Public Service Announcement: Don't Say You Use AI for Writing

…also don’t tell lies. But I’m getting ahead of myself already.

I keep running into people online who openly say that they use AI to do their writing for them. Now, technically, they may say they use AI to “help” their writing. It doesn’t matter. The distinction is immediately lost on everyone who sees that assertion, because when AI writes for you it does a lot more than just “help,” and everyone knows it.

My policy is that I never let AI draft anything for me that has my name on it. Not one sentence. Nothing. Ever.** (You can download my official AI writing policy here.)** When I was a year behind in writing Taking Testing Seriously, was I tempted to use AI to speed things up? No. It would be like hooking a motor to a stationary bike and calling that exercise. It would be like taking a helicopter to the top of Everest and saying that I summited.

I once ghost wrote an article for someone who was a poor writer. As I did so I had tremendous influence over the ideas, not just the style of writing. I chose what to put in and leave out. He could have had more influence, but to do that he would have had to take a very active role. Yet, he didn’t. The article was published in a book, and it had his name on it, but it was substantially my work. I did this because, at the time, I was trying to keep the peace in a small community, but it bothers me, to this day, that I helped burnish the professional image of a man who didn’t earn it. Maybe, today, the same fellow would use ChatGPT.

I have also helped other people write in such a way that we deeply collaborated. The chapter on Prospective Testing, in Taking Testing Seriously, was based on the somewhat jumbled but information-rich notes from, and conversation with, Jeff Nadelman. I respected Jeff when I started writing that article with him, and I respected him more, dozens of Zoom calls later, when we finished. Both our names are on that one. If you look at that chapter, Jeff’s key tangible contributions are stories separated out from the main body of the article. Those are his personal experiences. Apart from that, he contributed by talking with me for many many hours. That chapter is absolutely his as much as mine.

If AI deeply collaborates with you to write something, why am I saying you shouldn’t say you used AI? Because all I have is your word for it that you did any work at all. Unless I know exactly how you did that work– which would have to have been from personal observation– I can’t know the truth. (Yet you can check with Jeff Nadelman to confirm how we worked on that article.) So, in my mind, I am forced to put a big fat asterisk next to anything you do. Is that what you want? Meanwhile, if AI drafts a document for you, and you claim it’s your work, that’s a lie. Don’t tell lies.

Now put two and two together: Don’t tell me that AI helped you write, and don’t tell me that you did all the work when you only did some of it. Therefore, don’t use AI to write things for you that you present as your own work. If you DO, I will treat all your work as if it is slop or spam. And not just me, the entire community of serious professionals will discount “your” work. It used to be that we could take it on faith when someone turned in work that they claimed was theirs. No longer. Now it depends on your reputation.

Consider what you would think if someone said this to you: “I’m a skilled liar. I frequently tell lies. But don’t worry, I wouldn’t lie to you!”

A liar might say “I wouldn’t lie to you.” But ONLY a liar would say “I frequently tell lies.” Similarly, only someone who uses AI to help their writing would say “I use AI to help my writing.” And anyone who uses AI to help their writing may use it to do all of their writing. It’s such a steep and slippery slope to full laziness. We all know that. We are all thinking that.

So don’t say it. Don’t do it. In a world where there are ads with Matthew Broderick exhorting you to take a day off and let AI do your job, we are all perched on the top of a very steep cliff. Will you throw your reputation down the abyss?