Essay: Why You Should Almost Never Use AI to Write Anything Substantive
erwald · hn · 2026-09-20
Erich Grunewald published a long-form essay arguing that AI should almost never be used to write substantive material (essays, papers, reports), which hit the Hacker News front page. His core arguments: LLM output tends to be smooth but hollow, lacking genuine thought and personal perspective; outsourcing writing undermines the thinking process itself, since writing is thinking; and when readers can no longer tell human-written from machine-written text, trust in writing erodes. The piece has sparked active debate on HN about AI's impact on knowledge work and writing.
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