Writing
Is It AI Slop? The Truth About How I Write
The phrase AI slop is useful because it names a real failure mode: text that sounds polished but has no lived thought behind it. The mistake is assuming every AI-assisted piece is automatically slop. The better question is where the judgment came from.
The core idea
My writing process is closer to steering than outsourcing. I use AI to shape drafts, pressure-test structure, and surface alternate phrasings. The actual authorship lives in the selection: what I keep, what I delete, what I sharpen, and which distinctions I refuse to flatten.
Why it matters
This matters because AI makes mediocre fluency cheap. That raises the bar for real writing. A piece has to carry a point of view, a lived constraint, or a useful distinction. Otherwise it is just competent noise.
How to use it
- Judge AI-assisted writing by the specificity of the thinking, not by whether a model touched the prose.
- Use AI to create contrast, then apply human taste to choose the version with teeth.
- Keep the rough edge when the rough edge contains the truth.
The authorship test
AI-assisted writing is not automatically slop. The test is whether the piece contains a real selection function. Did a human choose the frame, reject plausible but wrong simplifications, preserve uncomfortable distinctions, and take responsibility for the final claim? If not, the prose may be fluent but unowned.
The process matters because AI optimizes toward averaged coherence. Good writing often depends on the non-average move: a sharp distinction, a lived constraint, a specific example, or a refusal to round the argument into a smoother but weaker version.
Process controls
- Start from a thesis or tension the author actually cares about.
- Use AI for expansion, counterarguments, structure, and compression.
- Manually preserve distinctions that the model tries to flatten.
- Cut paragraphs that sound good but do not move the argument.
Bottom line
AI can help with language. It cannot supply the reason the piece needed to exist. That still has to come from the writer.