AI, the journey, and the destination

Sunday, February 9, 2025

I’ve been using LinkedIn more recently. I’ve been avoiding the algorithms for a few years so it’s interesting to be consuming the output of one again. Some time away has made it much easier to resist the infinite scroll.

For all their disadvantages, the algorithms do sometimes surface interesting things you’d otherwise never see. One of those this week was a service that will automate the writing and publishing of a daily post on LinkedIn for you.

I don’t think it’s a very good idea. But it did set off a chain of thoughts: why, exactly, is it a terrible idea? It has many proponents (it seems quite popular). And I’m sure it does create useful content sometimes. For busy people, it might be worth its $60/month subscription.

Of course, passing off things an AI wrote as your own work is dishonest, and that’s my main problem with it. But there’s a deeper thing than that. Writing something isn’t just about having the written thing. The process of writing itself teaches you something. Hones ideas and arguments. Connects different concepts. Helps to make sure that when you meet someone you’ve connected with on LinkedIn, you’ve got something to say.

There are plenty of cases where the value is in “having the thing”. I read an AI generated summary of the news most mornings. I’m sure I could be a deeper appreciator of the news by writing that summary myself, but that’s not my goal. I also don’t mind if I don’t know what all of the news is - I’m happy just getting a sense of it. So just having the summary to read is the useful thing, and AI is great for that.

But for lots of things, the process of creating the thing is as (or more) important than the thing itself. We want AIs to do busywork for us, to help prompt ideas, to check our thinking, to assist in research - all that is great. Sometimes a bit of initial drafting is okay too. But taking that final, occasionally tempting step - letting a bot do the actual writing for you - is a trap.

It’ll save some time, but it’ll cost a little wisdom. Because often, the journey is more important than the destination.