How to Use AI and Still Sound Like Yourself

Everyone has the same AI now. The students who stand out aren't the ones who avoid it. They're the ones who use it to think, not to write.

Imagine that it's 11pm, and your paper is due at midnight. You probably should have started earlier, but the situation is what it is. You've got a thesis statement – barely – and every time you begin writing, it doesn't sound right. You get about two sentences into the introduction before deleting everything and restarting. Elsewhere on the desktop, an icon catches your eye.

ChatGPT.

"Please write me an argumentative paper based on the following topic and thesis statement."

You enter the prompt, and about 14 seconds later you've got a full essay, complete with supporting points and citations. You scan through, cut out the em dashes, delete the word "delve", save, and then submit.

A couple of days later, your teacher uploads your grade. B-, not bad for about 5 minutes of work.

ChatGPT works, and that's the problem.

Using ChatGPT for writing is a lot like playing a video game with cheat codes. You can do well, but you're not actually getting better at the game itself. In life, writing is one of the most valuable skills you can cultivate, and AI is making everyone worse at writing, at the same time as it enables everyone to generate an average paper. In fact, in a recent MIT study, students who used AI to generate their writing couldn't even quote a sentence that they'd "written" minutes earlier.

The thing is, in a world where average writing is now effortless, developing the skill of writing – and, more importantly, the taste and judgment of a good writer – is absolutely essential.

Learning to think

For centuries, writing has been valued because it is, at a very basic level, the process of thinking. Writing is difficult, especially when faced with a blank page, because independently generating and clarifying your own thought is difficult. When you sit down to write, like the scene described at the beginning of this article, it's supposed to be a struggle. Being able to do the hard work of coming up with ideas and then clarifying those ideas is one of the most valuable skills you can develop, and in a world where anyone can generate output without thought, the ability to think will be more valuable than it's ever been.

With that being said, AI can still help us in this process. When used properly, AI can assist us in our thinking, helping us to talk through new ideas and to clarify existing ones. The point is that you should still do the thinking, and let AI become a tool that clarifies and amplifies your authentic voice and ideas.

AI-writing rules to live by

The Golden Rule for AI is to use it to help you think, but to never let it do the thinking for you.

Following that, there are three processes you can use to write effectively with AI.

Technique 1: Brainstorm

Every writer knows the fear of the blank page. While there's definitely something to be said for simply breaking through the process of starting to write, AI actually shines in helping us here. You could feed in the topic, plus some ideas you have (they don't even have to be complete) and ask it to spin off 5 ideas based off your current thinking. This is just a way to widen your horizons, and to give you something to actively edit and shape as a writer trying to find your thoughts.

Technique 2: Structure

Some people find it easy to write in a stream of consciousness. For these writers, imposing structure can be difficult because they just get into the flow of writing and whatever emerges just ends up on the paper. If this is you, you can use AI to help you logically structure your ideas in a way that flows more naturally from point to point, paragraph to paragraph. This even works in the outlining stage, where some students dictate their ideas into a phone app and tidy up their disorganized thoughts with AI. Remember, even if AI is tidying up your thoughts, they're still your thoughts.

Technique 3: The Interviewer

This is a technique that fewer people use, and it's honestly the best. Instead of asking AI to write, tell it: don't write this for me. Ask me one question at a time about my topic, and wait for my answer before the next one.

This turns the engine into a partner that pulls the ideas out of you, question by question, while every word on the page stays yours. If that sounds familiar, it's exactly what a good writing coach does. I don't write their sentences. I ask the next question that gets them to write the right one.

Where a person still beats the machine

AI can run these functions surprisingly well. But sometimes it still takes a human to notice that one throwaway detail you mentioned that has a pivotal story just under the surface. The ability to notice these stories in hiding is an intuition that a good counselor builds up through years of practice. If you're working on something important, it's still a good idea to work with a person directly to ensure that your thoughts are properly translated into their final form.

The key insight

The most valuable skill right now isn't using AI to replace you. It's using AI to amplify you. Brainstorm with it, outline with it, let it interview you. Then write yourself.

The gravitational force of AI is slowly drawing everyone towards a huge mass of average writing. Those that break out will stand out.

Don't be part of the crowd. Learn to use AI as a co-thinker, not as a replacement thinker.

In a world where everyone is starting to sound the same, that's the key skill to cultivate.