In today’s fast-paced, ever-evolving landscape, the conversation around AI and writing is at an inflection point. By leveraging cutting-edge tools, educators and creators alike can unlock unprecedented opportunities to reimagine storytelling at scale. It’s not disruption, it’s differentiation—it’s not about replacing human voices; it’s about amplifying them. With a holistic, human-centered approach, we can empower stakeholders to craft purposeful, practical, and proactive narratives through seamless synergy between people and technology. At the end of the day, the question isn’t if AI will transform content workflows—it’s how we choose to lean in with intention.

How Far Will it Reach? Ain’t Nobody Know

AI-infused writing is everywhere. The above section was written with some light prompting and is meant to prove a point. There are tics and tells that signal a heavy dose of AI; the overwrought language, the overreliance on alliteration, and the “it’s not this, it’s that” seesaw construction, which acts as a thesis substitute. I am familiar with the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon (also know as the ‘Frequency Illusion’) and this is not that. I live online and the ubiquity of this style has overrun much of the writing in digital spaces. Yet (and perhaps ironically) I am not opposed to AI-assisted writing. Indeed, I’ve sought feedback from multiple platforms for this (and most) pieces.1 But the sameness is becoming equal parts nauseating and uninspiring. A colleague whom I admire recently summed it up well saying, “I can’t hear my own sentences anymore.”

That’s the problem. Many educators, leaders, and online writers are simultaneously lamenting the spread of AI while ceding our voice—and, arguably, our humanity—to the sameness machines. I'm calling us out because I'm one of us. In a recent Bluesky post (which served as the seed for this piece), I wrote, “…I am simply going to have the most unhinged, unique writing voice possible to stand out in the crowd.” Over two years ago Ethan Mollick wrote about the temptation of “The Button.” And like Eve reaching for forbidden fruit, many of us can't resist the promise of "The Button," failing this early test of our digital paradise, one bland sentence at a time.

Our Tubes Are All Tied. And I'm Straining to Remember Just What it Means to Be Alive.

As I’ve written before, I believe firmly that agency is one possible antidote here. Our individual voices, quirks, and idiosyncrasies act as essential buttresses against algorithmic sameness. And while many argue that writing is thinking, I don’t hold this belief. I do plenty of thinking entirely in my head—on the bike, in the car, in the shower, even during mindless meetings. Instead, I believe writing is thinking made visible. It’s how we externalize and clarify the messy connections, contradictions, and intuitions that otherwise stay hidden. In fact, it’s one of the primary reasons I started this Substack—to put ideas out there and to make them visible and vulnerable, in ways that a prompt alone cannot replicate. The rise of LLMs, with their algorithmically flattened prose, seems to be accelerating the decline of the primacy of text itself. Authentic, human-made meaning increasingly surfaces in multimodal experiences: the intonation of a thoughtful podcast, the raw honesty of video, the subtle gesture caught in a short clip. These forms add texture and nuance that algorithms struggle to replicate.2 Text alone is no longer king, and perhaps it shouldn’t be. But even as we embrace richer, multimodal ways of expressing ourselves, our written voice remains uniquely suited for revealing thought clearly and precisely.

Yet, beneath this shift toward multimodal expression lies another familiar tension—one about originality, authorship, and intentionality. It's easy to slip into a belief that authenticity demands originality, a purity untouched by outside influence. But authenticity doesn't require isolation or absolute originality. Rather, it requires transparency and purpose about how and why we remix, reuse, and reshape ideas.3

This tension isn't new. In fact, David Shields played provocateur around similar ideas more than a decade ago. In his 2010 book, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, Shields assembled 618 numbered passages—half borrowed directly from other sources. Random House lawyers insisted on meticulous attribution in a fine-print appendix, but Shields openly encouraged readers to cut those pages out, deliberately cultivating ambiguity. One of his main points? Authenticity isn't about purity.4 As I critique algorithmic sameness while collaborating openly with AI, I'm reminded once again that agency and intention shape the difference between remixing thoughtfully and surrendering blindly.

Now, Don't You Forget It. It Ain't Using Me.

Writing this piece required a careful dance—collaborating openly with AI tools while firmly protecting my own voice. I didn’t simply push "The Button." Instead, I used the back-and-forth, the friction, the continual clarification of prompts and revisions to sharpen my thinking. This dialogue, though algorithmically mediated, deepened my sense of what I wanted to say. This is the model of AI use I want to advocate for—both in our personal and professional writing, and especially in our classrooms. Instead of uncritically handing our thinking over to the machines, we can actively push against defaults, clarifying rather than flattening our ideas. If writing truly is thinking made visible, then perhaps thoughtful collaboration with AI can make the nuances of our thoughts even clearer. But that’s only possible if our hands remain firmly on the wheel.

None of this collaboration was accidental or automatic. I brought my experience of what lazy, default-driven AI writing looks like, developed over months spent critically consuming online content. I brought taste cultivated over years of reading literature, fiction, and history—texts crafted well before the onset of any LLM derived content. I brought my deep engagement with Shields’ provocative ideas, which have simmered in my head for the last fifteen years. And perhaps most importantly, I brought the messy human layers of my lived experience—as a student, as a teacher, and as a parent—into a new intellectual space, one that allowed me to say something (hopefully) meaningful and uniquely my own.

AI didn’t make this happen, but thoughtful engagement with AI helped clarify it. And yet, even after all of this careful collaboration, Jim James’s words still linger: “Cause when the power goes out, I got other means.” If the lights went out tomorrow—if the algorithms vanished and the screens went dark—I’d still have my voice. And I’d still have my pen, my paper, and the messy splendor of my own thoughts. That’s the point. The power is always going out, in one way or another. When it does, what matters most is what remains.

Note: If you've been around this blog, you know the drill—titles and subheadings are borrowed from song lyrics or titles. It’s a tradition. This is ‘The Academic DJ’ after all. I can’t think of a more appropriate song to capture how I'm feeling right now than Jim James’s haunting, playful, and insightful “State of the Art (A.E.I.O.U.).” Give it a listen (lyrics copied below the video)—and keep your candles handy.

Lyrics

Daylight come
Daylight go
How far will it reach?
Ain't nobody know
When the dawn breaks
The cradle will fall
And down come, baby
Cradle and all
Now, I know you need the dark
Just as much as the sun
But you signin' on forever
When you ink it in blood

A. E. I. O. U., E. I. O. U., A. E. I.O.U.I

I use the state of the art
Tech-nology
Supposed to make for better living
But are we better human beings?
We've got out wires all crossed
Our tubes are all tied
And I'm straining to remember
Just what it means to be alive
A life worth living
Now, you can feel it in your chest
Buildin' like little bullets
Just building up the nest
And you build it up strong
And you fill it up with love
And you pray for good rain
All from the lord above

A. E. I. O. U., E. I. O. U., A. E. I

I use my state of the art
Tech-nology
Now, don't you forget it
It ain't using me
'Cause when the power goes out
I got other means
'Cause the power's goin' out
I hear the power's goin' out
I mean it, the power's goin' out
I really mean it the powers goin' out