AI Didn't Write This Post. Kind Of.

I use AI to help me write my LinkedIn posts. There. Now you know.

There's a lot of noise on LinkedIn right now about "AI slop." LinkedIn even built a button to label it. The platform is taking a stance.

What that's created, at least from where I sit, is an environment where people don't feel safe using AI tools to help them write, or at least not safe admitting it publicly. Which is funny, because I'm pretty sure most of us are.

Last week, Stanley Druckenmiller used AI to help write a market-moving op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. Got called out. His response: "Of course I did. My name is on it. It's my message." People called it inauthentic. They questioned whether the ideas were really his.

I think I get the reaction. I don't think I agree with it.

Here's MY honest reason for using AI: writing is a slog for me. Producing content is not a true passion of mine. Building companies and mentoring younger founders is. But I know that putting ideas out into the world makes me a better builder and mentor, through the connections it creates. If the barrier to getting those ideas out is high enough, I write less. If I write less, fewer of my ideas reach you. That's not a good outcome for me, and probably not for anyone who might learn something from my experience and failures.

So I use AI as a collaborator. It interviews me. It teases out angles. It helps me figure out what I actually think before I say it. Some posts start as a clear idea. Some start as a vague feeling and AI helps me find the point. Either way, the thinking is mine.

And that's the part that matters.

AI output converges to the mean. That's what slop actually is. But my experiences are uniquely mine, and I do my best to share them authentically, to be vulnerable and honest. If I can do that, my posts aren't slop. Because my experiences and opinions don't converge to the mean.

Half the people on this platform use ghostwriters I'd argue using AI is actually more transparent. I'm the one in the conversation, refining the thinking, deciding what's true to my experience. The ideas are mine. The accountability is mine.

If you're writing less because you think the sentences have to come from you, that's worth reconsidering.

I don't think the problem is who typed the words. It's who does the thinking.