How about not using AI in the first place? If you work it out yourself and express it clearly you’ll be in a much better position to answer questions at the end.
Good perspective. Adam Grant actively warns against having AI write your texts, because it stops you from thinking. Writing is thinking.
What I do is, instead of having AI write texts on my behalf, I engage with AI on ideas. Because it helps me develop clarity and the overall structure of my arguments. Then the writing becomes clearer and easier.
There are a lot of these "How to get AI to write your ..." posts on here lately. I always considered social communication (including writing, presenting, even business presentations) to be part of the essence of what it means to be human. Now it's all about how to make the machine sound more human.
AI is indeed a useful tool for expressing yourself clearly or finding alternative ways to convey an idea—especially in another language—but the poetry is often lost. Sometimes I notice the robotic style of a text, other times I don’t. Despite this flaw, I find AI practical. The artistic side of language needs to be practiced personally—by speaking, writing, reading, and listening. And yes, I truly enjoy the act of expressing my way of thinking with my own style and rhythm
Actually back in the day we called that ‘simple English’. The fact that AIs use such language, in my opinion, is because it’s trained on lots and lots of corporate and patriarchal language items, so it fails to recognise simple English (apologies to non English speakers). But I also think people using AI for presentations, content of various kinds get lazy - ‘it sounds Ok so must be OK! People need to relearn communication skills on a whole new level if they are not going to become human AI speakers - if you catch my drift lol!!
this is what i personally struggle with bc i never learnt proper english... it was my worst subject and i never showed interest in it because i hated it + my adhd wasnt known and i had the worst teacher -.-
i want to learn this stuff so any suggestions on how to improve bc i dont want to sound like im writing prose. i want to be conversational and colloquial but be better at getting a point across without rambling, tangent-ing and going down a rabbit hole of words that could have been said in less lol
I think it's very sad that people who have a large vocabulary and a solid understanding of grammar now have to dumb down the language to be perceived as authentic
Lacey, that is not necessarily the case. If you have already found your own voice and published a lot of work, it's relatively easy to train your AI employees to write in your style. The problem arises when someone new uses these tools, and the output sounds very generic.
I'm talking about the fact that proper grammatical tools—like em dashes, for example—are being used as "tells" that something was written by AI, even if it wasn't. That means hiring staff are reading cover letters, making an assumption about the writing, and throwing out my job application because I paid attention in English class.
Respect lol but throwing up is positive cause you purging toxins hahaha
But in all seriousness, I hope yall solely use this for bullshit work like enriching corporations and not for serious creative work that could be used to expand your mind and consciousness. Because learning happens in the process, not the results and I know everyone is intelligent enough to produce creative work without AI as a crutch.
Not trying to demonize AI, but I am concerned about the fact people don't understand how learning works neurologically and undermine their neuroplasticity by offloading critical thinking and contemplation to robots that simply scour the internet for some shit some other guy already did.
but I'm into freedom so yall get your shit off lmao I just hope and pray people are doing this shit responsibly....
Get your point. And to create new neural pathways you will need a lot of repetition. But yes learning does enhance that process. That said. If one us learning to use AI for writing or a host of other things - as we’ve all been doing for decades now - then the art of creating effective prompts surely forces one to think more critically about outcomes and intention in ways that you wouldn’t normally? Just a thought.
lmao there is a big difference between using AI to learn how to write and using AI to write for you.
AI is only going to be as useful as your brain already is. To think AI can step in and do the work of developing your brain, when your offloading the work to AI is... pretty suspect in my mind. Learning how to prompt AI so its better at writing for you, rather than prompting your own brain to write. Idk, feels backwards. I get the idea that you could glean benefit from AI in terms of coming up with more creative questions, but those creative questions are attempts to get better information to aid YOUR OWN writing, not to find better ways to get AI to write for you. If you only seek better ways to get AI to write for you, the point is YOU NEVER WRITE. and your writing only becomes better IF YOU WRITE.
according to neuroscience, neural pathways are strengthened by attempts to recall information. If you are offloading information recall to AI, then you are skipping the learning process.
I totally love this. But personally I utilise my AI as a researcher that creates resources on the topic and organises so that I can write without the days and weeks of preliminary work. I guess it’s from an academic perspective. Too old school?!
This is super useful for doing swift comms work. I use the AI sandwich as a rule of thumb. My thoughts > input into AI > gate keep edit and publish. But your piece is way more useful
AI gets better all the time. Proper prompts utilizing tone, perspective ect make a big difference. A lot of people can't really tell once simple editing is done. Make sure to tell AI certain words to leave out and not repeat.
How about not using AI in the first place? If you work it out yourself and express it clearly you’ll be in a much better position to answer questions at the end.
Good perspective. Adam Grant actively warns against having AI write your texts, because it stops you from thinking. Writing is thinking.
What I do is, instead of having AI write texts on my behalf, I engage with AI on ideas. Because it helps me develop clarity and the overall structure of my arguments. Then the writing becomes clearer and easier.
That’s how I use AI also, as a mental sparring partner.
Same - I usually make it play the role of devil’s advocate - but it’s far too complimentary at times!
There are a lot of these "How to get AI to write your ..." posts on here lately. I always considered social communication (including writing, presenting, even business presentations) to be part of the essence of what it means to be human. Now it's all about how to make the machine sound more human.
AI is indeed a useful tool for expressing yourself clearly or finding alternative ways to convey an idea—especially in another language—but the poetry is often lost. Sometimes I notice the robotic style of a text, other times I don’t. Despite this flaw, I find AI practical. The artistic side of language needs to be practiced personally—by speaking, writing, reading, and listening. And yes, I truly enjoy the act of expressing my way of thinking with my own style and rhythm
Ah yes but not so much fun!!
Actually back in the day we called that ‘simple English’. The fact that AIs use such language, in my opinion, is because it’s trained on lots and lots of corporate and patriarchal language items, so it fails to recognise simple English (apologies to non English speakers). But I also think people using AI for presentations, content of various kinds get lazy - ‘it sounds Ok so must be OK! People need to relearn communication skills on a whole new level if they are not going to become human AI speakers - if you catch my drift lol!!
this is what i personally struggle with bc i never learnt proper english... it was my worst subject and i never showed interest in it because i hated it + my adhd wasnt known and i had the worst teacher -.-
i want to learn this stuff so any suggestions on how to improve bc i dont want to sound like im writing prose. i want to be conversational and colloquial but be better at getting a point across without rambling, tangent-ing and going down a rabbit hole of words that could have been said in less lol
the damn first 3 secs/hook always trips me
You would be surprised that people prefer your style of writing now because it sounds more human and personal. 🙂
👆 this
and 10000% on this
Why not just write yourself?
I think it's very sad that people who have a large vocabulary and a solid understanding of grammar now have to dumb down the language to be perceived as authentic
Lacey, that is not necessarily the case. If you have already found your own voice and published a lot of work, it's relatively easy to train your AI employees to write in your style. The problem arises when someone new uses these tools, and the output sounds very generic.
I'm talking about the fact that proper grammatical tools—like em dashes, for example—are being used as "tells" that something was written by AI, even if it wasn't. That means hiring staff are reading cover letters, making an assumption about the writing, and throwing out my job application because I paid attention in English class.
I love emm dashes and semicolons, and I’ll keep using them no matter what 😂
A man’s gotta know on which hill to die on ;)
And this is my Thermopylae 😂
I love em dashes, and I will keep using them.
Lacey, it’s a shame. I like em dashes and all kinds of metaphors, and wish we could stop calling them “tells” so easily
Me too!
Seems like a very robotic way to sound human. Have you tried just writing? :)
Boy I'm finna throw up
keep it positive, mate
Respect lol but throwing up is positive cause you purging toxins hahaha
But in all seriousness, I hope yall solely use this for bullshit work like enriching corporations and not for serious creative work that could be used to expand your mind and consciousness. Because learning happens in the process, not the results and I know everyone is intelligent enough to produce creative work without AI as a crutch.
Not trying to demonize AI, but I am concerned about the fact people don't understand how learning works neurologically and undermine their neuroplasticity by offloading critical thinking and contemplation to robots that simply scour the internet for some shit some other guy already did.
but I'm into freedom so yall get your shit off lmao I just hope and pray people are doing this shit responsibly....
Get your point. And to create new neural pathways you will need a lot of repetition. But yes learning does enhance that process. That said. If one us learning to use AI for writing or a host of other things - as we’ve all been doing for decades now - then the art of creating effective prompts surely forces one to think more critically about outcomes and intention in ways that you wouldn’t normally? Just a thought.
lmao there is a big difference between using AI to learn how to write and using AI to write for you.
AI is only going to be as useful as your brain already is. To think AI can step in and do the work of developing your brain, when your offloading the work to AI is... pretty suspect in my mind. Learning how to prompt AI so its better at writing for you, rather than prompting your own brain to write. Idk, feels backwards. I get the idea that you could glean benefit from AI in terms of coming up with more creative questions, but those creative questions are attempts to get better information to aid YOUR OWN writing, not to find better ways to get AI to write for you. If you only seek better ways to get AI to write for you, the point is YOU NEVER WRITE. and your writing only becomes better IF YOU WRITE.
according to neuroscience, neural pathways are strengthened by attempts to recall information. If you are offloading information recall to AI, then you are skipping the learning process.
I’ll think you’ll like the Renaissance 2.0 section of the newsletter once I have a moment to start publishing there
Thank you for sharing! I love the prompts and the rationale.
I like some of the tips in your humanized prompt, I especially loved the addition about no summary footers - YES!
That said, in my opinion it includes too many subjective elements for an AI.
E.g. $10 words, incisive professional, never sound like an informercial, dry humour or an idiom if it fits the context, etc.
For this to be more effective consider the following updated version that probably still needs work!
<begin prompt example>
Rewrite the text below for professional clarity and impact.
- Keep every idea and fact. Only modify if the original is ambiguous or grammatically incorrect.
- Use active voice throughout. Maximum three sentences per paragraph, each under 20 words.
- Alternate between short (5-10 words) and medium (15-20 words) sentences.
- Replace complex words with simple alternatives. Use contractions.
- Delete these specific items: very, really, actually, basically, journey, roadmap, navigate, leverage, utilize.
- No bullet points unless the original had them for essential information.
- No summary footer. End with your strongest point.
- Replace all em dashes with commas, periods, or rewrite to avoid them.
- Include one understated observation per 200 words if it strengthens the point.
- After rewriting, review to ensure all rules were followed.
Return only the rewritten text.
<end prompt example>
I personally use a much larger one with even more nuance, but I thought this might help others here. AI is a blast!
Thanks for the awesome feedback Ross. Appreciate you!
So much work to avoid doing any work.
That’s probably so true. AI is such a rabbit hole
I totally love this. But personally I utilise my AI as a researcher that creates resources on the topic and organises so that I can write without the days and weeks of preliminary work. I guess it’s from an academic perspective. Too old school?!
Honestly, there’s no wrong right way Mike actually let me rephrase this. There are some wrong ways to use it, but I think it would really enjoy this article here. https://open.substack.com/pub/aiadopters/p/your-team-stopped-questioning-ai?r=19bdgo&utm_medium=ios
Who is Mike? Did I miss something
Sorry I dictated and didn’t check. Skip Mike :)
😂😂🫣
This is super useful for doing swift comms work. I use the AI sandwich as a rule of thumb. My thoughts > input into AI > gate keep edit and publish. But your piece is way more useful
I ended up using a Gemini Gem to store this information. Looking forward to making it a better editor than I can find in a custom ChatGPT GPT.
Try Claude
I haven’t been using Claude enough, it seems. Giving it a go.
This has for to be one of the most useful, helpful articles I've read in a while. Thank you for this.
LoL it works 🤓🤓💩💩
AI gets better all the time. Proper prompts utilizing tone, perspective ect make a big difference. A lot of people can't really tell once simple editing is done. Make sure to tell AI certain words to leave out and not repeat.
Who cares if u used AI anyway? If I hear talk about em dashes…
I have always loved em
dashes.
What do you think of Bob Kosse accusations of ChatGPT.
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