I am a big proponent of using AI to help speed up the grunt work of, well, any task; but this blog is about writing, so we’re going to talk about AI in writing. Specifically, I want to talk about four guiding principles that will help you use AI as an author with more effectiveness and without losing your voice.

But, since I am also a big proponent of establishing definitions, let’s look at what we’re actually talking about. What is AI, and what is an LLM?

Defining AI

This is an issue because there’s what’s actually AI, and there’s what’s marketed as AI. When AI began to be perceived as a magic button for customer involvement and investment, a lot of things we’ve already accepted as normal technology got redefined as “AI” so it could sound new and amazing. That includes simple things like Photoshop tools or Word’s grammar check.

That’s led to confusion with the way the Butlarian Jihad hunts down AI-using heretics. (If you don’t recognize the term, it’s from the Dune setting and references a movement to ban AI. It’s becoming the standard way to refer to the rabidly anti-AI crowd today.) When everything is AI, it’s really easy to justify cancelling someone for using it in a way that the Butlerians don’t like, or when they just don’t like the user. But that also means that it’s incredibly hard to escape AI, because these days everything is AI — or at least marketed as such.

So defining AI in a way that matters to normal people is important. Of course, most normal people would fall asleep just listening to a real definition of AI and LLMs. Allow me to demonstrate.

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