WRITING | READING | MEDIUM

How AI is disturbing my Medium reader experience and making me explore less

(what’s on and what now, seen from a reader’s perspective)

From the Gardening Books section in my library at Bayt al-Andalus, Belgium — flaleman, 2021

Medium has long been a platform for writers to connect with a curious and engaged audience. As a writer, I have been a happy contributor for some time now.

But wait a minute.

I am not afraid of ChatGTP

Unlike many other writers, when AI language models appeared for mass use, such as ChatGTP in the fall of 2022 and Google Bard a few months later, I was not too impressed. No panic in my house! — and certainly no fears that ChatGTP was about to make my work obsolete or anything of the sort. Sheer originality and weird boundary-crossing between fields seemingly far apart have always been my hallmark, and the stuff that ChatGTP came up with — upon my prompts, however well-versed and finetuned and cunning and witty — was blatantly low quality rubbish.

My writing has always been truly personal — and I have always nurtured the idea of not snugly fitting into the algorithm as a token of honor. I am a multilingual and tend to use a mixture of expressions à la bonne heure, taken from different cultures and languages. And my background: imagine a…