In the Age of AI, Maybe Don’t Proofread?

Proofreading is one of the first things we learn to do in school after learning to write. We outline, we research, we write, we proofread. It’s just part of it. But now, with LLMs doing a considerable amount writing, it’s commonplace for things to be perfectly written, free of spelling and grammar errors (though also sometimes free of sense). As someone who prides themself on not using AI to write my blog posts that really got me thinking about what a blog should be in a post-AI world.

Now, I could put one of those little badges in my footer saying that “No AI was used in the writing of this post” or “Made with love by a real human.” But, I think there’s something much simpler we can do to keep the internet human: Stop striving for perfection.

This will result in errors. This will result in sloppy posts that could have been clearer or more well thought out. But it will also result in real people’s thoughts being shared genuinely, and I think that’s really what most people want right now, as we’ve seen with many other forms of art. If an AI painted the perfect painting of a sunset over [insert your city of choice here], people would say, “that looks nice, but it doesn’t mean much.” And they’d be right! But, if someone makes a similar painting, with human motions and human mistakes (happy little accidents) and human emotions… Now, that’s a work of art! It’s a work because it took effort and thought and someone doing the work. And the mistakes are part of that. That means something.

Anyways, I’m not going to stop reading what I write before I post it… I’d like my writing to at least be mostly coherent. But, maybe, if we all stopped aiming for perfection, we’d also feel a little more connected in a time where cold efficiency is fighting to take over, and human beings have become secondary to production.