Becoming an AI bot

I’m tired, boss.. I was sitting on the train with a colleague this week after a great day with the Unwonted team and we were discussing content creation and being seen in the world of IT when I’m being reminded of how rarely I have the time or energy to create blog posts. Having two kids under 3 is part of it, but it’s also that every other linkedin post or blog post nowadays seem to be AI generated, partly at least. There’s just something very off-putting about it that’s affected me a bit I guess.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve done it myself, I’m part of the problem (if it is a problem?). Maybe I write a sentence in my not so perfect english with not so advanced words, have AI “fix” it and it looks professional. But here’s the thing, IT LACKS ANY KIND OF SOUL, often times it can be seen from a mile away that it’s been AI generated. The dead internet theory argues the internet is mostly bots and automated content, so do we really need to become bots ourselves before ASI enslaves us all?

This is not a post about AI hate, I have truly embraced AI myself. I’m a daily heavy user of Codex, I use AI to help write reports, documentation, statement of works, etc. Just a few days ago I built some big garden beds at home, but not before asking ChatGPT how much wood I’d need from byggmax.se, and it gave me exactly everything I needed and how to cut it up. AI has 100% made me a lot more efficient at work.

Linkedin has been my go to place since X became a thing to keep up-to-date with a lot of Azure related info, and blogs have according to me always been the best way to do that. But when we write every little linkedin post or blog post using AI, it just feels wrong. It lacks that soul and authenticity that made me want to read your content to begin with.

The big ones

Let’s look at a few extremely common examples that I see basically every day.

Em-dashes is without a doubt the most common one. We’ve all seen it. Becoming less common as people prompt AI to write text without them.

• “The results look promising—but we should verify them first.”

Rule of three is also very overused.

• “Our platform is fast, flexible, and secure.”
• “The update is simpler, smarter, and stronger.”

Lists everywhere. Bullet points, numbered ones. Don’t hate on lists though, they’re good.

Antithesis is a word I wouldn’t have used myself, but I learned something new writing this post. Better known maybe as It’s not X, it’s Y. I think I see this one most of the time now.

• “It’s not cloud-native, it’s legacy infrastructure in Azure.”
• “It’s not governance, it’s a spreadsheet with opinions.”

Three kinds of posters

This is us, we’re all here in some way or form.

The person with the AI generated profile picture of themselves. Every post is heavily AI generated and have this tacky Microsoft Copilot generated picture with a million colors and things happening. The post is probably a learn article summarized of a new service that went GA or in preview. This person has become a bot and can churn out posts like never before, and it’s also probably something you want to read to stay up-to-date.

The one in the middle where we can spot influences of AI in the text, but not be 100% sure. Antithesis is a big one to look out for here. This is probably where I’m at, and it’s probably out of shame or trying to sound smarter than I am. It also creates a trust issue, like am I reading this persons words or not? What is this person really like?

And this leads me to the point of this post. Here on out, I swear to never use AI to write any public content that should come from me, Robin, on social media such as linkedin or blog posts. It will be my words, messy or not. That’s how I’d like to read it at least and I think that’s what I discovered now from endless scrolling to stay up-to-date on the things I work with.

The last one is the person you can’t really tell anymore. No AI profile picture, no obvious tells, no weirdly polished sentences that sound too good. They probably do use AI, but more like a second brain used to get unstuck or test a phrasing. The difference is that it still feels like them in the end.

Final thoughts

This is so out of my normal blog posts I feel weird writing it. I just had to vent a bit.

AI is here to stay without a doubt and for good reasons still. It provides someone like me a huge productivity boost when researching, going through documentation, thinking through an architecture, writing a script, an IaC template. Just hold off becoming a bot a little longer.