Lately, the LinkedIn algorithm has inundated my feed with posts decrying the use of AI, especially within the so-called “creative” fields. Self-styled thought leaders and social media preachers have climbed onto their collective soapbox — writers, copy editors, journalists, social media mavens, anyone who’s ever made a dime selling words — all explaining, with Herculean confidence,

“I can spot AI writing a mile away, and you’re a horrible human being if you use it.”

They list the evidence as if they’re describing the markings of some rare bird: em dashes, lists of three, polished clarity, tidy little paragraphs, grammatical correctness, stacked short sentences, the familiar “it’s not about X, it’s about Y” construction. All dead giveaways, apparently.

Every time I read one of these posts, I react the same way. They’re not describing AI writing; they’re describing competent writing.

And that’s what makes this whole thing so interesting.

When Clarity Became Suspicious

For as long as professional writing has existed, clarity, structure, and readability have been the goal. This is how editors were trained. These are the foundations upon which style guides were built. Entire careers have been made teaching people to write in a way that’s clean, organized, and easy to follow.

Now those same qualities are being held up as forensic evidence that a machine must have been involved.

Somewhere along the way, clarity itself has become suspicious.

The Tools We Pretend Not to See

I’m not all that interested in defending AI or its use within the writing professions. Use it. Don’t use it. That part doesn’t concern me.

What fascinates me is the sudden belief that writing can be judged by how it was produced instead of by the impact it has on the reader.

I’ve never been asked if I outlined something before I wrote it, whether Grammarly touched a sentence, if I leaned on a thesaurus or MLA guidelines, or borrowed from my own writing. Nobody asks which tools were involved. They ask whether the paragraph works.

But now we’re supposed to care if a language model helped draft it.

That’s new. And it’s strange.

Writing Was Never a Blank Slate

As a writer, I’ve never worked from a blank slate. I reuse structures and imitate rhythms. I’m inspired by well-worn patterns I’ve seen a thousand times before. Like most writers, I learned by absorbing the writing of others. I’ve quietly, sometimes subconsciously and sometimes very deliberately, stolen techniques and, through revision and reshaping, made them my own.

Writing has always been iterative, influenced by tools long before we finish the first sentence.

AI didn’t invent assisted writing. It just made the assistance visible.

Perhaps that’s what’s bothering people.

That’s Not Detection. That’s Discomfort.

The part that stands out most is the certainty. “I can always tell,” they say.

Except they can’t. No one can.

Universities have tried to build AI detection systems. Publishers have experimented with them. They fail constantly, because AI was trained on vast amounts of human writing. It produces text that looks like the writing it learned from.

What people are really reacting to is writing that sounds like something they didn’t personally struggle to produce. It feels like an imposter doing the job without the years of effort behind it.

That’s not detection. That’s discomfort.

The Only Question That Matters

If you read something and genuinely can’t tell whether it was written by a person or a machine, then the only honest question left is this: was this any good?

That’s how writing has always been judged. Not by purity of process. Not by moral stance. By outcome.

As a reader, I don’t care how the sentence was born. I care if it lands.

An Identity Crisis Wearing a Lanyard

Watching professionals argue on social media about the birthplace of sentences rather than whether the sentences work has been one of the strangest side effects of this whole AI moment. It feels less like a discussion about craft and more like an identity crisis wearing a lanyard.

I’m not worried about AI writing. It won’t steal my job. If anything, it will make me a stronger writer, because adapting to change is part of the deal, whether I like it or not.

What fascinates me is how quickly it has become convenient for people, writers especially, to forget how writing works. How it has always worked.

Because if lists of three and grammatical correctness are proof of machine authorship, then a lot of very human writers, me included, have sounded suspicious for a very long time.

Isn’t that a much funnier problem than the one everyone thinks they’re trying to solve?

P.S.
I did not use AI to write this essay. Or maybe I did. A little.