When I was younger than I am today, I decided to upload a bunch of articles and memos into AI to get it to learn my voice, tone, and perspective. It considers me to be “irreverent.”
For some insane reason, I thought I’d be able to say a few things to AI and it would extrapolate in my voice with my perspective and write the articles that were in my brain.
When that didn’t work, I tried to get it to give me an outline.
When that didn’t work, I’d dictate crap to it and try to get it to extract the most unique concepts (something it actually does seem to be able to do) and turn those into an outline with quotes and references.
When that didn’t work, I’d just give up. Because, by that time, I’d sunk 2 hours into pushing and pulling to no avail as whatever system just forgot half the stuff I’d just finished getting it to understand.
Fast forward to today and writing articles is like pulling teeth. It’s harder and worse than it’s ever been. I have more thoughts, ideas, opinions than ever, but they’re not making it past Claude or Chat’s initial pat on the back for being so original. And “irreverent.”
Synthesis across domains is one of the few skills I have. But AI has sucked the wind out of my sails and left me at sea.
Writing is where I typically do my best thinking and synthesizing. Friction is how I refine. And writing creates friction for me. It helps me take the wild barrage of semi-connected thoughts that are always flying around my brain and plug them into a cohesive perspective. It’s almost as good as having an argument with someone you adamantly disagree with or reading a book you hate. What better way to figure out what you believe than to be faced with something you don’t?
But AI has changed all that. Now I dump a few half baked thoughts into one of the many AI’s I pay for and try to make it “get it.” Now all the friction is in trying to explain the disparate pieces instead of weaving them together myself. The result is massive frustration, a lot of wasted and unproductive time.
But never an article.
This situation isn’t uniquely my situation. In fact, AI hasn’t been delivering on its promises yet. At least not for a large percentage of organizations trying to roll it out. And why is that?
In part, because it needs a massive amount of context to operate, but it can’t maintain long threads of conversation. In part because you need a workflow you’re constantly assessing and refining to avoid pitfalls like the veteran effect, verification tax, or worse – making important business decisions based on AI errors (according to a Deloitte survey, 47% of enterprise AI users admitted to making at least one major business decision based on hallucinated content in 2024).
I asked AI about all this, and it said, “AI isn’t a universal productivity booster. It’s a task-level accelerator. AI is a floor-raiser more than a ceiling-raiser.”
When you’re looking at what you can delete, simplify, automate, or delegate, make sure to hold onto what you’re best at.
