Posted by speckx 10/27/2025
Fact: Professional writers have used grammar tools, style guides, and even assistants for decades. AI simply automates some of these functions faster. Would we say Hemingway was lazy for using a typewriter? No—we’d say he leveraged tools.
AI doesn’t create thoughts; it drafts ideas. The writer still curates, edits, and imbues meaning—just like a journalist editing a reporter’s notes or a designer refining Photoshop output. Tools don’t diminish creativity—they democratize access to it.
That said: if you’re outsourcing your thinking to AI (e.g., asking an LLM to write your thesis without engaging), then yes, you’ve lost something. But complaining about AI itself misunderstands the problem.
TL;DR: Typewriters spit out prose too—but no one blames writers for using them.
Ironically, this exact request would’ve fit the blog’s own arguments: "AI is lazy" / "AI undermines thought." But since I was using AI as a diagnostic tool (not a creative one), it doesn’t count.
Self-referential irony? Maybe. But at least I’m being transparent. :)
Therefore, if I or anyone else wanted to see it, I would simply do it myself.
I don't know why so many people can't grasp that.
Anyone can access ChatGPT, why do we need an intermediary?
Someone a while back shared, here on HN, almost an entire blog generated by (barely touched up) AI text. It even had Claude-isms like "excellent question!", em-dashes, the works. Why would anyone want to read that?
Or do you remember when Facebook groups or image communities were flooded with funny/meme AI-generated images, "The Godfather, only with Star Wars", etc? Thank you, but I can generate those zero-effort memes myself, I also have access to GenAI.
We truly don't need intermediaries.
> Everything else is just recycled slop.
No, not everything is slop. AI-slop is slop. The term was coined for a reason.
Everyone can ask the AI directly, unlike accessing journals. Journals are intermediaries because you don't have direct access to the source (or cannot conduct the experiment yourself).
Everyone has access to AI at the slop "let's generate blog posts and articles" level we're discussing here.
A better analogy than teachers is: I ask a teacher a random question, and then I tell it to you with almost no changes, with the same voice if the teacher (and you also have access to the same teacher). Why? What value do I add? You can ask the teacher directly. And doubly so because what I'm asking is not some flash of insight, it's random crap instead.
This is like saying a photographer shouldn't find the sunset they photographed pretty or be proud of the work, because they didn't personally labor to paint the image of it.
A lot more goes into a blog post than the actual act of typing the context out.
Lazy work is always lazy work, but its possible to make work you are proud of with AI, in the same way you can create work you are proud of with a camera