My specific choices

I can write my own SQL statements, but that’s not why I’m here.
When I ask AI to write a SQL statement for me, it does a better job than I could do in a fraction of the time, so that’s a benefit to me. I miss out on the opportunity to learn how to write better SQL queries, but I’m okay with that.
Writing text for people, that’s my thing. That’s why I’m here. I can ask AI to do that for me, and it does a fine job, but I’m not willing to trade away the learning opportunity there, so I choose to defend a hard boundary that no AI gets involved in my writing.
I don’t ask it for ideas. I don’t let it write outlines or drafts. I don’t let it suggest improvements. I don’t let it proofread.
I tried all that. I had a project to train an AI agent on all of my old writing, then write like me. It “worked”, by some definitions of working, but I had a moment where I realized I was within sight of a system where AI could have 75 ideas for articles to write based on the code I’ve written for a project, then assess them for which 3 were best aligned with what I’ve found interesting in the past, outline those 3, write first drafts of them, refine those drafts into posts, pick the best one, proofread it, and publish it on my website.
At that moment, I asked, “Well, what’s the point of that?”
People might find that content interesting.
They might learn something from it.

But, for me, I decided that keeping the work of writing to myself because writing by hand helps me:

  • clarify my thinking
  • expose my own cognitive distortions
  • keep a record of past thoughts
  • assess my own work critically
  • slow down and consider alternatives