Think First, Then AI

If I’m reading something by you, I’m not interested in what the AI thinks. I want to know what you think. Think first, then use AI to help.

I use a lot of AI. It is my researcher, my analyst, my secretary, my illustrator, and my programmer. It helps me do more, create more, and achieve more. Increasingly, AI is also my thought partner.

But AI is not me.

It can never be me. Even though it is going to be better than me at any completely defined task, AI can never have what I have:

• As much data as it’s trained on, it can’t have all the information that I have
• AI is the same for everyone, and it gives the same ideas to all users
• Written software does not do on its own or take responsibility

Think first

If you ask AI to answer a question or solve a problem, you haven’t worked through the solution yourself. It’s like those students that have ChatGPT complete their homework; the homework gets done but nothing was gained.

It’s the same if you have an AI write something for you. Writing is a process of thinking: dead ends, retries, trying out ideas, selecting the best, and working through problems. You’re robbing yourself of being able to do this!

You’re also robbing your reader. Everyone gets the same answer when they ask an AI a question. This means that if your reader were interested in the answer, they could get it themselves in a few seconds. When you have them read it, they’re spending time on something they could have done themselves. And if they wanted to know it, they would have already done that. When you have an AI write something to give to someone else, you’ve added nothing new to the world.

And I think you do have interesting and even important things to say. Your lived experience, subject matter expertise, and additional information are unique. When you write from what you know and what you think, it is a new creation. No other person could have written the same thing. That is new value that should be shared with the world.

Then AI

Even with all of that, you should absolutely use AI as part of the writing process. There are dozens of ways to do this:

• Research: make sure the AI is in a tutoring mode through custom instructions or an agent
• Translate from your native language to the reader’s language
• As a thought partner
• Brainstorming new ideas
• Editing and copy editing
• Adjusting for audience

As you do this, be careful not to let the AI change your meaning. If you don’t watch out, it will water down your ideas, pulling in your thoughts back towards the average answer. When an AI rewrites even one sentence, closely examine it for your original meaning. When you lose your meaning, you’re back to wasting the reader’s time.

You can do better

Savvy readers will recognize when you’ve used AI to replace your thinking. I see writing like this all the time:

In this high-pressure working environment, it’s crucial to focus on your original ideas. It’s not the AI that has the talent—it’s you.

And I immediately know that the author didn’t think first; it wasn’t their original thought. When there are well-structured paragraphs of compound clauses, contrasting comparison, and em-dashes all together, it’s guaranteed to be AI slop. In a few months, AI will change to new tropes, but it is still going to be very obviously uninteresting.

I’ve written this essay to convince you to tell me and others your original ideas. Don’t outsource your voice and experience! Write what you think first, then let AI help you improve.

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Want to share this message? Send this link whenever you see someone you respect taking the easy path out and robbing the world of their unique thoughts: https://aka.ms/ThinkFirst