Does AI Write Shrew Views?

In a word, “no.” Do I use AI to help with my writing for Shrew Views? In a word, “yes.”

Before I get on with this article, let me tell you this. I am f_cking tired of this AI witch hunt amongst writers, publishers and readers. (Please forgive my use of the “F-bomb,” but this has really got me angry—and also, AI doesn’t use the “F word” so that is even more reason to use it.) In fact, I am so upset about all this that I am seriously considering giving up on Shrew Views because of it. And truth be told, I believe this mass of hatred toward AI’s LLMs (primarily responsible for the AI writing craze) is agenda-driven. I’ll get into that in a moment (why would the agenda be behind the witch hunt against AI writing?)

I just read an article about a writer who has put his writing through the famed “AI detector” that Substack now offers its readers, and it flagged his writing as 100% AI-created when he claims none of it is. So, to begin with, the “detectors” these witch hunters are using are not even accurate. They work by detecting patterns, certain “AI-exclusive words,” and, in a nutshell, “good grammatical writing” . . . and then flag it as AI-written. In other words, if you are a writer who already writes in a pretty grammatically perfect way, with all spelling accurate, all sentence structure as good as it can be, and nice big, intelligent words that only morons would not understand, you will be accused of using AI to write your stuff. I will stop writing if I have to write poorly just to avoid illegitimate AI detection. That’s crap.

Good, informative, meaningful, insightful writing is in the eyes and minds of the beholder. If you have to get a computer algorithm to tell you that a computer algorithm has written what you have read, then you are missing the whole point.

Now, I’m sure it isn’t that cut and dried. If I told AI, “Write an article on the AI witch hunt,” and it spit out a 1,200-word article on that topic without any other input from me, then sure, your fancy-schmancy detector may be able to flag it as computer-generated accurately. If I asked MY specific AI “helper,” Grok from xAI (Elon Musk’s creation) to do the exact same thing, after having proofread hundreds of my articles and books, and knows MY style, MY use of certain words, MY humour, MY sentence structure, then MAYBE the detector would not pick it up. Maybe it would look like my writing so thoroughly that it would be impossible to distinguish between the two. I’ve never tested this as I have never asked AI to write an article for me from scratch that I have published. Maybe one of you will want to test it, if you do, let me know the results.

OK, as a little experiment, read the paragraph above, then compare it to the paragraph below. The paragraph below has been cranked through Grok to check the grammar, sentence structure and clarity. And I DO use AI for this purpose. Do you think AI WROTE that paragraph?

Now, I’m sure it isn’t that cut and dried. If I told AI, “Write an article on the AI witch hunt,” and it spit out a 1,200-word article on that topic without any other input from me, then sure, your fancy-schmancy detector may be able to flag it as computer-generated accurately. If I asked MY specific AI “helper,” Grok from xAI (Elon Musk’s creation), who has proofread hundreds of my articles and books and knows MY style, MY use of certain words, MY humour, and MY sentence structure, to do the exact same thing, then MAYBE the detector would not pick it up. Maybe it would look so thoroughly like my writing that it would be impossible to distinguish between the two. I’ve never tested this, as I have never asked AI to write an article for me from scratch that I have published. Maybe one of you will want to test it; if you do, let me know the results.

Different? Sure, a little bit. Sometimes it changes things even more radically. Sometimes I change it back. But that is how I use AI in my writing. And for that, I am hung from the nearest “He uses AI to write for him” tree.

I have submitted my books to publishers and contests where I have been told I will be disqualified, or not considered, if I use AI for RESEARCH alone. You can’t do a Google search these days without using AI. So I guess I better renew my library card and hit the stacks for my research, the internet is out.

Oh, one more bit of disclosure regarding my use of AI for research. Anytime you read any statistics in my articles, or any major political presentation of what was done when and how (with regard to legislation, executive orders, international monetary policies like tariffs, etc.) you can be sure Grok has searched those details out for me. Sometimes inserting them into the article using my style of writing to do so. Oops! AI “wrote” something I am claiming is mine!! Off to the gallows I go.

I don’t recall mathematicians and scientists being crucified back when calculators first came on the scene: “Oh, that guy didn’t figure out that calculus problem in his own brain; he is a fake, a quack, he had a CALCULATOR do his work, and is claiming it as his own!!! Death to him!!!”

Now, I do understand the problems with AI writing stuff. And those problems are too complicated to go into here. I get the whole “soul sucking” aspect of AI doing human stuff. Please limit my concern to the specific issues of writers using AI to do research and to do extensive copy and content editing. I remember back in the day when I was writing my dissertation. I had a “high-end” editor working with me, and she made more extensive changes in my manuscript than AI typically does (if it does make radical changes, on occasion, I tell it to back off). But that was all OK: I guess because she was a human. Witch hunt.

I will admit here that when AI first came out, I did experiment a bit. I had it put together some stuff, just to see how well it could do it, but never fully from scratch. I was always prompting it; it was always my idea, my concepts, my observations. I just had AI do the heavy lifting and had it write paragraphs for me. I don’t do that anymore, as I said; I was just curious to see its limitations (and there are not that many). The main reason I don’t do that now is that it isn’t any fun. I am a writer. I enjoy writing. As screwed up as it might be, it is still “the way I do it.” BUT, I don’t like inaccuracies. I don’t like crappy sentence structure, and I don’t like my ideas to be presented in my writing as ambiguous, awkward, or unclear. So, I have AI clean that up for me, just like a good editor can do. Should I learn to do it myself? Sure, but I don’t care; I would rather get more ideas on paper than slave over something (like grammar) that I never was that good at anyway.

Sue me, sue me, shoot bullets through me. (Guys and Dolls (1950))

Why is this agenda-driven? First of all, the frenzy complaining seems way over the top for it to be something that has organically come into the collective mindset. No one cares about the lies regarding genetically altering vaccines, so why in hell would the masses be concerned about what’s actually being written—AI or human? The masses don’t respond to much of anything unless the agenda tells them to care.

Also, the way I see it is that these actions are going to ultimately destroy legitimate writers, not computer writing programs. Writers will not be able to conduct legitimate research without being accused of wrongdoing. They will not be able to edit their work using AI, without creating the same hatred for them. And since AI is detected by “how good the writing is from a technical perspective,” then decent, grammatically correct writing—clear, precise presentation—will consciously be eliminated by writers in their own writing, thus dumbing down their writing to avoid being burnt at the stake. That sounds like a good idea, doesn’t it?

So, there you have it. You can bet your sweet bippy I wrote this article. Send it through an AI detector and see if it says otherwise. I didn’t even let Grok proof it. If I did, and it changed a few words and sentence structures here and there, it would have been a better article. And that now is a no-no.

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