have read and cited. And the most common models users are using are the cheapest/free ones anyway, only compounding the accuracy issues.
Imagine you went to a library assuming authors, publishers and library staff have done some minimum due diligence only to find the library is being replaced rapidly with books that no one in the chain has read.
No one can be a domain expert in every single thing they encounter, which is why we place trust in others to varying degrees to fill in the gaps based on their experience and knowledge, even if you're a dyed in the wool skeptic. When increasingly what we encounter isn't being vetted as a basic first step then it's a waste of time and rude to the audience, which only decreases peoples' tolerance for bullshit and increases cynicism (which we could use less of).
Ugh that sounds like a lot of work. Are you sure we can't just throw shallow dismissals around and feel smug about it, rather than interacting with the contents of what something is saying?
Isn't that, ironically, exactly the sentiment that motivates people to use AI to produce content?
I think your comment hints at the reality: we're all just increasingly lazy. We want to minimize how much time and effort it takes to produce content, and at the same time we want to minimize how much time and effort it takes to engage with it.
> My policy is that I never let AI draft anything for me that has my name on it. Not one sentence. Nothing. Ever.
> If AI deeply collaborates with you to write something, why am I saying you shouldn’t say you used AI? Because all I have is your word for it that you did any work at all.
So using author's logic, I should not trust them when they say they never use AI for writing, because all we have is their word.
> “I’m a skilled liar. I frequently tell lies. But don’t worry, I wouldn’t lie to you!”
Interesting how saying you used any amount of AI instantly labels you as "a skilled liar" to the author.
I think the argument is misguided, even if I agree with the principle: it is based in the effort one puts in and how it's similar to a sport.
I don't care whether my favorite author sweated for months facing a typewriter, of he effortlessly dictated the final form of the book in one sitting to a secretary while sipping mojitos.
I think my issue with AI has more to do with the signal it sends: reading takes effort, particularly literature, and I use the author's name as a proxy to judge whether to invest that effort myself. Nothing bad in selling dollar store crap, but it's bad to put 'Nike' on it.
Your individuality is what you sell as an author. I can get access to the LLM without you.
> I can get access to the LLM without you.
And you can read a car maintenance book. That doesn't mean you can fix your car now.
The author vouched the LLM output using their experience, that's what you get. Unless you are as experienced in their domain, it will take you time to figure out if the output of your LLM prompt is correct or non-sense.
Yeah, the somelier argument.
It doesn't work for me sorry, because you wouldn't accept a book by John, a friend of Hemingway, as a Hemingway book no matter how much he assisted in editing. Nor a Picasso museum exhibition is by Marie because Marie chose which paintings to display.
Authorship and edition are different claims.
I want to read Ray Bradbury and Jack Vance, not Claude's output based on a prompt from a barely literate would-be.
I want to read code by Abrash, Peyton Jones and Karpathy, not Claude's output based on a prompt from a third rater.
If you send me AI generated writing, I will have my AI agent read it and respond to it.
Meanwhile I will use my limited human time to engage with humans and human created content.
The problem lies with people trying to claim credit without doing the work: writing. AI is a fantastic tool that catches flow errors, grammar problems and punctuation misuse, just like a copywriter. But copywriters don't get bylines.
My line is clear, if you use copy paste the AI output that's not your writing. I am okay with AI collaboration - it detects the errors, you decide what to do with them.
I would never use AI for something where I need my own voice, say a blog post or a personal letter.
But I'm not ashamed to say that I used it last week in a chat conversation with a recruiter to turn this:
into this: I'm not ashamed, I think I'm right, and I'll do it again. This recruiter didn't deserve my authentic voice or my personal toil, not for this task.If it makes James Bach think I'm a liar, that's a price I'm willing to pay.
What was the value-add of AI here? Some modicum of undeserved politeness instead of the curt bullet points you prompted with? Or an intentional “fuck you” by sending something sloppy with AI tells?
Your use of the phrase “undeserved politeness” suggests to me that maybe you aren't someone I should look to for advice on how to behave.
That's probably true, but to be clear, I'm not communicating my own values here. I'm trying to understand your rationale.
>This recruiter didn't deserve my authentic voice or my personal toil
Yet they deserve inauthentic politeness from a chatbot? It just sounds like "fuck you" with more steps.
It definitely reads as a 'fuck you' to me. Is there a group of people that responds well to that last sentence?
Perhaps I'm wrong, but yes, I believe there is. Your own personal preferences are not universal.
You need AI to write 2 sentences?
Two sentences in recruiter register, yes. I'm really bad at it and I do need help.
So maybe a call is in fact better than an email?
As I mentioned, I'm hard of hearing and phone calls are difficult for me.
And emails apparently are also difficult for you. Did you even write the comments here by yourself?
It’s not that you are a liar, it’s that I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you are. Not just me, but also many other people will automatically discount whatever you say when they suspect they are talking to something not-you that bears your name.
Maybe it’s not your goal to be seriously? But if it is…
When I write something heavily edited by AI - I mention that I use AI assistance (not AI led thinking). I will probably remove that because the perception is quite different. Its like applying one applying to an engineering job but write "a pychic, a medium" in a corner of their resume.
It is very common to see that any interesting thought gets immediately tagged like AI slop and the real AI slop wins. Try an A/B test and you shall see that AI actually wins because of the people who hate AI. Most people cannot distinguish between a human and a AI written post and yet those same people want to be judgemental. And the people who are against AI and say "its just the next token generator and I don't use it" and yet use autocomplete on their mobiles are just duplicit. And yes AI is the next-token-generator, we have no proof that most humans were not brainwashed to become the same.
I don’t use autocomplete, either. But if I did that would not be hypocritical. Autocomplete does not operate on the level of key ideas.
The “humans are just as bad” argument holds no water. Humans have many infirmities, but you can form relationships of trust with people who earn trust and deserve it. You can hold people accountable, personally and publicly. With the exception of rare criminals and the severely mentally ill, you understand people and you can work with them.
Anyway, if you hire someone to pretend to be you, that’s fraud. That’s being a scammer. Don’t do that. For the same reason, don’t let AI write in your name.
Or if you do, remember that I warned you how your reputation would collapse and people would stop taking your work seriously.
AI could have helped the author write what he's trying to say in one three word sentence: don't use AI.
Because in his view, if you use AI and don't disclose it, you're a liar. And if you use AI and disclose it, he won't trust you anyway.
It’s a perfectly reasonable position, though that may be because I share it.
If you’ve “written” something with AI, I have idea if you even read it, thus I have no idea if it even really reflects your thoughts. And I don’t care what a computer has to say, I care what a human has to say.
I fully agree with this.
The problem we have now is determining if the person actually wrote it. It suddenly got a lot easier for people to get someone else to generate text. And there are a lot more lazy humans than skilled writers.
That's an argument against people actng lszy, not against them using ai.
> If you’ve “written” something with AI, I have idea if you even read it, thus I have no idea if it even really reflects your thoughts. And I don’t care what a computer has to say, I care what a human has to say.
At a more fundamental level, if AI generated it then I have no trust it is actually true or reflects facts or matches reality. It's insulting to throw AI slop at us because you expect us to read something you didn't bothered to write or perhaps even read. The text is probably all wrong with a veneer of well sounding verbiage, and potentially is created to drive engagement instead of actually communicating useful information.
And the great gatsby can be summarized as “rich guy throws parties and then dies” - but sometimes saying something slowly is the point. Sometimes doing something slowly is the point too.
If you are serious, then AI has already begin to rot your brain.
My post was much more than saying “don’t use AI.”
I use AI. I even use AI adjacent to my writing. But with me, you always know that my written words are directly from me. They sound like me. I pretty much write how I talk, albeit more grammatically.
My post was about why you are taking a big risk with your reputation/brand if you let AI draft your written communication on your behalf.
That summary makes the point but doesn’t communicate the meaning
You're right, but I don't think there's anything particularly insightful about the author's perspective.
People are allowed to set their expectations/standards but in 2026 taking the position that use of AI is lying (when not disclosed) and trust destroying (when disclosed) is basically going to set you up for a lot of disappointment. It's just unrealistic.
For better or worse, AI is being used everywhere and it's harder and harder to spot, especially when the use is "thoughtful". Your only real defense is to think critically about the content you're consuming to determine whether it's accurate and has value.
> it's harder and harder to spot, especially when the use is "thoughtful".
It's not, only suckers think otherwise. The more you consume, the easier it gets to spot them, and also you get bored of it quicker. Which is fine for an actual tool.
IMO: if you think it's problematic if people could spot AI tool marks, you're not actually viewing or using AI as a tool. Rocket scientists aren't ashamed of using high end 5-axis CNC or SLS laser metal 3D printers to make rocket engines. Good machinists can tell how they were made, and that should mostly inspire confidence. If someone thinks the tool marks for a specific type of a tool needs to be hidden for the artifacts to be trusted, there has to be something wrong somewhere with the tool or how it's used, or both. Likely both.
Anyone looking at a Boeing 787 can tell that it flies on a pair of turbofan engines, and it's cool. Most people looking at AI images can tell it's generated using AI, and some can even identify models used, and that is NOT cool. That should be a strong enough sign that something is wrong with AI.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48609233
This was on the front page for a while yesterday. A decent amount of discussion. I'm quite sure this was produced using AI.
I was the only person who mentioned it.
AI is really easy to spot if it's being used to do all the work. It's less easy to spot when it's being used as a starting point, for editorial passes, concept development, argument refinement, etc.
> People are allowed to set their expectations/standards but in 2026 taking the position that use of AI is lying (when not disclosed) and trust destroying (when disclosed) is basically going to set you up for a lot of disappointment. It's just unrealistic.
Better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.
Or you could engage with content critically, understanding that in this day and age, you can't be 100% sure of its provenance. Decide whether it's accurate, insightful, worth thinking about and researching further, etc. based on its substance, not who you think produced it and how.
You are asking many readers to do substantial amount of work for something nobody potentially put any effort into. This is the fundamental imbalance. Much like answering unknown numbers, reading articles from new sources has become a time wasting trap.
It is absolutely possible to produce an insightful article using AI. But it intakes skill and dedication few people have.
> You are asking many readers to do substantial amount of work for something nobody potentially put any effort into. This is the fundamental imbalance. Much like answering unknown numbers, reading articles from new sources has become a time wasting trap.
But AI is only the latest continuation of what you're describing. The internet has been full of slop (clickbait, SEO-bait, etc.) and propaganda/disinformation for many years before AI was even a thing. Social media gave every person on the planet with a heartbeat and internet connection a publishing platform over a decade ago.
The only realistic approach for dealing with this is to exercise critical thought when you consume content. And if the massive volume of content we're flooded with is problematic, narrow the sources from which you consume content and consume less of it. Get off social media. Disavow YouTube. Don't doom scroll the news. And so on.
I don't see this article as inconsistent with exercising critical thought. In a sense, this policy the author is describing is itself an exercise of critical thought. And it's one way of narrowing the sources from which they consume content. Exercising critical thought involves noticing patterns and developing heuristics and rubrics to judge things. That's entirely compatible with what the article describes.
Saying "if you use AI and don't tell me, you're a liar and if you use AI and tell me, I won't trust anything you write" is not critical thought. It's a sledgehammer filter and basically impossible to apply because there is virtually no way in 2026 to identify the provenance of any content you consume.
The likelihood that the author has consumed and trusted content that was produced using AI in some form, and not even realized it, is close to 100%. It's literally everywhere these days, and not everyone using it is using it to do all the work. But it leaves little hints that it was involved.
There are frequently posts that hit the front page of HN that have numerous AI fingerprints that produce discussion devoid of any comments questioning whether they were produced using AI. And HNers are probably one of the groups more likely than the general population to be able to identify AI content.
> Decide whether it's accurate, insightful, worth thinking about and researching further, etc. based on its substance
This is the part the original human poster is assumed to have screened as a first step, not the audience, particularly if the audience is unfamiliar with the subject (such as a guide, etc).
I literally came across a guide online from a user who wasn't a spammer, who disclaimed they haven't even read the very guide they posted as an article on their website, as it was LLM generated. At least that user put up a disclaimer but why would I trust such a guide, given my and others' extremely inconsistent experience with the veracity of LLM output and as someone coming to the guide to learn (ie: not a domain expert)? Overwhelmingly other users don't put up such disclaimers so we don't even get to know whether they've vetted anything.
Trust is the key thing. To continually erode reader trust means you're putting the burden at every step on the reader. Sure, one should always apply critical thinking to even human output but there is an implicit, baseline assumption that with human output they're at least familiar with what they've output (whether they're lying or telling the truth or ignorant but honest). LLMs meanwhile handle ground truths in a flaky way, such as when they'll hallucinate quotes from even articles they claim to have read and cited. And the most common models users are using are the cheapest/free ones anyway, only compounding the accuracy issues.
Imagine you went to a library assuming authors, publishers and library staff have done some minimum due diligence only to find the library is being replaced rapidly with books that no one in the chain has read.
No one can be a domain expert in every single thing they encounter, which is why we place trust in others to varying degrees to fill in the gaps based on their experience and knowledge, even if you're a dyed in the wool skeptic. When increasingly what we encounter isn't being vetted as a basic first step then it's a waste of time and rude to the audience, which only decreases peoples' tolerance for bullshit and increases cynicism (which we could use less of).
Ugh that sounds like a lot of work. Are you sure we can't just throw shallow dismissals around and feel smug about it, rather than interacting with the contents of what something is saying?
> Ugh that sounds like a lot of work.
Isn't that, ironically, exactly the sentiment that motivates people to use AI to produce content?
I think your comment hints at the reality: we're all just increasingly lazy. We want to minimize how much time and effort it takes to produce content, and at the same time we want to minimize how much time and effort it takes to engage with it.
It's a vicious cycle.
[dead]
> My policy is that I never let AI draft anything for me that has my name on it. Not one sentence. Nothing. Ever.
> If AI deeply collaborates with you to write something, why am I saying you shouldn’t say you used AI? Because all I have is your word for it that you did any work at all.
So using author's logic, I should not trust them when they say they never use AI for writing, because all we have is their word.
> “I’m a skilled liar. I frequently tell lies. But don’t worry, I wouldn’t lie to you!”
Interesting how saying you used any amount of AI instantly labels you as "a skilled liar" to the author.
ghostwriter says not to use ghostwriter
more at 11