I think there’s an uncanny valley effect with writing now.
Yesterday I left a code review comment that someone asked if AI wrote it. The investigation and reasoning were 100% me. I spent over an hour chasing a nuanced timezone/DST edge case, iterating until I was sure the explanation was correct. I did use Codex CLI along the way, but as a power tool, not a ghostwriter.
The comment was good, but it was also “too polished” in a way that felt inorganic. If you know a domain well (code, art, etc.), you start to notice the tells even when the output is high quality.
Now I’m trying to keep my writing conspicuously human, even when a tool can phrase it perfectly. If it doesn’t feel human, it triggers the whole ai;dr reaction.
Yesterday I left a code review comment that someone asked if AI wrote it. The investigation and reasoning were 100% me. I spent over an hour chasing a nuanced timezone/DST edge case, iterating until I was sure the explanation was correct. I did use Codex CLI along the way, but as a power tool, not a ghostwriter.
The comment was good, but it was also “too polished” in a way that felt inorganic. If you know a domain well (code, art, etc.), you start to notice the tells even when the output is high quality.
Now I’m trying to keep my writing conspicuously human, even when a tool can phrase it perfectly. If it doesn’t feel human, it triggers the whole ai;dr reaction.