Using AI to Grow Earnestly

These words here are mine. I have Grok review them and tell me things, which I then type. I treat Grok like an editor. The thoughts are mine. These words are mine. The flow and the argument are mine, made sharp with Grok’s feedback. I am a solid B-level writer, which stings, but it’s true.

In this short piece of writing, I want to explain a thought I’m having about AI in the context of thinking. I want to think my own thoughts because I see regression to the mean happening all around me. Just look around and you will see so many mannerisms of AI. It sounds good until you realize the dead-internet theory is true. Instead, I want this little corner of the internet to be mine, in my voice.

This isn’t just a vanity project of stuffing content into the machine’s training data. It is a tool to help me preserve my writing. I strongly believe that writing is thinking, and the first thing I wrote took too damn long. Writing and thinking are skills, and they demand exercise just like lifting heavy shit.

I also have perspectives I want to share, but I want them done on the cheap. That’s the other body of work: I give the AI a few dots, tell it to go a level deeper on the research, and it connects them toward a destination. I read it to educate myself, and I let it end there. In a way those are not my original thoughts. They are what I am thinking about. They are a map of my mind and of what I’m consuming. This is what I’m exploring, and I’m sharing it as a meta-level gravestone for that thinking.

This is how I’m leveraging AI so I can explore while also honestly thinking aloud. I have found that if I just let AI do all the thinking, my mind becomes sloppy and AI becomes a crutch. I don’t want a crutch. I want jet fuel for a powerful mind.