Oof. This is an issue that I am passionate about. As a late 40s lawyer, I have built my career on my brain power - my ability to do research and write well. I have worked very hard to become a good writer and make cogent and strong arguments that dance circles around my opponents. I also teach as an adjunct, and I have also emphasized this to my students. I am the parent of a couple of teenagers, who I want to learn to use their brains - to learn to write and read and think and do all of the things that make us human. I want them to feel the struggle of writer's block and the joy of fighting through it and coming out with something they can be proud of.
My best friend is a lawyer who specializes in writing appellate briefs (long, long arguments). She feels the same. We do our jobs because we like it. We like the writing and research. Most of all, we hate the really bad schlock that comes from AI. AI makes people dumb. It also ruins the environment. I have become so passionately against AI, I have turned off every AI Feature on every application and browser that i use (to my kids' chagrin -- "it takes so much longer to look at all these pages rather than reading the AI summary!!").
But I will now bow. I will not bow to the environmental degradation. I will not bow to the billionaire/trillionaires who are earning money off of our fast stupidity. A democracy only works when the civilian population is educated, informed, and is able to critically think. The current government and the AI billionaires are working very hard to take those skills away. I see my fighting back against AI as a small form of civil disobedience.
Thanks for weighing in and sharing from another professional point of view.
Thanks for also mentioning your kids. I didn't touch on the parenting part of it because it felt like a whole other essay for another day, but I will say that one of the worst parenting moments I had last year was when my son came home from school upset about a project he'd been working on for many weeks.
The 5th graders had all written "novels" during this time and they were asked designed a jacket cover for their book. My kid was one of three out of the whole class who hand-drew his cover. The rest of the kids used the AI tools in Canva to make covers. My son was so deflated not only because his cover didn't look "real" like the other kids' covers--but because he didn't know how to do what they had done. We have so much work to do course-correcting for these kids.
Let's not forget to mention the rampant cheating with AI. My oldest son has a restricted Smartphone (so no internet/social media). But his classmates all had full internet access, including snapchat and other features. They would surreptitiously take photos of the questions on their tests, plug it into an AI feature, and then get the answer. My son was absolutely disgusted and upset that almost everyone around him cheated on their biology final. I told him he earned his "B-" with honesty and integrity, as much as it sucked to get. This year, there is a state policy, so it will be interesting to see if the students continue to earn "As" on those tests. What astounds me is how the teachers seemed to just look the other way at this cheating, and that the students didn't even consider using AI to be cheating at all.
In New York, the devices are now taken away or locked down from beginning to end of day, so the kids aren't even using them in between classes or at lunch, which I think is even better!
I’m a retired high school math teacher but I went back last semester to help my old school after a new (but much older former engineer) quit suddenly in December. I can attest to the cheating with AI problem. We used to use a complex, well-written real-world problem based curriculum that would have been difficult to cheat with. But our former principal made us change to a more traditional and rote one to match the other district high schools. So now our assessment questions matched the very procedural and rote curriculum, thus making it easy to cheat with AI. We also had a no phones policy but it’s a pain to enforce consistently in each classroom and students figured out they could ask to go to our learning lab during assessments and sneak their phones in with them. I know our English department was really struggling with it as well on essays. But to add to the fun, the district superintendent kept telling us to use AI. She also kept telling teachers to have more babies to help the future of the school district. I’m in Colorado and I’ll give you 3 guesses who the US representative is in the area 🙄.
Thank you for this. I am also in my late 40's. I am a Pastor and I write sermons each week. I pour over scriptures, commentaries, books... Like you, I do it because I love it, I believe in what I do and am passionate about it. I do not use AI, and have "turned it all off" as well. I use my brain, my instincts and all that is within me to get the job done and I love it. I also will not bow, and if it ever comes to that, I shall resign from my job, and know I have done it well, and to the best of my abilities for many years.
Just the thought of a pastor using AI to write sermons gives me chills. I am sure that no one would want that--even the most enthusiastic adopters of the technology.
In response to your closing question, I don't want to gather. I want to read your writing. I'm a reader more than a talker or listener. Most writing doesn't last beyond its time, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have lasting value for those who read it.
This has been heavy on my brain too recently. My day-job is in tech (SaaS) and I manage the customer-facing team; a career I've had for about 12 years. Things are changing so rapidly and we're now expected to do so much more with less and being pushed to use Claude (and the like) to move faster.
What I've realized is that it doesn't actually make my job better, it just means the company makes more money by not filling those needs with humans. I actually feel *more* stressed than before. I used to love working with customers, but now everything is being moved to automation. AI has really been the final nail in the coffin of my tech career and I gave notice at my job last month. I just can't and won't be able to keep up with where the industry is going.
Those types of career realizations can be brutal. I remember sitting at my desk in disbelief the day I realized that the purpose of the media company I worked for was not, in fact, to deliver news, but rather to return a profit to our shareholders. I felt so naive, but it made it easier to leave that job eventually.
Agree with all of this. I also feel like it lessens our appreciation for human created art when the assumption for everything now is that it was AI created. (Obviously I still appreciate it! But for those who don't write or create themselves, the knowledge isn't necessarily there.) And I find it makes me so suspicious of everything which saddens me.
Ooooh, that's terrible to feel suspicious, but I totally relate. Whenever I am searching on Pinterest these days I have to ask myself, "Is this real?" How crazy!
"In the past I’ve worried that I might be falling behind by not learning to use AI agents to streamline my work, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I have no interest in using AI for anything. Let me fall behind." I feel the same way. Wanting something different from what an AI-powered vision of the world/future can provide. Thank you for writing.
Love what you shared, Laura! It's such a convoluted topic and feels deflating, the AI debate. How do we combat it? It seems like a bulldozer coming through with no sign of slowing down. I appreciate that it can bring some efficiency to some work, but also seems to lead to the demise of critical thinking, among other things.
Also, keep writing because you're so eloquent and capture what many people are thinking and feeling in such a raw way.
I can imagine it's thorny for your line of work: It seems like every designer is using AI renderings these days and it's hard to blame them for using the tech for something that used to take time and/or cost money.
And thanks for the encouraging words to keep writing.
Here here to all of this. I honestly need to own all the steps in writing and making a newsletter to really know it’s delivering what I want it to deliver. I’d much rather save time in other ways….if someday AI can give me a hand with weekly food prep, peeling and chopping carrots (argh!!) okay, I’m listening. I’ve also been reading intently about the fallout and potential water crises from Data centers….whole towns being taken over. Thank you for caring about this stuff with us Laura…xx
There are thousands of words to be written about the insanity of using our energy and water to power these data centers. It's pathological. Glad to have you here in the trenches with me muddling through the old fashioned way ❤️
I keep hoping there's going to be a wider turning of the tides in terms of people's perception, and hopefully rejection, of AI-produced writing/music/art. Like get out of here with your flat robot content, you're lame! I think it's going to be up to us as consumers to sniff out the slop, be vocal about how much it sucks, and celebrate human-produced work. Feels insane to even have to say that, but to me our power is in the cultural acceptance piece of it.
I appreciate all the thoughtfulness here. I both work in tech as my day job and as a professional photographer alongside my wife. So I use AI on the regular for my job and appreciate what it offers. I've also decided that AI has *no* place in my photography. Our work's whole through-line is awe and enchantment, after all. And I'm appreciative of writers in my orbit who write their own words (there are some who write their own, but use AI as an editor or thinking partner/fact checker, and I can see the value in that).
AI use and consumption is decision each person has to make for themselves. And it's also possible they change their minds over time with changing tastes and desires. And that's ok.
I'm grateful to be in my late 50s and have (mostly?) already learned discernment and critical thinking. Irrespective of one's feelings on using AI, developing these skills is critically important to operating in this world and I wonder how younger generations can develop this muscle in this environment.
In the US at least, we've not been too keen on teaching critical thinking in primary education, lest one question things too loudly later. The ready presence of AI without mitigating education risks at least 2 generations who could be quite gullible to whatever an "authoritative" source dictates, or worse.
I wish I had more answers right now, but am grateful that collectively, through continued thoughtful and respectful discussion in forums like this one, we can navigate our way through all of it.
Thank you for writing about this topic. I occasionally have to make public remarks in my role as an elected union leader in my teacher’s union. I pour over the remarks, write out notecards, practice in front of my partner etc. I can’t imagine ever using AI to write remarks but I know many people do it. I struggle to help people understand the environmental impact, connection to data centers etc. not to mention the lack of critical thinking when you just use AI.
In recent months, I’ve used AI mode in Google when regular search results were just… meh —not really what I put in the search bar. Now I realize this might be by design. Another form of planned obsolescence.
Novelist/poet/professor here, and I'm with you. This is all beautifully said. I fear AI is ruining so many things we love and care about, but I don't think it's all inevitable if we resist it. I do worry about all the people who won't, and aren't, and what will happen to their brains (like some of my students--are they just giving up their chance to learn how to express themselves? Awful). But one day at a time, I guess. Thanks for this, Laura.
It's a great and sad article. It's staggering how quickly things have changed. I'm reasonably certain that my creative writing students are not using much AI, because they want to be there and want to learn, but my colleagues who teach first year writing are really in the thick of it. The question is always what is the point of any of this I guess. Is it to learn or is it to get a degree? The degree has to mean very little if you haven't learned, though.
Good morning I loved your breadth here: Starting with wrapping presents and baking cake and evolving into unreadable writing on your screen. I know what it’s like to go into the Apple Store. The overwhelmed, the temptation, the bright and shiny bathrooms that are like being inside of an iPhone. Makes me feel inadequate.
But, Being a writer is much more about the self discovery than it is about the product or the equipment. Even though I care about what comes out that’s what I discover and all of the crossed out deleted “what was I thinking“ sentences that disappear upon a fourth or fifth or 10th or 20th reading. Too many of the mystery books that I found is “cozy“ I realize now or have become repetitive AI slop. The poor authors think they’re pleasing their readers by producing a book a year. You can’t do that unless you’re bungee corded to a chair with somebody giving you a feeding tube. So keep on keeping on Laura. Thank you. I don’t even mind typos because it shows that a human being is involved.
Thanks Cynthia, I agree: All the things that were crossed out and deleted along the way are just as important as what makes it onto the final page (typos and all!).
Generative AI/LLM is something I think about A LOT and am very resistant to. As a librarian, reader, sometimes writer, huge fan of music (including Hurray for the Riff Raff!!), I can’t help but feel that AI symbolizes the exact opposite of everything I love and am. I also really love learning and, as you said in the section about decluttering, it just feels good to learn stuff. I hate to sound like a motivational poster in an English classroom, but I think learning is its own reward! Thanks for writing this.
I love that you write your own material, and I personally feel that I can sense the passion in your blog and the few others that I follow that inspired me to become more minimalist and live more simply. I think that is hard to fake and I appreciate your hard work.
Oof. This is an issue that I am passionate about. As a late 40s lawyer, I have built my career on my brain power - my ability to do research and write well. I have worked very hard to become a good writer and make cogent and strong arguments that dance circles around my opponents. I also teach as an adjunct, and I have also emphasized this to my students. I am the parent of a couple of teenagers, who I want to learn to use their brains - to learn to write and read and think and do all of the things that make us human. I want them to feel the struggle of writer's block and the joy of fighting through it and coming out with something they can be proud of.
My best friend is a lawyer who specializes in writing appellate briefs (long, long arguments). She feels the same. We do our jobs because we like it. We like the writing and research. Most of all, we hate the really bad schlock that comes from AI. AI makes people dumb. It also ruins the environment. I have become so passionately against AI, I have turned off every AI Feature on every application and browser that i use (to my kids' chagrin -- "it takes so much longer to look at all these pages rather than reading the AI summary!!").
But I will now bow. I will not bow to the environmental degradation. I will not bow to the billionaire/trillionaires who are earning money off of our fast stupidity. A democracy only works when the civilian population is educated, informed, and is able to critically think. The current government and the AI billionaires are working very hard to take those skills away. I see my fighting back against AI as a small form of civil disobedience.
Thanks for weighing in and sharing from another professional point of view.
Thanks for also mentioning your kids. I didn't touch on the parenting part of it because it felt like a whole other essay for another day, but I will say that one of the worst parenting moments I had last year was when my son came home from school upset about a project he'd been working on for many weeks.
The 5th graders had all written "novels" during this time and they were asked designed a jacket cover for their book. My kid was one of three out of the whole class who hand-drew his cover. The rest of the kids used the AI tools in Canva to make covers. My son was so deflated not only because his cover didn't look "real" like the other kids' covers--but because he didn't know how to do what they had done. We have so much work to do course-correcting for these kids.
Let's not forget to mention the rampant cheating with AI. My oldest son has a restricted Smartphone (so no internet/social media). But his classmates all had full internet access, including snapchat and other features. They would surreptitiously take photos of the questions on their tests, plug it into an AI feature, and then get the answer. My son was absolutely disgusted and upset that almost everyone around him cheated on their biology final. I told him he earned his "B-" with honesty and integrity, as much as it sucked to get. This year, there is a state policy, so it will be interesting to see if the students continue to earn "As" on those tests. What astounds me is how the teachers seemed to just look the other way at this cheating, and that the students didn't even consider using AI to be cheating at all.
DEEP SIGH. I am grateful New York has banned cellphones in schools. Hopefully this happens everywhere.
All tests should be in-class, answers handwritten, and devices have to be handed to the teacher at the beginning of class.
In New York, the devices are now taken away or locked down from beginning to end of day, so the kids aren't even using them in between classes or at lunch, which I think is even better!
I’m a retired high school math teacher but I went back last semester to help my old school after a new (but much older former engineer) quit suddenly in December. I can attest to the cheating with AI problem. We used to use a complex, well-written real-world problem based curriculum that would have been difficult to cheat with. But our former principal made us change to a more traditional and rote one to match the other district high schools. So now our assessment questions matched the very procedural and rote curriculum, thus making it easy to cheat with AI. We also had a no phones policy but it’s a pain to enforce consistently in each classroom and students figured out they could ask to go to our learning lab during assessments and sneak their phones in with them. I know our English department was really struggling with it as well on essays. But to add to the fun, the district superintendent kept telling us to use AI. She also kept telling teachers to have more babies to help the future of the school district. I’m in Colorado and I’ll give you 3 guesses who the US representative is in the area 🙄.
All tests should be in-class, answers handwritten, and devices have to be handed to the teacher at the beginning of class.
Thank you for this. I am also in my late 40's. I am a Pastor and I write sermons each week. I pour over scriptures, commentaries, books... Like you, I do it because I love it, I believe in what I do and am passionate about it. I do not use AI, and have "turned it all off" as well. I use my brain, my instincts and all that is within me to get the job done and I love it. I also will not bow, and if it ever comes to that, I shall resign from my job, and know I have done it well, and to the best of my abilities for many years.
Just the thought of a pastor using AI to write sermons gives me chills. I am sure that no one would want that--even the most enthusiastic adopters of the technology.
In response to your closing question, I don't want to gather. I want to read your writing. I'm a reader more than a talker or listener. Most writing doesn't last beyond its time, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have lasting value for those who read it.
Fair enough--and thank you for weighing in.
I think and feel the same.
This has been heavy on my brain too recently. My day-job is in tech (SaaS) and I manage the customer-facing team; a career I've had for about 12 years. Things are changing so rapidly and we're now expected to do so much more with less and being pushed to use Claude (and the like) to move faster.
What I've realized is that it doesn't actually make my job better, it just means the company makes more money by not filling those needs with humans. I actually feel *more* stressed than before. I used to love working with customers, but now everything is being moved to automation. AI has really been the final nail in the coffin of my tech career and I gave notice at my job last month. I just can't and won't be able to keep up with where the industry is going.
Wishing you luck with what is next, Audrey.
Those types of career realizations can be brutal. I remember sitting at my desk in disbelief the day I realized that the purpose of the media company I worked for was not, in fact, to deliver news, but rather to return a profit to our shareholders. I felt so naive, but it made it easier to leave that job eventually.
Thank you, Laura!! Can totally relate. I also had a baby and turned 40 in the last year, so my BS tolerance has dropped significantly.
Hah! The BS tolerance gets less and less the further into parenthood you go. You've been warned!
Agree with all of this. I also feel like it lessens our appreciation for human created art when the assumption for everything now is that it was AI created. (Obviously I still appreciate it! But for those who don't write or create themselves, the knowledge isn't necessarily there.) And I find it makes me so suspicious of everything which saddens me.
Ooooh, that's terrible to feel suspicious, but I totally relate. Whenever I am searching on Pinterest these days I have to ask myself, "Is this real?" How crazy!
"In the past I’ve worried that I might be falling behind by not learning to use AI agents to streamline my work, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I have no interest in using AI for anything. Let me fall behind." I feel the same way. Wanting something different from what an AI-powered vision of the world/future can provide. Thank you for writing.
We'll fall "behind" together ❤️
Love what you shared, Laura! It's such a convoluted topic and feels deflating, the AI debate. How do we combat it? It seems like a bulldozer coming through with no sign of slowing down. I appreciate that it can bring some efficiency to some work, but also seems to lead to the demise of critical thinking, among other things.
Also, keep writing because you're so eloquent and capture what many people are thinking and feeling in such a raw way.
I can imagine it's thorny for your line of work: It seems like every designer is using AI renderings these days and it's hard to blame them for using the tech for something that used to take time and/or cost money.
And thanks for the encouraging words to keep writing.
You said it! It's an act of balance...that sometimes causes some existential questioning. Haven't found the right line to toe in all of it.
But what I do know is that it's important for talented writers to keep fighting the good fight!
Here here to all of this. I honestly need to own all the steps in writing and making a newsletter to really know it’s delivering what I want it to deliver. I’d much rather save time in other ways….if someday AI can give me a hand with weekly food prep, peeling and chopping carrots (argh!!) okay, I’m listening. I’ve also been reading intently about the fallout and potential water crises from Data centers….whole towns being taken over. Thank you for caring about this stuff with us Laura…xx
There are thousands of words to be written about the insanity of using our energy and water to power these data centers. It's pathological. Glad to have you here in the trenches with me muddling through the old fashioned way ❤️
Olds in writing/newsletter-making 4ever🤓
I keep hoping there's going to be a wider turning of the tides in terms of people's perception, and hopefully rejection, of AI-produced writing/music/art. Like get out of here with your flat robot content, you're lame! I think it's going to be up to us as consumers to sniff out the slop, be vocal about how much it sucks, and celebrate human-produced work. Feels insane to even have to say that, but to me our power is in the cultural acceptance piece of it.
It's so lame. I hope that people start shouting about it too, but it's often hard to discern what is AI-written and what is not.
I appreciate all the thoughtfulness here. I both work in tech as my day job and as a professional photographer alongside my wife. So I use AI on the regular for my job and appreciate what it offers. I've also decided that AI has *no* place in my photography. Our work's whole through-line is awe and enchantment, after all. And I'm appreciative of writers in my orbit who write their own words (there are some who write their own, but use AI as an editor or thinking partner/fact checker, and I can see the value in that).
AI use and consumption is decision each person has to make for themselves. And it's also possible they change their minds over time with changing tastes and desires. And that's ok.
I'm grateful to be in my late 50s and have (mostly?) already learned discernment and critical thinking. Irrespective of one's feelings on using AI, developing these skills is critically important to operating in this world and I wonder how younger generations can develop this muscle in this environment.
In the US at least, we've not been too keen on teaching critical thinking in primary education, lest one question things too loudly later. The ready presence of AI without mitigating education risks at least 2 generations who could be quite gullible to whatever an "authoritative" source dictates, or worse.
I wish I had more answers right now, but am grateful that collectively, through continued thoughtful and respectful discussion in forums like this one, we can navigate our way through all of it.
Thank you for writing about this topic. I occasionally have to make public remarks in my role as an elected union leader in my teacher’s union. I pour over the remarks, write out notecards, practice in front of my partner etc. I can’t imagine ever using AI to write remarks but I know many people do it. I struggle to help people understand the environmental impact, connection to data centers etc. not to mention the lack of critical thinking when you just use AI.
In recent months, I’ve used AI mode in Google when regular search results were just… meh —not really what I put in the search bar. Now I realize this might be by design. Another form of planned obsolescence.
Novelist/poet/professor here, and I'm with you. This is all beautifully said. I fear AI is ruining so many things we love and care about, but I don't think it's all inevitable if we resist it. I do worry about all the people who won't, and aren't, and what will happen to their brains (like some of my students--are they just giving up their chance to learn how to express themselves? Awful). But one day at a time, I guess. Thanks for this, Laura.
I can't imagine using AI for a creative writing class, but almost everything I read about how people are using AI amazes me. Did you read the New Yorker article by the professor about a year back? https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/07/07/the-end-of-the-english-paper
It's a great and sad article. It's staggering how quickly things have changed. I'm reasonably certain that my creative writing students are not using much AI, because they want to be there and want to learn, but my colleagues who teach first year writing are really in the thick of it. The question is always what is the point of any of this I guess. Is it to learn or is it to get a degree? The degree has to mean very little if you haven't learned, though.
Good morning I loved your breadth here: Starting with wrapping presents and baking cake and evolving into unreadable writing on your screen. I know what it’s like to go into the Apple Store. The overwhelmed, the temptation, the bright and shiny bathrooms that are like being inside of an iPhone. Makes me feel inadequate.
But, Being a writer is much more about the self discovery than it is about the product or the equipment. Even though I care about what comes out that’s what I discover and all of the crossed out deleted “what was I thinking“ sentences that disappear upon a fourth or fifth or 10th or 20th reading. Too many of the mystery books that I found is “cozy“ I realize now or have become repetitive AI slop. The poor authors think they’re pleasing their readers by producing a book a year. You can’t do that unless you’re bungee corded to a chair with somebody giving you a feeding tube. So keep on keeping on Laura. Thank you. I don’t even mind typos because it shows that a human being is involved.
Thanks Cynthia, I agree: All the things that were crossed out and deleted along the way are just as important as what makes it onto the final page (typos and all!).
Thank you for writing this (no irony intended). It also reminded me to back up my computer!
That actually should have been a PSA to everyone up at the top: BACK UP YOUR COMPUTER!
Generative AI/LLM is something I think about A LOT and am very resistant to. As a librarian, reader, sometimes writer, huge fan of music (including Hurray for the Riff Raff!!), I can’t help but feel that AI symbolizes the exact opposite of everything I love and am. I also really love learning and, as you said in the section about decluttering, it just feels good to learn stuff. I hate to sound like a motivational poster in an English classroom, but I think learning is its own reward! Thanks for writing this.
I love that you write your own material, and I personally feel that I can sense the passion in your blog and the few others that I follow that inspired me to become more minimalist and live more simply. I think that is hard to fake and I appreciate your hard work.