Of course I use artificial intelligence.
I helped build one of the first chatbots millions of people actually used.
SmarterChild arrived more than 25 years ago. Silicon Valley later called me the BotFather, which was flattering until people began saying it as if I ran a robot crime family.
Now my avatar is made with AI. My research uses AI. My drafts get argued over with AI. Sometimes AI finds a better word. Sometimes it finds a worse one with enormous confidence. I still have to know the difference.
This has caused distress among the intelligentsia.
I understand. They spent years developing the ability to make perfectly ordinary ideas sound expensive. Then a machine learned to do it in eleven seconds.
The response has been swift. Not Jonathan Swift, sadly. He knew how to make hypocrisy funny. I mean the other kind of swift: a new code of purity announced before anyone has worked out what purity means.
Some publications now say they will not accept work written with the help of AI.
This sounds rigorous.
So did the rule against calculators.
We should take them seriously. In fact, I have a modest proposal.
Every writer must submit a complete chain of intellectual custody.
Did you use spellcheck?
Did Google finish a sentence in the search box?
Did your word processor suggest a cleaner phrase?
Did an editor move a paragraph?
Did a friend say, "This part is boring"?
Did you look up a synonym? Read a book? Search an archive? Employ an intern? Drink coffee grown by another human being?
If so, please disclose the assistance.
We must protect the sacred tradition of the solitary writer: alone in a room, receiving no help from anyone except an agent, an editor, a copy editor, a fact-checker, a lawyer and several centuries of dead writers.
Orwell warned about language used to conceal thought. He did not warn that all tools were immoral. A pencil is a tool. So is a library. So is an editor. The moral question is ownership. Does the named writer own the sentence?
Did I decide what I believe?
Did I check the facts?
Did I reject the machine's bad ideas?
Will I take the blame when the sentence is wrong?
That last one matters.
AI does not have a reputation. It cannot be embarrassed. It does not get the angry call. It cannot lose a friend, a customer or a case. The person whose name appears at the top gets all of that.
Good.
Authorship means responsibility. Immaculate conception is a different business.
There is lazy AI writing everywhere. You can spot it because it arrives wearing a blue blazer and carrying three "key takeaways." It explores the evolving landscape. It delves. It says the future is not just promising but transformative. It has never met a sentence it could not turn into a panel discussion at a regional airport hotel.
I hate that stuff.
But bad writing existed before the chatbot. We had jargon, press releases, management books and LinkedIn thought leaders. The machines did not invent empty prose. They learned it from us.
Banning AI will not make a dull writer interesting. It will make the dull writer dishonest about the toolbar.
The honest position is simpler.
Yes, I use AI.
No, it does not get my byline.
I do.
The machine can search faster than I can. It can compare drafts, test an argument, find the hole I missed and remember the name of the person I met in 1998. It can also make things up, flatten a joke and write like the annual report of a company that manufactures beige carpeting.
Call it management.
More than 25 years ago, SmarterChild taught me something the current debate keeps missing. People did not care that there was software on the other side. They cared whether the conversation was useful, memorable and alive. The technology mattered. The personality mattered more.
The same is true now.
A human working with AI remains human. The photographer uses a tripod. The pilot uses an autopilot. The musician uses a synthesizer. They remain responsible for the result.
The tool expands the operator. It does not excuse him.
That is the compound: human judgment, machine attention, one accountable name.
I intend to be a prime example of it. My next business is built around exactly this idea.
AI does not make me virtuous or right. It lets me attempt more, notice more and move faster while the decisions remain where they belong.
With me.
This is also where the new puritans have it backward. Using AI openly is not the dishonest position. Pretending that modern intellectual work passes through no machine assistance is.
The serious rules are obvious.
Do not invent facts.
Do not counterfeit a person's voice without permission.
Do not hide a financial interest.
Do not surrender judgment.
Do not blame the bot.
Those rules are harder than "no AI." They require editors to judge the work instead of inspecting the writer's appliances.
Some will still reject it. Fine.
But spare us the halo.
An editor who refuses any AI-assisted work is free to do so. The Associated Press, for example, permits cautious experimentation by staff but bars ChatGPT from creating publishable content. That is a clear house rule. What it is not is evidence that people who use different tools have weaker minds.
Intellectual vigor is not measured by how slowly you type.
It appears in the choices: what you ask, what you doubt, what you discard, what you can defend.
Swift borrowed the calm voice of policy to expose cruelty. Orwell cut through political fog with plain English. Neither man's work would improve if we forced him to use a worse pen.
My pen talks back.
Often it is wrong.
Sometimes it is brilliant.
It never gets the last word.
I do.
And yes, of course I used AI to help write this.
Robert Hoffer co-created SmarterChild and is co-founder of GlobalComix.