AI Usage

I find generative AI models (mostly LLMs) extremely useful in many situations. I use them particularly heavily for writing software and internet research (if you haven’t tried Deep Research, Claude Research, etc., you are missing out) as well as, like many other people, for requesting explanations of complicated ideas, brainstorming, or summarizing things. I’ve also recently been involved in integrating them into RemNote to generate flashcards and assess understanding.

However, my default policy is that I never use LLMs to write English text. If I write to you, or you read something I have written on the web – blog posts, M2 tiddlers, emails, etc. – all of the words except for quotations are written directly by me. If this is ever not the case, I will include a prominent disclaimer indicating that the content was partly written by AI. (So far, the only place I’ve done this is in technical software documentation, where I might allow Claude Code to make an update to the docs along with a code change. Even then, I usually prefer to do it myself.)

I do sometimes use LLMs to do research that I later incorporate into my writing, or to proofread or review my writing for factual or grammatical errors. But I never let an LLM write new text for me, and I don’t accept large chunks of suggested changes or fixes into my work or allow LLMs to directly change it; at most, it might suggest an obvious change of a couple of words and I might manually apply it.

I have at least three reasons for this policy:

1. When I write, I normally do it to figure out what I think about the topic. Even if that isn’t the primary purpose, it’s a wildly valuable secondary one. Using an LLM here would be asking the model to tell me what I should think, which is exactly as foolish as it sounds.
2. I find that being tempted to respond or publish something using an LLM is a signal that the task is B.S. to begin with, so an even better approach is to not do it at all, or find a different way to achieve the goal.
3. Most importantly: I don’t want people to have to question whether I really think something or whether I just had a computer say I do and didn’t review it carefully. Since there is limited value for me in using LLMs here right now, it’s easier to just say I don’t do this.

Part of the ai page movement. Last updated March 15, 2026.