Ah, this piece is encouraging me to take another step to get over my fears of AI tsunami overwhelm. I know you are right. There is a middle ground with adopting the right AI tools in ways that enhance creative work, whilst always retaining my human originality. I am still dipping in and out of the horror show of what is happening too much. As ever, the key is to write regularly, daily ideally, and not let anything get in the way of that. Thanks Fred for your voice and ideas.
Great piece. It was great to see your stack breakdown - that's definitely THE quintessential AI writing stack (NotebookLM, Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity). I use the exact same combination in my workflows. Don't have much experience with fiction tools like Sudowrite.
The real key here is learning how to effectively use AI. While I understand why some groups resist it, the longer anyone waits to learn how to augment their work with these tools, the harder it becomes later. (There are exceptions and content that I will always prefer to be 100% human.)
There's also plenty of AI-generated slop floating around, but let's be honest - the internet was already flooded with mediocre content before AI came along. AI has just increased the volume of low-quality material, but that's true for virtually everything online these days. In a way, this actually helps truly excellent content (whether AI-assisted or not) stand out even more. Spend just a little time writing with AI tools, and you can immediately spot who understands how to use them effectively and who doesn't.
Thanks, Alex. Great to get some confirmation from a trusted source! I JUST finished doing a test drive with Sudowrite, which I’ll break down on substack next week. Long story short: I wanted to hate it, but it definitely has its uses.
Good question. I think audiences will accept anything that fills an emotional need in that given moment. The brain will do anything to alleviate boredom.
That being said, any kind of content that can attract and maintain attention will always have a presence, AI generated or not. The novelty aspect of AI is here for a limited time and it will produce much of the same stuff people on social media like now. And this will only propagate and become more recursive. Consider YouTube videos and AI generated playlists on a given topic—there already are AI generated playlist that regurgitate the same content over and over again. It generates clicks—people seem to enjoy it.
I catch myself trying to identify patterns on AI generated voice over work on a given thing. Even I miss the human element of sorts.
I'm curious why NotebookLM is your preferred place to keep all your details, while projects in Claude seems to do a good job - a comparison between the models focusing on their ability to remember would be great to read
Actually, I use both. The reason I like to use NotebookLM is that it doesn't "reach out" to the rest of the web when it summarizes, finds gaps, etc. in my work. (If I use Gemini, it will... but I like to keep it within bounds.) By the time I've exchanged ideas between Claude (where I do have a project), ChatGPT and NotebookLM, most of my thinking is captured in all three places. I'm SURE I'm doing more than I have to here... but the system's evolving.
When it comes to my work writing news stories and more journalistic-type pieces outside of Substack, NotebookLM is irreplaceable. Being able to synthesize all my sources and create briefs...it's incredible.
This brings up another point - journalists are one of the most stubborn groups against AI, but I think they're starting to realize some of these tools offer serious research and source synthesis capabilities that can actually enhance traditional journalistic work rather than replace it.
AI is a tool, but I'll never use it. Writing is the oldest form of human communication and I intend to keep it that way. I'm fine with people using it, but you're missing out on the human writing journey. I'm 55, and by the time im 65, writing won't be the same. A piece of our common humanity will have slipped away. What a tragedy.
Exactly, it’s a tool. It’s also the path of least resistance for those wanting to churn out content quickly. Whether or not that translates into any quality content is too subjective for me to debate on, at lest for now.
Ah, this piece is encouraging me to take another step to get over my fears of AI tsunami overwhelm. I know you are right. There is a middle ground with adopting the right AI tools in ways that enhance creative work, whilst always retaining my human originality. I am still dipping in and out of the horror show of what is happening too much. As ever, the key is to write regularly, daily ideally, and not let anything get in the way of that. Thanks Fred for your voice and ideas.
Great piece. It was great to see your stack breakdown - that's definitely THE quintessential AI writing stack (NotebookLM, Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity). I use the exact same combination in my workflows. Don't have much experience with fiction tools like Sudowrite.
The real key here is learning how to effectively use AI. While I understand why some groups resist it, the longer anyone waits to learn how to augment their work with these tools, the harder it becomes later. (There are exceptions and content that I will always prefer to be 100% human.)
There's also plenty of AI-generated slop floating around, but let's be honest - the internet was already flooded with mediocre content before AI came along. AI has just increased the volume of low-quality material, but that's true for virtually everything online these days. In a way, this actually helps truly excellent content (whether AI-assisted or not) stand out even more. Spend just a little time writing with AI tools, and you can immediately spot who understands how to use them effectively and who doesn't.
Thanks, Alex. Great to get some confirmation from a trusted source! I JUST finished doing a test drive with Sudowrite, which I’ll break down on substack next week. Long story short: I wanted to hate it, but it definitely has its uses.
Good question. I think audiences will accept anything that fills an emotional need in that given moment. The brain will do anything to alleviate boredom.
That being said, any kind of content that can attract and maintain attention will always have a presence, AI generated or not. The novelty aspect of AI is here for a limited time and it will produce much of the same stuff people on social media like now. And this will only propagate and become more recursive. Consider YouTube videos and AI generated playlists on a given topic—there already are AI generated playlist that regurgitate the same content over and over again. It generates clicks—people seem to enjoy it.
I catch myself trying to identify patterns on AI generated voice over work on a given thing. Even I miss the human element of sorts.
I'm curious why NotebookLM is your preferred place to keep all your details, while projects in Claude seems to do a good job - a comparison between the models focusing on their ability to remember would be great to read
Actually, I use both. The reason I like to use NotebookLM is that it doesn't "reach out" to the rest of the web when it summarizes, finds gaps, etc. in my work. (If I use Gemini, it will... but I like to keep it within bounds.) By the time I've exchanged ideas between Claude (where I do have a project), ChatGPT and NotebookLM, most of my thinking is captured in all three places. I'm SURE I'm doing more than I have to here... but the system's evolving.
When it comes to my work writing news stories and more journalistic-type pieces outside of Substack, NotebookLM is irreplaceable. Being able to synthesize all my sources and create briefs...it's incredible.
This brings up another point - journalists are one of the most stubborn groups against AI, but I think they're starting to realize some of these tools offer serious research and source synthesis capabilities that can actually enhance traditional journalistic work rather than replace it.
AI is a tool, but I'll never use it. Writing is the oldest form of human communication and I intend to keep it that way. I'm fine with people using it, but you're missing out on the human writing journey. I'm 55, and by the time im 65, writing won't be the same. A piece of our common humanity will have slipped away. What a tragedy.
Exactly, it’s a tool. It’s also the path of least resistance for those wanting to churn out content quickly. Whether or not that translates into any quality content is too subjective for me to debate on, at lest for now.
Super super curious about all of this