Forget The Em Dash

Forget the em dash. They're a new tell for AI sloppy writing. And no, it is not the em dash. It's something else entirely. Something that you and I have likely already suffered from. And that is huge wall of text. We mostly encounter it in work artifacts, like research, PDFs, research reports, sometimes even slack messages and emails. Basically, a huge chunk with AI output with absolutely zero discernment behind it. A colleague was recently lamenting that she is suffering from this AI slop on a daily basis. From Steve, a counting, has turned into Charles Dickens, providing brick-and-mortar dissertations that could have been clear and concise. Linguists like Noam Chomsky call the difference between performance and competence. Performance is what actually gets produced. It's fluent, it's capable, it is endless. And there's a very Stepford wife quality to it. Competence is the understanding and the capacity behind it. Do not conflate output with competence. Because output can cover ground, it feels space. It demonstrates capability. Oh, words. I sound, really to else call is utterance, which is complete communicates packaged someone intent context. And most importantly, to my utterance is discernment layer. AI produces the output to AI. Use AI well. That's right. You, however, are the lens. You should digest that output, analyze it, decide what should it look like? What does this need to be? That discernment layer is what's missing in this tidal wave of slop that you and I are swimming in, frankly, is a part of AI literacy that I wish more people talked about. Yours, what's knowing what's necessary. Knowing what actually lands. That's when this AI output becomes and competence. So whatever ChatGPT hands you, don't just copy and paste it because you will know. Your distill. Wanna learn how to think with AI and not just copy and paste from AI content? Follow along.