Reading Past the AI Layer

We’re all guilty of it. A post turns up,and three sentences in, we hit a run of perfectly even rhythm or a cannedflourish like “And that’s the whole point!” and decide a machine wrote it. Thenwe keep scrolling in search of “real” content.

We never find out what the writer had tosay because we’ve decided that anyone who didn’t write every word themselveshas nothing worth reading. So, if you’ve made it this far, thanks for the voteof confidence! Human Abby is grateful you’re still here.

When AI first exploded into public view,that “sounds like AI” reflex was understandable. Nobody was editing for thetells, and plenty of posts were machine-written from start to finish. Skipping themwas usually a reasonable call.

That’s no longer the situation.

A few weeks ago, a former colleagueposted something on LinkedIn. He’s sharp, and he’d be the first to tell you thatwriting is not his strong suit. The post had AI written all over it—almostliterally. I read it anyway because I knew him, and it turned out to be good.He connected a personal story to an idea that a lot of people in my networkwould benefit from hearing. I also know plenty of them scrolled right past it.

The Golf Cart Argument

This is not the first time a machine hasbeen accused of doing someone’s thinking for them.

In the spring of 1986, a high schoolmath teacher from Ohio traveled to Washington to protest the calculator. Shetold a reporter she wanted kids to learn to walk before they spent all dayriding around in golf carts. She was not alone. Teachers across the country sharedher concern, and school districts wrote rules keeping calculators out of early-gradeclassrooms. As late as 1990, nearly half of American fourth graders had neverbeen allowed to use one in class.

The worried teachers and parents lostthat argument. It took a long time, but calculators eventually made their wayinto classrooms as it became clear that the tool did not erase the differencebetween students who understood the math and students who were guessing.

A century earlier, a similar debateplayed out in photography. Because a machine made the picture, many peopleargued that there was no artist behind it. It took a Supreme Court case to helpsettle the question. Not everyone with an iPhone is Dorothea Lange, of course.But today, we recognize photography as an art form worthy of our attention. Thepurists lost that debate, too.

What Are We Trying to Prove?

95% of B2B organizations now use AIsomewhere in their marketing, according to the Content Marketing Institute. If“sounds like AI” is enough of a reason not to read something, there is not muchleft to read.

And what are we proving with that filter,anyway? That we’re above using AI? That the people around us should be aboveit? That writing is a gate that ought to remain closed to anyone who cannoteasily turn what’s in their head into polished prose?

Some of the sharpest people we work withdon’t enjoy writing. They know things about their businesses that took years tolearn, and they would much rather explain those things out loud than sit downand shape them into paragraphs. So they use a tool to get their ideas onto the page.The thinking is still theirs.

A Better Test: Is There a Person in Here?

That leaves a different question: whatshould we screen for instead?

Style is the wrong place to look becausestyle is often the part the machine changes. What AI can’t manufacture is a realstake in the subject. Instead of asking whether something “sounds like AI,” we shouldask two questions. A post needs to answer at least one of them well.

Is there something here we coulddisagree with? Nobodyhas ever taken the other side of “culture matters.” But saying you ungated yourcontent and increased qualified leads is a position that smart marketers willhave strong feelings about.

Is there something here that only thisperson could have written?Usually, that means a number from their own business, something a customer toldthem, or a pattern they can see from where they sit that nobody else can see.

That doesn’t meanthere’s no such thing as slop. There absolutely is. But slop is what happenswhen machines do the writing and the thinking. It’s cotton contentcandy: it looks great, but it’s gone the second you touch it. Tuning that outis completely reasonable.

The Work on Our End

The responsibility doesn’t fall only onthe reader. Asking people to give a post the benefit of the doubt creates anobligation for whoever wrote it: to make sure the person survives the process.

That’s a lot of what we do at Hencove.Somebody hands us a long interview or a rough first draft, and we find the realidea inside it. We help shape it, clarify it, and make it readable, but theunderlying thinking hasn’t changed.

Like the kids in Ohio, we just have newtools—and perhaps a bit more to prove.

The fourth graders who weren’t allowed near a calculator in 1986 arepushing 50 now. Some of them are the ones posting. The objection waiting forthem is the same one, just aimed at a different machine.