AI Blogroll

This is a list of posts about AI and technology that I read and enjoyed. Some may have my thoughts below the post.

^ response to the post I mentioned earlier, much more thoughtful than my response.

^ these types of posts make me think about how we define "art" in these debates. A lot of the discourse centers on visual art, but writing is art, too. For me, the entire point of writing is the process. building something from nothing, figuring out the flow, organizing the structure, and spending time finding the right words to convey a message.

when people say "art is different" but only apply it to visual mediums, I wonder what they think of written art. If the soul of art is the human process and having something to say, then generating text with AI skips the exact same meaningful steps as generating an image. I think this is a great perspective on the value of process over output but it misses the mark by implying visual art is the only kind of art to apply this perspective to.

but it makes me wonder a lot. if it's okay for visual artists to discard writing as something that's okay to automate, why is it not okay for writers to discard visual art as something that's okay to automate? why are people so protective of visual art and so dismissive of other kinds of art?

^ I go back and forth on things like this but at the end of the day as an academic my answer is yes, transparency is always appreciated. do they need to do that? are people obligated to make a statement? no.

putting the onus on the reader is putting a lot of cognitive load on people to be able to interpret and investigate. I'm here to read your blog post, not study a paper. an AI statement is a courtesy that lowers barrier to entry to read your blog, if your reader is the kind of person who cares about whether the content is AI or not.

^ I love this post. I've been unable to make a post like this because it angers me so much the way people view this community.

a few months ago I saw a post on bearblog that said basically, "haven't disabled people thought that maybe they just aren't supposed to do something?" referring directly to the idea of using AI as an accessibility tool. this is what immediately pops to mind every single time I want to talk about this and I get really angry. The audacity to ask that question of a community full of people who have uncontrollable limitations in a world that refuses to help them unless legally required. of course we fucking considered that, that's what people have been telling us our entire lives. "rather than trying to find ways to work with you or accommodate you, I guess you're just not meant for this."

so anyway, it's nice to have a thoughtful link to use when this topic arises since I cannot express this myself without getting irritated.

^ I have out of curiosity put some writing in checkers. my school papers from 2002-2006 were all flagged high percentage AI. blog posts I've written without AI were flagged ~50% chance. and then I wrote a few things AI assisted and they got NO AI scores. in my limited experience and based on these experiments, detectors are BS. and people who think they can detect are wrong too (when humans accuse me of AI, what they are unintentionally evaluating is writing where I'm sober vs inebriated, which I find hilarious - my sober writing is, apparently, AI generated, since both humans and detectors think so).

^ this isn't what you think based on the title. it's not about using AI to write for you. this is a really interesting approach, and also another example on AI usage being entirely personal. for example, I could never again use AI to organize thoughts (outlining is one of the things I like about writing), but might try a similar approach to enhance section by section, after I have already written the first draft (when writing for work, to clarify, where I am expected to use AI).

^ I like this message as a contrast to making things easier in the user experience. since I do use AI at work and I am expected to build AI tools that help people complete work, I've been thinking about friction and how it shows up multiple times in the process of using AI. from a user experience standpoint I'm trying to figure out how to make it easier for people. they already have to use this technology that they don't want to use, so how can I make it so it's less frustrating? but even within that scope, I am robbing them of growth opportunities. on the flip side, we are literally seeing right now what people do without that technology to assist them with the tasks I'm targeting. they are not seeking growth. they are simply avoiding. (in other words, they just don't do the task at all, or they do it poorly and without considering the experience of others, which slows down or breaks the support experience, which is part of why I'm working on this in the first place.) still, this idea gives me a lot to consider, I certainly don't want anything I make to remove the desire to learn.

^ Excellent thoughts on some of the arguments people make (and perhaps I have made in the past) for writing with AI and how they're still offloading even when they think they aren't. if you're using AI, you're offloading. You're having it do work that you aren't doing yourself. Even if the thoughts are yours, you're removing the human elements of organizing and articulating those thoughts. I think it's very important to be honest with yourself using a technology like this.

^ Yes this is so important and another reason not to use AI to do everything for you. Often even if you ask if it has plagiarized anything, it will say no, despite literally doing that.

^ same and I hate it. I should care less what people think of my writing but I do have at least one blog worth reading and I get a little disappointed in myself when I intentionally leave typos and misspelled words just to appear human. I will never abandon the em dash, though. interestingly, I do this more frequently when writing about AI

^ This is what I'm trying to get at and almost every AI argument I make on this topic. The technology enhances or speeds up stuff that you already know. It cannot fill in blanks for stuff you don't know. if your prompt is limited in understanding, and you're also unable to review the output and understand it, the AI is not going to fill in those blanks for you. if you, as an amateur coder go to AI to build something complex, it's going to be missing all kinds of best practices because you didn't know to prompt or check for them.

You can find more posts Jan-April 2026 on my other blogroll page.