Infected by the machine

 

Nearly eleven years ago, I wrote of nostalgia for my "pre-internet brain". I was already yearning for a mercurial mystery, an opaque numinosity, a unique contrariness that I feared was slipping away from me.

Today, I had a nagging feeling that, while my pre-internet brain is alive and well, it's gone into hiding. Especially when it comes to its output in the form of work-related writing.

I feel as if my writing is becoming blander round the edges. As if there's a part of my brain that really is infected by AI. I'm not over-keen on putting everything through an AI detector, but gave it a go, nevertheless.   

Client 1

I write articles for their brand communications and media newsletter. As usual, at the beginning of the year, one article is about trends. My first draft was "64% likely human", but by the time I'd incorporated the client comments, it had crossed a line. Into "69% AI probability."

Uh-oh.

I dug out my article on trends from 4 years ago. "98% likely human."

Definitely infected.

Client 2

In this case, I write keynote-type speeches for marketing events. For the 2025 event, the line had been crossed, too: "68% AI probability." For the 2021 speech I was still operating on pre-AI brain: "97% likely human."

There are push and pull factors going on here. From the client side, the feedback is often of the "crisper, clearer, simpler" sort, and I have sometimes been given an AI first draft as a brief, rather than a few bullet points.

It's much harder to extricate yourself from an AI-style as first draft than polish up your first draft with AI.

Then there were the pull factors from my side. As the audience for the articles and speeches is international, I use Hemingway  to keep the language and structure relatively simple. And I probably cut out more colloquialisms than I used to. Killing my darlings for better comprehension.

This is all conscious stuff. But I sense that the infection has worked its way in unconsciously. I am spending far too much time reading stuff online, too much of which is AI-generated. And I suspect my clients are, too. We are all becoming infected. And the expectations of what's a well-written article has changed.

I know that I must push back now. Because I'm not writing for AI and GEO. My audience is 100% human. I'm spending more time on real, paper books. Avoiding AI summaries, going to original sources. 

It's time to wake the non-infected, pre-AI part of my brain up.