Defensible Use of AI in Writing (Like This)

harlan@harris.name (Harlan Harris) — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

If AI helps me get ideas from my head to the readers' heads faster, that's good. Society thrives when ideas are shared, critiqued, and built on. But authors shouldn't take credit for other peoples' ideas -- they should synthesize others' ideas, including the "blurry JPG of the web" that is LLMs. The question is: what makes AI-assisted writing defensible? When is it helpful to society, and when is it plagiarism? When can you still be considered the author of AI-assisted writing?

Writing on Harlan D. Harris

Defensible Use of AI in Writing (Like This)