Using AI Without Letting It Do Too Much

Once you start using AI in your planning and your writing, it can be tempting to use it for everything. It starts to function as a crutch or an addiction, the way many people compulsively reach for their phones. But I’ve found that while I can ask for input from AI, I’ll just as often discard what it gives me. I asked for language that I might use in the About section of this website, or as shorthand to explain what this website aims to accomplish, and this is what I received:

Bridging the frontier between traditional prose and generative intelligence. From the 'Badlands' of experimental art to the systems of an MBA at UW-Madison, I’m exploring what happens when we let the machine assist the soul.

That’s too much. I ended up going with something much simpler:

I am a writer and creator bridging the gap between traditional storytelling and A.I. tools before heading to UW-Madison for my MBA.

Even though I didn’t use what AI suggested, I liked the idea of bridging, so I kept that. I also like the idea that the website would be a collaboration between (or a combination of) the traditional and the new. So even when I don’t adopt the writing, it’s often very helpful to have something to consider and to pick the parts that I connect with, and then go from there.

It’s not unlike when I used to write song lyrics by flipping the dictionary open and finding a word that I liked and just going from there. It can be strange, or maybe “strangely simple,” how we create things. It’s not always a lightning bolt of inspiration. It’s just as often a workman-like approach or craft techniques that produce the writing.