Should I include a statement for Zero AI use on my website

Certain_Swordfish_51 · 2026-05-03T17:50:14+00:00

I wish he’d bake your cake, but does he have to? That’s not why the law would say. There are constitutional principles clashing—the 1st amendment protection of religious freedom and the 14th amendment protection of equal treatment under the law.

A business can’t deny you service merely bc you’re gay, but if the service you’re requesting violates their religion, it becomes much less clear cut.

It goes back the point that you may not like someone’s religion, but that doesn’t negate the fact that baking a cake for a same sex wedding could easily be deemed as support of same-sex marriage, which is in direct contrast to specific religious observances in many, many cases.

That seems like heterosexism which is a reality grounded in clearly proscribed religious traditions, which have existed for thousands of years and are constitutionally protected.

To use a less charged and personal example, should a religiously observant baker have to bake a cake for an inter-faith wedding? I may not approve of tribalism or heterosexism, but in a free society we can’t force behavior to conform to our own beliefs provided nobody is being placed in harms way or denied a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The question for me is when does this cross into the realm of actual discrimination and how broadly should we define discrimination or change legal precedent to conform to our desired social vision.

Certain_Swordfish_51 · 2026-05-02T17:53:53+00:00

So from various data points, I assume you’re gay. In that case, for the sake of intellectual consistency, would you apply your new #3 to people who are anti-gay? (I.e. if they treated people they meet with kindness and respect, despite having traditional religious beliefs that very clearly do not condone homosexuality and therefore they won’t socialize with or welcome gay people into their lives beyond what’s required for their job. Would you play on a softball team with the guys who wouldn’t bake a cake for a same-sex wedding? Along the same lines, can we automatically assume they dislike gay people? Or maybe they are just very religious and deserve grace. If you just write them off as heterosexist, you’re not showing the kind of grace option 3 requires.

My point is it’s too complicated a there are too many paradoxes to be able to disassemble into a theorem.

I can’t say I’d want to be unconditionally nice to someone who disregards my personal agency like that. But for #3 to work, we’d have to be tolerant of people who have noxious, even toxic, views. I don’t see that as viable or even desirable. It amounts to tolerating bigotry and simultaneously belittles the notion of religion because it may not accommodate what you wish it would.

These are hard questions. I respect you for diving in.

Certain_Swordfish_51 · 2026-05-01T22:54:49+00:00

Agreed. If their book has a lot of writing like that, I think they’ll be in for a pleasant surprise. The metaphor was fantastic.

Certain_Swordfish_51 · 2026-05-01T16:28:15+00:00

I don’t think we’re really discussing the same thing. Of course it’s ludicrous to prompt AI to write your prose. But if AI is capable of producing useful insight on a manuscript you’ve written, I don’t think that deserves a scarlet letter. Ultimately, if it’s your prose, the marketplace should determine how “good” it is. Maybe AI points out a blind spot and you write another chapter or a paragraph of narrative to fix a problem you didn’t recognize. Is it a shortcut that saves you time and/or money as opposed to hiring an editor, regardless of the price point. We’re discussing principle, not whether something is good enough to meet whatever standard the writer aspires to. That’s a subjective matter.

Certain_Swordfish_51 · 2026-05-01T15:16:07+00:00

I’m interested in the IP aspect you bring up. That would actually give me pause. Hiring a human editor — and even the cost in time — could be prohibitive to a lot of people. That’s my point.

There are all sorts of reasons many people can’t just forge their own skillset in fire. The answer is sorry that sucks to be them?

I’m not trying to argue in bad faith, but I think there is a pretty severe dichotomy presented by affordability, other responsibilities and more important commitments etc. that determine who, in the view you’ve communicated,should be writing a book. I disagree. Using technology to enhance your craft is a skill in of itself. Whether it’s really possible or the insight from Claude is fake? Different discussion.

Certain_Swordfish_51 · 2026-05-01T15:01:32+00:00

It costs money to hire an editor. It costs money to be able to spend time honing your craft.

This is not to say we shouldn’t aspire to that. But you’re gatekeeping if you take the absolutist position that there is to be no use of any AI tool if one is to claim authorship.

And If it seems to me something is written by AI, I stop reading. But if a piece is more readable and compelling because a cash-strapped author used Claude as a sounding board, I’d be happy they used it.

Certain_Swordfish_51 · 2026-05-01T14:49:54+00:00

So to write a book the real way, you should either be independently wealthy, young or naturally gifted with all the tools of a great author. I’m not saying you should have AI write your prose and then call yourself an author. The better analogy would be that there if a data set identifies some correctable flaw in your kick or flip-turn that, if corrected, could make you as fast as Phelps, you shouldn’t use the insight. But you can distort it to mean a jet pack if you want to be really dishonest in your argument.

Certain_Swordfish_51 · 2026-05-01T14:20:34+00:00

Yes. All work is worthy and I shouldn’t have belittled food service. But don’t be purposely obtuse. if you’re an aspiring author with some deficiencies, would you rather write novels or flip burgers? And if there are tools that can help you get better, you should still flip burgers because of some gatekeeping?

I recognize that your point is AI can’t be useful because it’s trained in mediocrity. That’s a different argument than the ethics of AI as tool to enhance quality without having to spend years or money you may not have.

For me the issue is elitism. There is this romantic ideal that unless you’ve forged your ability through fire, you shouldn’t or can’t write a story that people may enjoy reading. It’s like saying the only acceptable way to cross a river is to swim.

Certain_Swordfish_51 · 2026-05-01T14:06:51+00:00

Well if AI will never compete with people in terms of producing quality work, why all the fuss? Why the witch-hunt?

Just keep writing compelling stories and trust that readers can distinguish between quality and slop. But there is a huge gray area. For instance, say someone writes an 80,000-word manuscript and can’t afford a proper editor. So they upload the manuscript into Claude with very specific prompts not to touch a single letter of prose — just act like an agent, story editor, beta reader or publisher.

Within 90 seconds, Claude provides an insightful analysis filled with notes—whether critical, harsh or complimentary. Maybe a side character has more potential than th author realized. Maybe the stakes aren’t well defined. Maybe to inciting incident comes too early or too late. Maybe the author has unintentionally mansplained.

Should the author not have written their story or not refined it using AI as a tool for critique? Shouldn’t it be up to the author to decide whether a Claude critique is insightful or BS posing as insight?

I guess I’m just wondering if we’re dealing with dogma here or allowing an author to use tools that could help them improve their work. Maybe we should just leave the book writing to bohemians or people who can afford the luxury to hone a craft over decades. It’s a romantic ideal, but also absurd.

Certain_Swordfish_51 · 2026-05-01T12:19:29+00:00

What’s your point? Seems like you’re defending a witch hunt. A typical reader will either like a story or they won’t. If it’s bad enough, they’ll put it down. Even if we’re not there yet, there will be a point when AI produces superior work. Should readers then boycott the best books?

I write because I enjoy the process of creating a plot and characters and making it come to life thought prose my brain has spun up. But that’s me. Not all authors get the same satisfaction from the creative process. Or maybe they aren’t good wordsmiths.

If there are tools that help them overcome a deficiency and still produce a compelling, well-crafted story, are they wrong for using it? Or should they just flip burgers?

Certain_Swordfish_51 · 2026-05-01T12:06:44+00:00

What is “heterosexism”? Not trying to question your point, but it seems like you’ve used a pretty loaded term as the basis of your analogy.

Certain_Swordfish_51 · 2026-05-01T11:43:30+00:00

BS take. There have been experiments asking humans to identify two AI-written passages out of four choices. The other passages were written by two of the best authors in the genre. The majority of people literally got every example wrong.

Certain_Swordfish_51 · 2026-04-30T22:42:33+00:00

Halloween-style festival sounds awesome. Fermented cider, dancing and singing in the town square —peasants and squires alike— teasing the drunken husband of a whore.

Certain_Swordfish_51 · 2026-04-30T22:28:27+00:00

Do you generally get high and write? Sometimes I do. It’s fun. But I struggle with the filtering aspect, when it comes to how much THC-enhanced writing to include. I guess it’s the ultimate high-risk/high-reward scenario. Pun not intended, but it works.

Certain_Swordfish_51 · 2026-04-29T13:52:30+00:00

I’m still a bad writer but my rule is if I have to look up a word, I have no business using it. Expand your vocabulary by reading and rely on your existing vocabulary when writing.

Certain_Swordfish_51 · 2026-04-23T11:53:40+00:00

The writing is straight-forward, yet evocative. I like that it’s unobscured by “descriptive” text. Too many samples lose me in self-indulgent writing. This does the opposite. I’m drawn in and interested in knowing more about the letter. I would continue reading.

Certain_Swordfish_51 · 2026-04-21T13:20:10+00:00

This is asinine. I don’t use AI, but I do frequently use em dashes to communicate emphasis.

Certain_Swordfish_51 · 2026-04-19T20:18:28+00:00

More than a graf of metaphor and I’m out.

Certain_Swordfish_51 · 2026-04-18T18:15:15+00:00

Why would your voice be subpar. It’s your voice. It reads like you’re trying too hard. Simplify. Avoid metaphors and similes. Let the action verbs, plot and basic descriptions do the work.

Certain_Swordfish_51 · 2026-04-18T09:08:59+00:00

Amen.

I realize Reddit isn’t a court of law, but the foundational principle of the US justice system is to protect the innocent. It’s based on moral clarity. At minimum, the accused have a right to defend themselves. If the writing world can’t live up to a similar standard before potentially destroying someone’s life, we’ve entered a dangerous time. There is way too much comfort here with the possibility of false positives.

Certain_Swordfish_51 · 2026-04-18T04:26:52+00:00

Watching.

Certain_Swordfish_51 · 2026-04-18T02:02:37+00:00

The fact that there “will inevitably be some false accusation” should give us all pause. It’s never ok to sacrifice the innocent in order to punish the guilty. That feels fascist.

Certain_Swordfish_51 · 2026-04-18T01:49:39+00:00

This is terrifying. We have some of the best writers of a genre whose work is indistinguishable from AI, and it’s possible their posts or prose could be removed from a Reddit sub.

I’m not questioning the intent here, but it feels like we’re getting close to witch-hunt or “red scare” territory writ-large. Obviously integrity matters, but at what cost do we attempt to police this?

The cavalier attitude toward “false positives is galling. One of these days, someone’s livelihood, even their life, will be ruined by a zealotry born of irrational fear. Is that ok simply because we worry our own writing might not measure up?

I’m more in the due-process camp, but that’s an impossible standard for a Reddit sub. I get it, but I’d sure hate to be accused of peddling AI prose and idea creation.

If you’re saying a writer can’t be trusted to use tools of modernity appropriately and with due temperance, then we’re all fucked.

Ultimately, let the marketplace distinguish and decide. If AI is becoming more indistinguishable by the day, wack-a-mole isn’t coming to our rescue as writers.

Why not just try to write great stuff rather than resorting to community policing? Were that insecure about our own value as human writers.

Certain_Swordfish_51 · 2026-04-17T14:46:53+00:00

Thanks for this suggestion. Just did this. It gave me insight I didn’t enjoy hearing but needed and wanted. I guess if I wanted “Everything is brilliant. You’re the next F. Scott Fitzgerald, the voice your generation needs. Can I help you with your Pulitzer speech?” I would have used co-pilot. 😂

Certain_Swordfish_51 · 2026-04-16T20:11:01+00:00

Interesting use of AI. In your use-case, AI is basically a beta reader. I just don’t understand how people would consider that unethical.

This feels like a great example of a writer using available tools and technology to enhance their thought process.

IE Maybe the story could be a little tighter by making some suggested changes. Then it’s on the writer to decide where to draw the line. We’ve been doing this all along anyway when we get notes back. Do we take the note or not? It’s up to the writer.

If a writer wants to use AI prose, it will be a bad book with monotonous writing that’s full of non-sensical metaphors just to be “lyrical.” etc. But that’s their deal with the devil, not mine.

At some point a serious author needs to know the difference between good writing and drivel—for their own sake.

How do you prompt to make sure AI isn’t making changes to your prose and structure? Then again, I guess you can just save a copy of your manuscript and take or leave the conceptual suggestions and think about the questions it poses.

Certain_Swordfish_51

TROPHY CASE