An AI usage statement for bryanbraun.com

I’ve had “AI usage statements” in the back of my mind ever since I read Ethan Marcott’s blog post sharing a round-up of his favorite ones. I didn’t consider writing one for this site, since it had the smell of status-signaling. Like a quasi-political declaration of allegiance to some sort of in-group (be it pro-AI, anti-AI, etc). I couldn’t be less interested in that.1 But then something happened that caught me completely off-guard. I was reading a post on my friend’s personal blog. This was a guy that I knew personally and looked up to. I’ve been reading everything he had been writing for years. About two-thirds of the way through a long (and fairly insightful) blog post, I had a sudden realization that the post had been written by AI. I’m not the best at detecting this kind of thing, but once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it. It was unmistakable. And the thing is, I didn’t feel indifferent or even disappointed, as I might have predicted. I felt betrayed. For somebody who considers…