It seems like every tool I use now implements AI features. Aside from the more obvious questions like why does my window fan need to be that “smart”?, I find myself more and more routinely annoyed by the assumption I might require AI’s assistance or editing feedback in the things I do professionally.
No, thank you, LinkedIn.
Is this just the expert’s dilemma? I want better writing in the world, and many potential writers don’t ever start because of their anxiety or conviction they can’t. AI can help with that, especially in the realm of helping fledgling writers develop some working confidence. At the same time, better implies a kind of quality that I don’t expect to see, ever, from AI outputs.
In spaces like LinkedIn, where writing functions within a set of established expectations, AI writing can only work against that goal of better. As a business and work oriented social media space, LinkedIn is already subject to the problem of noise: plenty of us have absorbed the message that we need to be active, that we need to produce content. But what is that content about? What is it seeking to achieve? Without clear goals and purposes in mind, everything we post is just one more scrolling wall of text to our communities.
If AI is now generating that noise, and more of us are using AI assistants to wade through it, what’s the point of it all? If we’re not talking to each other, why use words in the first place? I, at least, will continue to produce my own scrollable walls in the perhaps vain hope that someone out there is listening–at least, someone besides the AI eventual-overlord that’s put me on its enemy list.
Something Polished 