Ever since I was at school I’ve had scrutiny over how I write and how that, in some cases, doesn’t reconcile with my readers’ preconceptions of me.
In a time of artificial intelligence content generation I’m increasingly finding my writing being labelled as AI by colleagues and friends. Even yesterday I was told that, genuine carefully thought through, content I’d written was AI and it “could be spotted a mile off”; show me a LLM that can use a semi colon the way I do.
This is incredibly frustrating!
I love AI, I think we’re in a golden time where we can use AI chat in a considered and careful way; it’s a great sounding board, useful for collating content, organising thoughts and, of course, sense checking content and refining it. What it isn’t any good for is original thought or genuinely creating new content, and it’s certainly not any good at lateral thinking, yet.
I have to wonder why people think this of my content. What’s my first thought? Yes, run some of my work through AI and ask the simple question; “is this content AI generated?”
I started with my CV and some of the writing on my site.
Generally they say it is… Claude’s feedback on my CV was probably the most succinct:
• Some phrasing is quite polished and formulaic — “forging strong and lasting relationships”, “tangible business savings and efficiencies” feel like classic AI smoothing.
• The structure and consistency across every role is unusually uniform — most human-written CVs have more variation in tone and depth between older and newer roles.
• The summary reads like a well-prompted AI output — balanced, comprehensive, no rough edges.
The central theme across all responses is that my content is too formulaic and too consistent: now that just doesn’t seem fair!
Looking specifically at the example of my CV it’s important to note that, while I’ve updated it incrementally and iteratively, I wrote this CV 5 years ago in 2021…
I didn’t tell Claude I was the author but that it was an applicant to an ICT Operations Manager role. It thought I was a strong candidate… That’s reassuring:
A strong candidate for an ICT Operations Manager role in an education, SME, or charity setting. Worth interviewing, with questions focused on why he stepped back in seniority and his appetite for larger-scale environments.
Good questions Claude, good questions indeed…
What do I do: Be less consistent on purpose? Speak in riddles instead of plain English?
Some Background (if you want to keep reading)
I’ve often said I’m not well read: I think I need to stop saying that.
As a child I really struggled to get into reading fiction, there were a few exceptions where I lost myself in Dracula, the Odyssey and some early cyberpunk novels and a few classics, but I give me an operating manual or a textbook in a subject that I could apply then I would, and still will, bury myself.
Pre-teens I was often called posh, mostly because I articulated myself, but both consciously and by becoming too ‘street wise’ I developed a pretty strong London accent and adopted lots of slang into my vocabulary.
I think my broader vocabulary can also largely be attributed to Edge magazine. In the early 90s Edge launched, where the video game magazine landscape was predominantly amateur and hobbyist it stood out: typographically and aesthetically it was beautiful but the content was carefully and thoughtfully crafted and aimed at my generation of videogame enthusiasts who were young adults. I was glad to recently read a digital issue to see it still holds up.
I didn’t do brilliantly academically, I struggled at home. I’d also got myself into some pretty shady social circles and I left school without a clue. After a year out I took myself back into my studies, I was never encouraged to be creative but I went to college for an Access in Art and Design.
I loved art history, I think now I’m supposed to call it a History of Art, I didn’t engage with my tutor but I did soak up the content. Art history was the only part of the course that had a written submission and, as I loved Gerald Scarfe, I chose to write on satirical art looking at commonality from traditional art, through the dawn of printed press and into the then current day. Scarfe was working on Disney’s Hercules so it was comfortably relevant.
Typically, I left it all too late. I didn’t know what to do. Back then I did have JI 1.0, my brilliant sister Jasmin. With about 3 days to go I took my research and collection of ideas with scattered content to her pleading for help. Jasmin Intelligence was fantastic, she helped me write and structure the content; we printed it last minute and I illustrated the work ready for submission just in time to be bound. I learnt so much from her, she did indeed go on to a career using this skill and became a wonderful editor.
I submitted the work (on the last minute of the deadline). On the next college day, when we were supposed to be learning book binding so that we could finish our work and tie it into the broader curriculum, my tutor took me to one side. I can’t remember his full name, I’m remember his first name so I’ll just refer to him as Mick the Prick.
Mick the Prick gave me a very disapproving look and put my work on the desk in between us and looked at me long and hard. Now I have social anxiety; now I have measures but this broke me down completely. He said one thing and followed with silence “How do you expect me to believe you wrote this?” This was so awful I was falling apart inside, somehow I had composure enough to reply; I said that I was a long fan of Gerald Scarfe’s work and cited the sources of much of the research. He said you are resitting your GCSE English, how do you expect me to believe you can write like this; tell me what does didactic mean? I responded with a near perfect Oxford English Dictionary definition of didactic and went on to tell him that his prejudgement was abhorrent, that I could not find any mitigating circumstances for his behaviour, turned around and walked away with my heart racing and left the classroom without looking back as I had no other words.
I went straight to the Head of Art at the College’s office, I was really tearful but back then I would never let anyone see that so when I spoke to her I was composed; Mick the Prick had already levelled accusations about my work to her, she had been to speak to my English teacher who had sung my praises and I could see my work on her desk that she had been reading. Needless to say she reassured me. I never got an apology from my Art History teacher; and yes, I got a distinction for the work, thank you Jasmin (and an A* for English GCSE).
The Head of Art told me then that Mick had seen a scruffy cockney kid who he barely knew and just couldn’t reconcile his bias with my work. That was on him.
Fortunately I didn’t go to university, I had applied for the third time and the third time had offers for places I didn’t really want to go to; instead I went to work in IT and was so fortunate to, from my own merits, secure an excellent and developing position in a non-for-profit organisation that worked with business and was a strong proponent of plain English and clear messaging.
If only AI models were trained on the Plain English Campaign’s content they might not output the hyperbolic drivel that they often do…
