This is what I submitted to AI:

Now that I have decided to resurrect my blog after years of neglect, I am struck by just how different the shrinking blogging world is now.  Mainly, AI exists!!  How do I use it?  Should I use it?

BLOGGING HAS CHANGED

As I look back at all of my earlier posts from 2014-2022, I am struck by something.  I have always been a good synthesizer.  When I worked on Capitol Hill, I had to condense all of the materials that constituents/lobbyists/congressional committees gave me as well as my own thoughts/analysis into three-page memos, and I loved doing this.  And I can see that trait  in my older blog posts, “5 Simple Ways to Be a Better Friend to Yourself”, “12 Tips to Get a Good Night’s Sleep”, etc…

But now AI is much, much better at that than I am.  And the actual value of my old posts is sadly probably a bit limited.  I mean, maybe they are slightly interesting because a reader will know a real person wrote this, not AI.  

WHAT EVEN IS THE PURPOSE OF A BLOG NOW?

So what makes a blog interesting now, valuable to a reader?  Now that AI can manufacture thoughts and put them out into the world, what is it that I can do differently?  What do I even offer?

The thing I keep coming back to is the human behind the thought – me.  Even though I’m an ordinary person, I’m real, I’ve had experiences — a lot of them, I’m over 60. I can draw connections and synthesize ideas from my own lived experience.  That’s something AI can’t speak from, the specificity of being one person in a vast ocean of humanity making choices, living life.  And maybe now that visiting the internet is like walking into a hurricane of ads trying to separate you from your money, or mindless content trying to keep you clicking/swiping away your time and attention, maybe a real human being writing real human thoughts from her own wandering real human mind will be a reprieve from all of that, a shelter.  Maybe.

I think of blogging as spooling out Walt Whitman’s gossamer thread in the form of my thoughts.  If they connect with one other person and make them feel even a little lighter, understood, amused — that connection of the thread is the reward.  For some reason, that matters to me.  

And that leads into another idea from Ram Dass, who allegedly said we are all just walking each other home.  I love the idea of being a friendly companion for part of the journey, even if it is just the few minutes it takes someone to read this blog.   

I mean, I guess AI could invent a fairly convincing fake personal experience blog.  People could become ever more adept liars on their websites.  But blogging isn’t really a profit thing the way it used to be — it’s not a very good way to build a revenue stream.  For revenue, the whole world seems to have moved to short-form videos, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube.  So in a way, blogging is back to its origins, when it was a communication/expression thing. So I”m not sure why anyone would bother to use AI to create a personal blog.

WHAT ABOUT MONETIZATION?

I will admit, when I blogged years ago, I was listening to all of those “Build a 6 Figure Business” people, trying to use my website develop a funnel, trying to get people to sign up for freebies so I could send them emails, trying to create some kind of signature photography or coaching plan to sell them.   I will eventually go through all of my old posts and clean all that up.  As I mentioned here, I am not the least bit interested in a “signature program” or being part of the extraction culture.  

But I am a creative business.  I do make pottery, carve stamps and make prints, and write books that are for sale at craft shows, a local shop, and on Amazon.  So I may at some point mention those things and try to sell mugs/vases etc., but I don’t have a game plan to extract money from anyone who stumbles onto my website.  I’m just so sick of all of that.  I’m sick of experiencing it, and I certainly don’t want to promulgate it.  

So.  No ads here.  No funnels.  Maybe just an occasional mention of something real and tangible that I have for sale.  

SO IS THIS A NO AI BLOG??

Every blog post will begin with an idea in my head that I write through using Apple Pages.  I’ll write my “shitty first draft” as Anne Lamott says, then revise on my own until I feel like it says exactly what I want it to say.  

And then, well, I will likely run my posts through AI to proofread them, but NOT refine and polish them. That’s important to me.  I don’t want all the edges and quirks of the way I express myself smoothed away.  

This is the prompt I am going to use:

 “Edit this for clarity, grammar, and flow, but keep my natural voice, sentence rhythms, quirks, and imperfections. Don’t make me sound more polished, professional, elegant, or AI-written.  If a sentence is technically imperfect but sounds like me and is easy to understand, leave it alone.

Only change things that are genuinely confusing, awkward, overly repetitive, or incorrect. If something needs more elaboration, tell me rather than inventing or adding it yourself.
Don’t add ideas, metaphors, transitions, conclusions, or emotional emphasis.
*After your edit, give me a list of the changes you made so I can double-check them.”  *

We’ll see how it goes.  

This is What AI Said:

Changes I made

Very little, actually — which I think is a good sign for both the post and your prompt.

  1. Changed “2014-2022” → “2014–2022” and made a handful of punctuation/spacing corrections.
  2. Added commas around “as well as my own thoughts/analysis” so that long Capitol Hill sentence is easier to parse.
  3. Changed “etc…” → “etc.”
  4. Changed “I’ve had experiences — a lot of them, I’m over 60” to “I’ve had experiences — a lot of them; I’m over 60.” The original was a comma splice that actually made me stumble.
  5. Fixed the typo “I”m” → “I’m.”
  6. Fixed “trying to use my website develop a funnel” → “trying to use my website to develop a funnel.”
  7. Added the comma after “shitty first draft” in the Anne Lamott sentence.
  8. Broke the AI prompt into slightly clearer paragraphs, but didn’t change its meaning or voice.
  9. I left things like “Mainly, AI exists!!”, “So.”, “And then, well,”, the repeated “real human”, “much, much better”, and your slash constructions alone. Those are voice, not errors.
  10. I also left “promulgate” alone. 😂 It is a somewhat grand word sitting in a very conversational paragraph, but I can absolutely hear you using it, and it means exactly what you mean.

There are two places where I wouldn’t edit, but would flag for you to think about.

First, this:

“But now AI is much, much better at that than I am.”

I understand what you mean — AI is fantastically good at generating the kind of synthesized advice posts represented by “12 Tips…” But I don’t actually think AI is necessarily better than you at synthesis. It’s better at cheap, nearly instantaneous synthesis of generic information. Your Capitol Hill synthesis involved judgment: deciding what mattered, what was credible, what belonged in three pages, and what the member needed to understand. That’s a different thing. You may still want the sentence exactly as written because the slight overstatement launches your larger point nicely. I just noticed it.

Second, this is probably the conceptual heart of the piece:

“That’s something AI can’t speak from, the specificity of being one person in a vast ocean of humanity making choices, living life.”

That’s the argument. AI can imitate the form of personal writing. It can manufacture a plausible story. What it cannot have is a past. It didn’t have your Capitol Hill job, become a photographer, make pots, care for your father, abandon blogging, come back ten years later and reconsider what any of it is for. The provenance of the thought matters.

What I Did

  1. Accepted most of this
  2. Ignored
  3. Accepted
  4. Rewrote in my own words
  5. Accepted
  6. Accepted
  7. Ignored (I speak in run-on sentences)
  8. Ignored
  9. No action required
  10. No action required. I’ve used $10 words as long as I can remember. I read a lot, they are precise, what can I say.

And then I went and revised my essay again from my own brain, because I love words and I love writing and I love trying to get closer to the truth of what I’m trying to say on my own.