People I work with, friends, and family will look at something I have written, researched, solved, or finished, and dismiss it with four words:
“You just used AI.”
This is not about one colleague, friend, or family member. Sorry, but enough people have said it that nobody gets sole credit.
So no, I am not writing this about you. Or maybe I am, because this article is more than 400 characters long, so only a couple of you will make it this far anyway.
Most people are joking. Nobody is being removed from the Christmas card list or marked as a pro forma adjustment. But the joke carries an assumption: the work—my work—counts less because AI played some part in the process.
My usual response is, “Yeah. I use it to help me research. I can read really fast now.”
Queue the crickets from whoever I am talking to.
Nobody Says, “You Just Excel’d That”
Nobody looks at a financial model and says, “You just Excel’d that.” Nobody sees someone use a calculator and demands to know whether the math is authentic, or whether the person pressing the buttons cheated by pressing buttons.
Sixth graders excluded. No calculators, please.
Nobody walks through a finished house, sees that it is still standing, and criticizes the carpenter because he used a nail gun. No one questions the quality of the house because a hammer did not manually drive every one of the thousands of nails.
“Oh my gosh, you didn’t use a handsaw to cut the framing?” Tools and technologies evolve.
Before anyone types me a manifesto, know that I understand that AI is different. It is not just another calculator. It is not the introduction of email or Google. It is a completely different universe of leverage.
AI can chew through 200 pages before I slam a Celsius at breakfast. It can compare documents, organize information, build models, write code, question an argument, and produce an incredibly convincing screed with the confidence of a tenured professor.
That makes it more powerful and more dangerous.
But the answer to a more powerful tool is better judgment from a brain. My brain and yours.
The answer is not choosing to work more slowly to make everyone feel better about how difficult the work was. I have that move. I can set up a year’s worth of meetings, committees, presentations, and show-and-tell to make everyone more comfortable about slow-rolling a build.
But that is not me. That is not how we got here, and it is not where we are going.
The business world does not award bonus points for resisting adoption or failing to embrace change. Customers do not pay more because the answer took longer to find. Well, they do in time-and-expense billing, but around my shop, we are already collecting those old business bones for a Smithsonian exhibit on The History of Consulting.
A Better Standard for AI-Assisted Work
The standard should be pretty simple.
Is it accurate? Is it useful? Did it solve a real problem? In business, did it create value for the customer, meaning the people who give us their money to solve problems? And, is a real person willing to own the result?
If AI gives me a bad answer and I use it, that is my fault.
If it helps me read 200 pages, find the real issue, challenge my thinking, and reach a better decision faster, I also own that.
The tool does not own the outcome. I do. You do. Even the doofus who simply copied the answer from Chat, never checked it, and then blamed the machine when it was inaccurate.
Using AI does not eliminate responsibility. It concentrates it. The more leverage the tool provides, the more judgment we need from the person using it.
Mindlessly copying whatever AI hands you is lazy. Publishing facts you have not verified is irresponsible. Using it to pretend you have expertise you do not possess is not leadership.
But none of those things is an indictment of AI.
They are indictments of poor judgment by professionals whom you give money to lead and to think with their brain.
Refusing to use AI because you want everyone to admire how hard you worked is not much better. Clients don’t pay for the struggle. They pay for the result.
The carpenter still has to know how to measure, cut, and build. The person holding the calculator still has to know which equation to solve. The human being still decides what stays, what goes, what is true, what matters, and what outcome they are creating.
AI Touched the Process. I Own the Article.
Let me be precise, because vague language is part of how we ended up here.
I did not hand over my brain and wait for a publishable opinion to appear.
This article comes from my experiences, my frustrations, my mistakes, my opinions, my jokes, and several words that were removed before publication.
AI was one tool in the process. I used it to research faster, pressure-test the argument, challenge the structure, and point out places where I was repeating myself. I also used Google, spell-check, old notes, a printer, a felt-tip pen, jotter cards, and the increasingly unreliable filing system inside my own head.
AI doesn’t decide what I believe, it does not have experiences, form my opinions, or compose this article.
AI doesn’t build successful companies singlehandedly. It is a tool. It doesn’t make acquisitions, lead or engage in meetings, make the mistakes that enable personal growth, or experience the pressure of being responsible for what happens next.
It cannot be embarrassed by this article. It cannot answer for it if I am wrong. It cannot put its name on the outcome, positive or negative.
I sure can.
That is the difference between using a tool and surrendering authorship to it.
So the next time someone tells me, “You just used AI,” I will probably give the same answer:
“Yeah. It helps me get answers and finish things faster. You know, like a calculator or a nail gun. Tell you what: next time you text-dump on me, I’ll reply with a handwritten letter, signed, sealed, stamped, and dropped in the mail. Maybe then it will feel authentic and genuine, you relic.”
Then I will let the crickets do their work.
AI can help me move faster. Sometimes it helps me think better. Sometimes it helps me find the doofus faster.
But it cannot own the outcome. I can.
Entrepreneurs start and finish things.
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Originally posted on Forbes.com
