Introduction
AI & Polarization
What Is AI? A Tool… Right?
AI & Me
The Perspectival Argument
AI & the Literary Community
Dangerous Ground & Legit Concerns
Metathesiophobia & Existential Fear of Change
An Extension of Human Intelligence
Conclusion & Key Takeaways
Additional Reading

Introduction

This is not about dismissing criticism of AI-generated writing wholesale; it’s an argument against overgeneralization. It all started after I read an article on The Substack Post: “Against Claudefishing.”^[1] Despite that insufferable portmanteau, I was curious about the subject—Substack’s implementation of a so-called AI detector, Pangram, integrated into the platform to tamp down on AI slop. The article was interesting. I have no issue with their decision to roll out this feature, nor do I have a particular position on their business operations or decisions. The responses to the proclamation, however, were another story. Of course, the responses were more dyadic than didactic; the binary fix was in: You are either for or against AI. Alas, that’s too much of a chasm; this requires something more parochial—AI and writing as a topic in and of itself.

“You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.” –Ayn Rand

AI & Polarization

Artificial Intelligence (AI), almost inexplicably, has become one of the most polarizing technologies in recent memory. (I know, I spent more than 20 years in the tech industry, frequently writing code the old-fashioned way: by hand in an IDE or text editor.) On one hand, we have adherents who ardently advocate for AI as a transformative force for expanding human creativity and productivity. Conversely, some people increasingly view it with suspicion, treating even the slightest whisper of AI involvement as evidence of creative bankruptcy and intellectual dishonesty. And with the advent and growing popularity of AI detectors, allegations of “AI-generated” writing, and the casual dismissal of broad swathes of work as “AI slop” seem to me to reflect a broader cultural anxiety or, perhaps, metathesiophobia (more on that later). Yet in many cases, the conversation has drifted away from the single most important question: What exactly is AI, and what role is it supposed to play?

What Is AI? A Tool… Right?

Among other things, AI can answer questions, simplify and explain complex topics, brainstorm project or business ideas, solve logic problems, write code, and analyze data. It’s also excellent for summarizing documents, analyzing poems, and yes, writing and editing: essays, resumes, stories, speeches, and social media posts. This, however, should be obvious. Perhaps I’ll use Occam’s razor: The most basic answer is that AI, much like a coping saw, is a tool. What this tool cannot do, however, is replace thought or substitute for expertise. And like a coping saw in the hands of a capable carpenter, AI can extend human capability without replacing the need for judgment, skill, or intent.

A coping saw can produce intricate cuts; cuts that are impossible to make efficiently freehand, but the saw cannot design, decide what to build, or interpret a woodworking blueprint. It also cannot evaluate whether the finished product is structurally sound, aesthetically designed, or intricately detailed. Each of those responsibilities remains entirely human; some are even subjective. Additionally, AI cannot independently determine purpose, context, or value when organizing information, identifying patterns, drafting prose, summarizing research, or assisting with an essay. Those responsibilities remain with the person using the tool.

AI & Me

I’ve personally used AI tools for different reasons, including learning how they work and how best to use them to obtain a specific result. I’ve also used AI tools out of mere curiosity. I’ve used them for “vibe coding,” to brainstorm and build apps, to research topics that would take too much time using the old method of “search, sift, click, read, notate.” For example, why would I choose to spend hours gathering information on hodological space from a Sartrean perspective when I have a tool, AI, that can facilitate that process by providing a synopsis and links to academic literature and research on the subject within seconds? That would be foolish. I’ve also used AI to create “roadmaps” for different projects, write outlines, and even generate images (some silly noir comic book panels) for experimental purposes.

This distinction, the one between AI as a tool vs. a technological boogeyman, matters because AI is often described as though it were a lone wolf, an autonomous actor, conscripted to toil away in the shadows. Phrases such as “AI wrote this,” “This is AI,” or “AI created that” imply a degree of agency the technology simply does not possess. Large Language Models (LLMs) do not wake up each day with ideas to express or with arguments to make. Hell! In their current iteration, they do nothing without human direction; humans build, train, and use them. In essence, AI has gorged itself on the fat of human labor. They respond to prompts, requests, constraints, revisions, corrections, and the goals supplied by some person—you or me. The quality of the output depends on, and is inseparable from, the quality of the human interaction behind it. That said, what you choose to do with the output is strictly your decision. But even in this respect, AI’s reach remains truncated; all it can do is supply you with the output.

The Perspectival Argument

In this sense, and from a writer’s perspective, AI is more of an instrument than an author. Does a piano compose music by nature of containing all eighty-eight keys? Of course not. The musician selects the notes, shapes the piece, determines the tempo, adds nuances like syncopation, and communicates emotion. Similarly, AI requires direction, evaluation, iteration, and refinement. Even with an initially polished response, meaningful work often relies on more nuanced prompts and better queries. It remains reliant on rejecting weak outputs, verifying data and claims presented as fact, reorganizing ideas, and supplying personal expertise. The “intelligence” in artificial intelligence extends beyond the computational; it can only appear through collaboration with actual human intelligence.

This collaborative nature also explains why AI has found applications across such disparate fields. An engineer might use it to accelerate software development and identify bugs. A physician may employ AI-assisted systems to review imaging studies and summarize medical literature while retaining responsibility for diagnostic conclusions and treatment. An attorney could use it to organize evidence gathered in discovery. Yet, professional judgment remains essential to legal analysis. Scientists accelerate hypothesis generation and literature reviews. Educators can develop lesson plans more efficiently. Are we to then lambast all these professionals and label their work AI slop? If not, then why are writers held, it would appear, to a higher standard?

A writer may use AI to flesh out ideas, challenge assumptions, edit drafts, or, perhaps, overcome writer’s block by jumpstarting the creative process. How would you know what spark may be lit by merely reading AI-generated output? One thing often leads to another; remember, without Nobel laureates Felix Bloch’s and Edward Mills Purcell’s work in physics, you probably wouldn’t be able to get an MRI today.^[2] That’s a fact. And looking a little closer, across these domains—scientific, legal, medical, the arts, etc.—the pattern remains remarkably consistent: AI facilitates work; it does not eliminate the need for expertise.

Unfortunately, much of the current public discourse treats any possible AI involvement as inherently illegitimate; look at the responses to news of the Pangram integration. This attitude has given rise to an increasingly pedestrian practice of dismissing broad categories of work as “AI slop.” Pshaw! Don’t get me wrong, the term accurately describes some content. That content, typically found in the bowels of the web and on social media platforms, is generally low-brow, low-effort material generated with little concern for ethics, accuracy, integrity, originality, consequence, or usefulness. And as for the writer, well, if you’re going to use AI to produce a line like “The sun made the air smell like hot pennies,” then not only should you be looked at cock-eyed, you’d also deserve it. The real travesty is that the AI slop branding has expanded into an imprecise label applied to virtually any work with even a slight suspicion of AI assistance. It’s an indiscriminate use of the term, one that offers more cheese than bread, but a sandwich has to be balanced.

ON A RELATED SIDENOTE: Perhaps on account of the hoopla, I’ve taken the time to write things and, to see, copied paragraphs and fed them into AI detectors. And yes, the result was that the work that I just produced is some arbitrary percentage written by AI. Moreover, to maintain the integrity of the experiment, I tried the same exercise with different “detectors,” only to get similar results. Intellectual rigor aside, the conclusion suggests that I write like AI. And since, like most people, I write the way I talk, I suppose I also talk like AI‽ The problem with this should be obvious… but here we are.

AI & the Literary Community

The unfortunate thing is that the writing community illustrates this tension particularly well. Historically, writers have embraced every significant technological advancement that reduced mechanical labor while preserving creative control. Typewriters supplanted the pen and pencil. Word processors replaced typewriters. Spell checkers reduced errors in proofreading. Grammar software identified awkward constructions. Search engines transformed research. Citation managers automated formatting. Yet, somehow, miraculously, none of these innovations, from the rudimentary to the advanced, reduced the writer’s responsibility or role in argumentation, style, or generating ideas. AI belongs within this continuum, albeit as a more sophisticated tool, one that demands correspondingly more stringent discernment.

To dismiss, or refer to every piece of AI-assisted writing as “AI slop,” also indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of how writing itself works. I’ll be presumptuous in saying that good writing has never consisted merely of arranging words into grammatical sentences while remaining ever-vigilant for punctuation errors and typos. Assuming a strictly nonfiction domain, good writing demands clarity of thought, coherent structure, persuasive reasoning, factual accuracy, audience awareness, and perhaps most difficult of all to achieve: a distinctive voice. (This, of course, bleeds over into works of fiction, but given the countless genres, well, you see the issue.) AI can assist with each of these elements to varying degrees, but it provides no guarantee. A poor thinker, equipped with AI, still produces impoverished arguments. Conversely, a skilled writer equipped with AI may compose a polished piece more effectively and efficiently. This comparison is tantamount to an experienced woodworker producing fine cabinetry with power tools versus an amateur with the same equipment.

Dangerous Ground & Legit Concerns

Where does this leave us? In dangerous territory: The assumption that tools erase credibility and authorship; AI itself is not the real danger. Is it? When a historian spends weeks refining an AI-assisted draft with archival research, original analysis, careful writing, and even more careful editing, the resulting work remains, at bottom, fundamentally human. If another individual copies an AI response without reading, verifying, or understanding the output, the deficiency lies not with AI; that lack lies squarely in the user’s negligence. The same hammer can be used to build a house or crack open a skull, but we judge the act, not the existence of the hammer.

Perhaps the most significant consequence of today’s anti-AI sentiment is that it encourages superficial evaluation. Basically, it’s been reduced to any other run-of-the-mill social media trend. Instead of engaging with ideas on their merits, many writer-doctrinaires and readers alike have increasingly shifted focus toward searching for signs of AI involvement, as though identifying the tool negates the quality of the work produced. The result is a deprivation of attention, taking it away from what ultimately matters—the work. Is the argument coherent? Is the evidence credible? Is the analysis original? Does the work contribute something meaningful, pleasurable, or needed by someone at that moment in their life? These standards have always defined quality, regardless of whether the writer drafted with pen and paper, a typewriter, a word processor, Claude, or any other assistive tool. I get it: Some anti-AI sentiment has a foothold in legitimate concerns, like copyright infringement, labor displacement, rampant misinformation, environmental costs, low-effort content farms, etc. But this ain’t that, or maybe I’m missing the point.

Metathesiophobia & Existential Fear of Change

Earlier, I mentioned metathesiophobia. Metathesiophobia is a noun used to describe a fear of unwanted change, while revealing a more profound personal and existential challenge than most other phobias. In a nutshell, metathesiophobia has roots in inner insecurity and the knowledge that we cannot control every detail in our lives. An example might be the arrival of, and prevalence of, AI tools. But what can we do? Either accept it or reject and ignore it. Maybe the tsunami of anti-AI sentiment is more about fear of change and being replaced than about some person that you’ve never heard of using it to write something that you can either read or ignore. Maybe the backlash represents an attempt to restrain changes in the technological landscape. Worse, maybe the fear is grounded in the idea of losing one’s job or being outdone by someone who “cheated” to win. I don’t know; that’s all speculative and theoretical. I do know, however, that many of the alleged purists act more like technophobes than people with genuine concerns, existential or otherwise. If the reaction to AI is driven by fear, those are concerns best addressed in a more appropriate setting, not here. Not now.

An Extension of Human Intelligence

To continue, there’s a clear demarcation between automation and augmentation; I don’t think the assumption should be that AI exists, or was created, to replace human effort. Generally speaking, from what I’ve seen and done, the most productive uses of AI augment human capability. For example, it’s excellent at handling repetitive or computationally intensive tasks, freeing up an individual to allot more attention to creativity, analysis, decision-making, and judgment. AI, in my opinion, is not a substitute for human intelligence; it extends human intelligence.

So when it’s all said and done, AI should neither be romanticized nor demonized; both positions are incorrect and should be rejected. It is also not a “cheat code” that allows anyone to skirt effort, nor is it an existential threat to human creativity simply because it can generate language or images. Like every powerful tool before it—mitre saw, plane, sander, mass spectrometer, scanning electron microscope, or MRI—its impact depends upon the intentions, judgment, and integrity of the operator.

As I’ve stated, much of the anti-AI sentiment and the ironic calls for increased use of AI detectors arise from genuine concern, and that’s understandable. But these concerns represent human policy challenges, not inherent flaws in the technology itself. Dismissing all AI-assisted work as “slop” or leveling accusations of AI use ignores the broad spectrum of contemporaneous collaboration. Did the calculator kill math education or destroy its users’ minds? No. But it did change how we teach and approach mathematics. Ultimately, AI will redefine what skills matter most, but it won’t replace writers, artists, or creators. Personally, I believe the sweet spot is in one’s ability to wield AI with intention; those who fear or abuse it will only get left behind in the dustbin of technological history. The real “cheat code,” after all, isn’t the tool itself; it’s the human ability to adapt, question, and create meaning in an increasingly automated world.

Conclusions & Key Takeaways

AI has essentially polarized the world; people are either for it or against it. And like all other polarizing topics—religion, politics, etc.—most interest is in the individual’s position: closed-minded and staunch. But AI is merely a tool. And like any other tool, it requires human interaction to serve its intended purpose with integrity. I’ve personally used AI for different reasons. I’ve also used so-called AI detectors (ironically, an AI tool that detractors seem to love). For me, they’re all just tools, undeserving of exceptional fanfare. Unfortunately, many in the literary community don’t share my perspective, leading to angst, accusations, and lambasting by too many obnoxious members of a pretentious quorum. It’s dangerous ground, but one with legitimate concerns like copyright infringement, job loss and reductions in the labor force, and privacy-related distress. The concerns are real; the fear and existential dread are not. Because at the end of the day, AI is about (or should be about) extending human intelligence to produce remarkable, long-lasting, meaningful, and perhaps life-altering work.

Now I will ask you: How’d you wind up in a Procrustean bed? Who’s forcing you to read anything AI-assisted or that you suspect was written with AI? Stop yelling into the wind, hoping it will change direction. AI is here to stay, and its future will be determined less by what the technology can produce and more by what people choose to create with it. What will you use it to create? I don’t know. But if it’s good, I’d still read it.

Additional Reading

[1] Substack Article: Against Claudefishing

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_Physics