Don’t use AI to create things until you can tell treasure from trash

Don’t use AI to create things until you can tell treasure from trash

Call it Claude’s paradox. The best writers write better with AI help. The rest write worse. It’s not that mysterious, actually. If you give me some quality lumber, a power saw, a nail gun, and sandpaper and ask me to make a piece of furniture, I’ll produce something crappy, rickety, and ugly. I have no…

Tips for writing professionals working with rich, powerful people
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Tips for writing professionals working with rich, powerful people

As your editing and ghostwriting career grows, you may find yourself working with senior executives, CEOs, celebrities, or other rich and powerful people. This can be intimidating. But it doesn’t have to be, if you keep a few principles in mind. The key thing to remember is that although this is an asymmetric relationship, it’s…

What real writers say about using (or not using) AI
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What real writers say about using (or not using) AI

Most of what you read about writers using AI has a bias. It’s filled with writers who like to shout about what they think. Social media algorithms reward the shouting, and you get one of two impressions, depending on your friends: Everyone is using AI for everything, or AI is going to cause the downfall…

Announcing the world’s largest survey on writers’ use of AI. Make your voice heard.
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Announcing the world’s largest survey on writers’ use of AI. Make your voice heard.

Starting today, you can participate in the “AI and the Writing Profession” survey. This survey is a joint project of Gotham Ghostwriters and Bernoff.com. Dan Gerstein, the CEO of Gotham Ghostwriters, proposed this project to me and I enthusiastically agreed to become his partner in it. The web is filled with all manner of opinions…

Why is Delta offering inverted passengers $30,000 each?

Why is Delta offering inverted passengers $30,000 each?

You probably heard about the Delta Air Lines plane that crashed in Toronto, landing upside-down on the tarmac. Amazingly, due to the swift actions of the crew, all 76 passengers survived. (Since this was in Canada, I immediately worried that the long-suffering guitar-carrying Canadian musician Dave Carroll must have been on that plane, but apparently…

Disruptors disrupted; Bookshop.org ebooks; Krugman’s lament: Newsletter 29 January 2025
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Disruptors disrupted; Bookshop.org ebooks; Krugman’s lament: Newsletter 29 January 2025

Newsletter 79: American tech pirates want protection from Chinese tech pirates, patent examiner crisis, data infrastructure erosion, plus three people to follow and three books to read. Nobody whines louder than a disrupted disruptor Chinese AI model Deepseek has thundered onto the scene, competing effectively with existing players like OpenAI and Meta while using far…