Essays and writing on AI
The Breath of the Author
The palpable presence of someone else's mind in our best writing should give us pause about the encroachment of AI text
Wherein I Find Myself Writing About Writing
Most everyone finds writing to be challenging (especially those who say they enjoy it). This is because writing is an intentional, thoughtful act. This is as it should be, but “AI” has recently exacerbated the misbelief that writing is simply an output. In fact, it's a creative process that has merit in and of itself.
How to write well with AI
Why people who pledge never to write with AI are telling on themselves
Our AI Philosophy | Typefully
Social media runs on an implicit contract: I write something, you follow me, you read it, and you trust it came from a human mind. AI writing is curr…
AI assistants can sway writers’ attitudes, even when they’re watching for bias | Cornell Chronicle
Cornell Tech researchers found that writers who used biased AI auto-suggestions saw their views gravitate toward the AI’s positions without their realizing it — even when they were made aware of the biased AI.
Literature fans should welcome AI as a fellow wordsmith | Aeon Essays
Strong resistance to AI among writers is understandable. But it obscures what we share with the machines: language itself
233. "The Illusion of Thinking" — Thoughts on This Important Paper
This is a fantastic paper. I just love it. tl;dr AI is not human. Anthropomorphization has been bad for AI, LLMs, and Chat. Clippy walked so today's AI could run.
We Asked the ‘Future of Truth’ Author to Explain How He Used AI. It Didn’t Go Well
A book about how AI shapes perceptions of reality came under fire for using AI-generated quotes. Its problems go beyond that.
Ethan Mollick on Twitter / X
There is a lot being written about the stylistic tells of AI writing (em-dashes, etc.) but this paper looks at AI narrative tellsFascinating differences between AI & human narrative, and asking AI to write in different styles doesn't do much to change it https://t.co/azkRHz34NQ pic.twitter.com/oTxSGBNYYE— Ethan Mollick (@emollick) May 28, 2026
Is there something it is like to be an AI?
Posted on Wednesday 2 Jul 2025. 1,593 words, 6 links. By Matt Webb.
AI Epistemic Risks: Emerging Mechanisms & Evidence
<p>Advances in artificial intelligence pose risks to humanity's collective capacity to form accurate beliefs, reason well, and maintain a healthy information en
Writing With and Beyond AI: Fieldnotes from Computer-Mediated Poetry
Apr 10, 2026, 12:15 pm - Large language models can make writing mind-numbingly efficient — but the point of writing with AI should be to write what we couldn’t have written alone (without generating bland, derivative “slop”).
Writing with AI help can shift your opinions | Cornell Chronicle
Artificial intelligence-powered writing assistants that autocomplete sentences or offer “smart replies” not only put words into people’s mouths, they also put ideas into their heads, according to new research.
trying to articulate what i hate about "AI writing"
dan
so it's like if we imagine a normal distribution but then we set super intense resonance at exactly the middle point. that's how it feels to be surrounded by AI writing every day. it's average *without* the normal distribution — just extreme dose of narrow average. this is what pushes my buttons