Comment by tkgally
The results are not surprising to me personally. When I have used AI to help with my own writing and translation tasks, I do not feel as mentally engaged with the writing or translation process as I would be if I were doing it all on my own.
But I have found that using AI in other ways to be incredibly mentally engaging in its own way. For the past two weeks, I’ve been experimenting with Claude Code to see how well it can fully automate the brainstorming, researching, and writing of essays and research papers. I have been as deeply engaged with the process as I have ever been with writing or translating by myself. But the engagement is of a different form.
The results of my experiments, by the way, are pretty good so far. That is, the output essays and papers are often interesting for me to read even though I know an AI agent wrote them. And, no, I do not plan to publish them or share them.
I use AI tools for amusement and asking random questions, but for actual work, I basically don't use them at all. I wonder if I'll be part of the increasingly rare group who is actually able to do anything while the rest become progressively more incompetent.