When smoothness starts to feel like improvement, your writing can lose the cultural architecture that makes it yours. You cannot protect what you haven’t named.
Dallas, your storytelling is top-notch. The way you connected AI smoothing our writing voice to language, identity, family, place, and the quiet pull toward the sensible default was just beautiful. And a bit painful in the best way. I’m also so fascinated by Maori culture, and the way you brought that layer into the piece made it feel even richer.
This line really stayed with me: you cannot protect what you haven’t named. That feels so true for writing voice but also for creative identity in general. If we don’t know what carries our specific weight, our odd little phrases, our metaphors, our cultural fingerprints, then of course AI will happily polish them into something technically fine and completely weightless.
Dallas, you’ve articulated the exact danger of the generic AI voice we are all swimming in. The risk in using AI to write is that it offers us a perfectly acceptable, frictionless alternative, and because we’re cognitively overloaded, we take it.
But look closer and it’s a shiny wrapper around an empty core.
This is why we have to draw hard boundaries around the parts of our work that carry our real voice - the burstiness, contradictions, our very human mess. Letting the tool sand that down for the sake of speed, we lose the one thing that makes a person read our work instead of someone else's.
IMO AI does have a place in your writing process, you just have to be intentional about where and how you use it.
Thank you, Mariam! I think what stands out to me the most in Substack is I often cannot tell much about a person in their writing, it's hard to see who the are - in all the many ways that matter, not just a location. I want to see all the wonder!
AI can be hugely helpful, but I am increasingly aware there needs to be a calibration to who you are, your identity, and teaching AI what that looks like or it gets levelled out.
Over the process of forming this post, as Claude became more exposed to the content, it's way of speaking to me changed significantly. It started inserting Maori words that form our everyday lexicon in NZ, it changed cadence in a remarkable way. I have not specifically added that to a skill yet, so found that quite fascinating to dive into!
I chose such a beautiful piece of writing to read before bed. The storytelling in here is just beautiful, and it is so clear that the shape of who you are is protected in your writing.
It had me thinking so much about my family history... similar to you there are ways I can't claim the same history as my Mom's father (he wasn't her biological father) but I feel so deeply connected to him, even though I didn't know him. And although it dosn't necessarily show up in how I speak, culture and heritage is something I care deeply about not being flattened or shaved away by AI.
This writing just touched ME, and touches on so many important things Dallas. And FWIW the dusty neural filing cabinet was one of my favorite lines!! I noticed it right away ♡
Natalie, thank you for your incredibly sweet words. This really feels like the most important post I have ever written. We talk about these issues in New Zealand a lot, not necessarily in the context of AI, but in this ongoing conversation about how do we honour and give rightful place to the culture and language of the indigenous people of New Zealand? How do we preserve the richness of what we hold here for generations to come after working so hard to bring it back?
AI smooths out the edges, and I find myself increasingly in my corner wanting to see the edges - I want to read the weird words and phrases, the funny family quirks that pop up unexpectedly. I want the sayings that don't translate well to English but to see people use them anyway!
We have so much more in common the more we go along, Natalie! Love that so much 🩷
You are keeping the legacy going Dallas. You have taught me so much about New Zealand, about Stan Walker, about Maori culture... things I wouldn't have known without you. And even the current state of affairs - i had no idea about the English Language Bill. You are doing important work by bringing up these conversations Dallas. ❤️
And yes everytime I find more out about you I think the same thing! I've shared a bit with Fran because it's quite the trip understanding our genealogy. But the more you dig back the more you want to protect it
If you visit NZ one day, you're fully primed to dive right in and see the layer underneath the obvious! Stan represents, to me, a way bigger conversation than I can ever cover here, but next time we chat I can tell you 😊
Love that you've had some chats with Fran about that! I love genealogy too and have spent so much time in ancestry.com - my Dad swore there was a family castle in Denmark he'd seen photos of and I wanted to find it. There is no castle 🤣🤦🏻♀️
Protecting and learning to treasure where we come from is everything.
The aoleu made me smile 😂❤️ and then the rest of this undid me!!!
I grew up between Romanian and Spanish and English and Armenian and there are feelings that only exist in one of those languages and nowhere else.
My Armenian grandmother had so many words for feelings tht I've never been able to translate and I've stopped trying. When I write in English I carry those untranslatable things underneath and I think that's part of why my writing sounds like it does.
AI has no access to that layer. It can mimic the surface but it can't carry what lives below it.
Thank you so much for this piece and the beauty of it! 🥰
Mia, I love Romanian so much! It has such a beautiful musical sound to me. Each time I speak the Romanian phrases and words I carry, I find it also an act of remembering a time, place and people who shaped me greatly.
What an incredible heritage you have!! It definitely comes through in your writing in such a beautiful, particular "Mia-ness". I would LOVE to read your work when you are not confined to just English but move between all the languages of your heart to express the message and intent just so (I would be so curious to see what AI could do to explain the parts I cannot understand as well!).
Thank you so much for your lovely words, I appreciate you foarte mult!! 🩷
Such a beautiful and deeply reflective piece, Dallas! I love how you've weaved together your grandfather's heritage with the habits that we now form when interacting with AI. Very good reminder that our unique voice holds a piece of history, and we shouldn't casually trade it away just because a machine offers a tidier sentence. Thank you for writing this. 🩵
Thank you for your kind words, Anna 🩷 I've been so deeply in the depths of this and wondering if I should even publish it, if it was for my voice to share.
AI is so busy smoothing out what it understands as rough edges, it concerns me what we then believe about ourselves and the stories we carry, the things we quietly let go of because of it. We need to keep remembering who we are and where we come from, and that the smooth centre is really just a constructed fiction.
Yes, I completely agree with you, and I appreciate you sharing this with us.
I had a wonderful conversation with someone who is encouraging older generations to write down as much as they can remember about their heritage and stories so that they can be passed on to younger generations who would not have any knowledge of it before the age of AI. I thought that was a great idea and so needed. Your writing also preserves the texture of lived history.
Oh I love this idea and what a marvellous conversation to have! I used to ask a particular grandparent to do this and they couldn't seem to grasp why it was important or why we would care. Once they go, we're left trying to put together pieces of who they were and understanding what was inherited.
Perfect timing, Dallas. I'm working on an essay. Working title, Your Relationship with Technology? Healthy or Toxic? Theme: Whether you’re excited, ambivalent, or disgusted by the growing prominence of AI tools and topics, I offer a new perspective on how your work and thinking is changing in the new environment. Context: Language as humanity's superpower.
Dallas, your storytelling is top-notch. The way you connected AI smoothing our writing voice to language, identity, family, place, and the quiet pull toward the sensible default was just beautiful. And a bit painful in the best way. I’m also so fascinated by Maori culture, and the way you brought that layer into the piece made it feel even richer.
This line really stayed with me: you cannot protect what you haven’t named. That feels so true for writing voice but also for creative identity in general. If we don’t know what carries our specific weight, our odd little phrases, our metaphors, our cultural fingerprints, then of course AI will happily polish them into something technically fine and completely weightless.
Such a beautiful and important piece. 🩷🦩
Dallas, you’ve articulated the exact danger of the generic AI voice we are all swimming in. The risk in using AI to write is that it offers us a perfectly acceptable, frictionless alternative, and because we’re cognitively overloaded, we take it.
But look closer and it’s a shiny wrapper around an empty core.
This is why we have to draw hard boundaries around the parts of our work that carry our real voice - the burstiness, contradictions, our very human mess. Letting the tool sand that down for the sake of speed, we lose the one thing that makes a person read our work instead of someone else's.
IMO AI does have a place in your writing process, you just have to be intentional about where and how you use it.
Thank you, Mariam! I think what stands out to me the most in Substack is I often cannot tell much about a person in their writing, it's hard to see who the are - in all the many ways that matter, not just a location. I want to see all the wonder!
AI can be hugely helpful, but I am increasingly aware there needs to be a calibration to who you are, your identity, and teaching AI what that looks like or it gets levelled out.
Over the process of forming this post, as Claude became more exposed to the content, it's way of speaking to me changed significantly. It started inserting Maori words that form our everyday lexicon in NZ, it changed cadence in a remarkable way. I have not specifically added that to a skill yet, so found that quite fascinating to dive into!
I chose such a beautiful piece of writing to read before bed. The storytelling in here is just beautiful, and it is so clear that the shape of who you are is protected in your writing.
It had me thinking so much about my family history... similar to you there are ways I can't claim the same history as my Mom's father (he wasn't her biological father) but I feel so deeply connected to him, even though I didn't know him. And although it dosn't necessarily show up in how I speak, culture and heritage is something I care deeply about not being flattened or shaved away by AI.
This writing just touched ME, and touches on so many important things Dallas. And FWIW the dusty neural filing cabinet was one of my favorite lines!! I noticed it right away ♡
Natalie, thank you for your incredibly sweet words. This really feels like the most important post I have ever written. We talk about these issues in New Zealand a lot, not necessarily in the context of AI, but in this ongoing conversation about how do we honour and give rightful place to the culture and language of the indigenous people of New Zealand? How do we preserve the richness of what we hold here for generations to come after working so hard to bring it back?
AI smooths out the edges, and I find myself increasingly in my corner wanting to see the edges - I want to read the weird words and phrases, the funny family quirks that pop up unexpectedly. I want the sayings that don't translate well to English but to see people use them anyway!
We have so much more in common the more we go along, Natalie! Love that so much 🩷
You are keeping the legacy going Dallas. You have taught me so much about New Zealand, about Stan Walker, about Maori culture... things I wouldn't have known without you. And even the current state of affairs - i had no idea about the English Language Bill. You are doing important work by bringing up these conversations Dallas. ❤️
And yes everytime I find more out about you I think the same thing! I've shared a bit with Fran because it's quite the trip understanding our genealogy. But the more you dig back the more you want to protect it
If you visit NZ one day, you're fully primed to dive right in and see the layer underneath the obvious! Stan represents, to me, a way bigger conversation than I can ever cover here, but next time we chat I can tell you 😊
Love that you've had some chats with Fran about that! I love genealogy too and have spent so much time in ancestry.com - my Dad swore there was a family castle in Denmark he'd seen photos of and I wanted to find it. There is no castle 🤣🤦🏻♀️
Protecting and learning to treasure where we come from is everything.
Ohhh how I would love to visit NZ one day!
And here's to hoping maybe ... Ancestry was wrong?! 😆🏰
Ive spent time on there too and it is a rabbit hole! So fascinating.
But you are right Dallas, protecting that is everything. ♡
The aoleu made me smile 😂❤️ and then the rest of this undid me!!!
I grew up between Romanian and Spanish and English and Armenian and there are feelings that only exist in one of those languages and nowhere else.
My Armenian grandmother had so many words for feelings tht I've never been able to translate and I've stopped trying. When I write in English I carry those untranslatable things underneath and I think that's part of why my writing sounds like it does.
AI has no access to that layer. It can mimic the surface but it can't carry what lives below it.
Thank you so much for this piece and the beauty of it! 🥰
Mia, I love Romanian so much! It has such a beautiful musical sound to me. Each time I speak the Romanian phrases and words I carry, I find it also an act of remembering a time, place and people who shaped me greatly.
What an incredible heritage you have!! It definitely comes through in your writing in such a beautiful, particular "Mia-ness". I would LOVE to read your work when you are not confined to just English but move between all the languages of your heart to express the message and intent just so (I would be so curious to see what AI could do to explain the parts I cannot understand as well!).
Thank you so much for your lovely words, I appreciate you foarte mult!! 🩷
I appreciate you foarte mult too! ❤️🥰
Such a beautiful and deeply reflective piece, Dallas! I love how you've weaved together your grandfather's heritage with the habits that we now form when interacting with AI. Very good reminder that our unique voice holds a piece of history, and we shouldn't casually trade it away just because a machine offers a tidier sentence. Thank you for writing this. 🩵
Thank you for your kind words, Anna 🩷 I've been so deeply in the depths of this and wondering if I should even publish it, if it was for my voice to share.
AI is so busy smoothing out what it understands as rough edges, it concerns me what we then believe about ourselves and the stories we carry, the things we quietly let go of because of it. We need to keep remembering who we are and where we come from, and that the smooth centre is really just a constructed fiction.
Yes, I completely agree with you, and I appreciate you sharing this with us.
I had a wonderful conversation with someone who is encouraging older generations to write down as much as they can remember about their heritage and stories so that they can be passed on to younger generations who would not have any knowledge of it before the age of AI. I thought that was a great idea and so needed. Your writing also preserves the texture of lived history.
Oh I love this idea and what a marvellous conversation to have! I used to ask a particular grandparent to do this and they couldn't seem to grasp why it was important or why we would care. Once they go, we're left trying to put together pieces of who they were and understanding what was inherited.
Perfect timing, Dallas. I'm working on an essay. Working title, Your Relationship with Technology? Healthy or Toxic? Theme: Whether you’re excited, ambivalent, or disgusted by the growing prominence of AI tools and topics, I offer a new perspective on how your work and thinking is changing in the new environment. Context: Language as humanity's superpower.
Glad you enjoyed the read, Georgia!