tl;dr: If it took you twenty seconds to generate, don’t expect me to spend twenty minutes reading it.
I’m seeing a massive influx of AI-generated documents: deep-research reports, meeting notes, PRDs, and strategy decks.
They look professional. They follow a clean structure. But when I push for the “why” behind a specific recommendation, the logic usually collapses.
Writing forces understanding: For me, writing isn’t about producing paragraphs, it’s about clarity of thought. The act of writing forces me to build a clear understanding of the topic. I have to grapple with the nuances and trade-offs.
That process takes time because thinking takes time. When I use AI to skip the writing, I often end up skipping the thinking, too.
No time to read: AI can spit out a professional looking, polished document in no time. However, it doesn’t reduce the time required to read or understand it.
In fact, AI docs are often harder to digest, because I don’t know what the person was actually thinking (vs what AI wrote for them). When I read a human-written doc, I’m tracking their logic. When I read an AI doc, I’m constantly wondering: “How much conviction does the writer have on this point?”
I have stopped reading documents that are purely AI-generated. If you didn’t have the time to write it, I don’t have the time to read it.
I use AI every day, including writing this blog post. But I still believe that writing is a reflection of thought. Using AI to write without thinking is just generating noise.
If you really want to send an AI-generated doc, just send the prompt.