Why AI-Assisted Writing Has Become Common: Writing Is Difficult

Summary

This opinion essay examines why professionals and students increasingly use AI to help produce written work. It begins with the controversy surrounding UC Berkeley mathematics professor Zvezdelina Stankova, whose essay criticizing some students' preparation was assessed by the AI detector Pangram as 33% AI-generated or AI-assisted. Stankova said AI helped edit the piece, while several hundred person-hours of human work, including about 80 of her own, went into it. The article also cites investor Stanley Druckenmiller's admission that AI helped write a Wall Street Journal column, which drew criticism while the newspaper continued to stand by the essay. The author argues that saving time is one reason people accept visibly imperfect AI prose when the alternative is writing less or not writing at all. Another reason is that essay writing requires more than having ideas: it demands structure, organization, transitions, grammar, style, and sustained narration. The article contrasts this with the relative ease of expressing ideas in short social-media posts. It also argues that undisclosed AI assistance is controversial because readers generally assume the named author wrote the work, making AI-assisted authorship closer to uncredited ghostwriting than to using a simple writing instrument. The author concludes that AI still struggles to turn notes into natural-sounding essays, though the author used AI to identify errors in this essay as well.