Should the telescope get the credit?? Or the human with the curiosity and intuition to point it.

Lately, I’ve noticed a strange and somewhat ironic trend here on a subreddit about AI of all places.

I’ll post a complex idea I’ve mulled over for months, and alongside the thoughtful discussion, a few users will jump in with an accusation: “You just used AI for this.”

As if that alone invalidates the thought behind it. The implication is clear:

“If AI helped, your effort doesn’t count.”

Here’s the thing: They’re right. I do use AI.

But not to do the thinking for me, (which it’s pretty poor at unguided)

I use it to think with me. To sharpen my ideas and clarify what I’m truly trying to say.

I debate it, I ask it to fact check my thoughts, I cut stuff out and add stuff in.

I’m sure how I communicate is increasingly influenced by it, as is the case with more and more of us

**I OWN the output, I’ve read it and agree that it’s the clearest most authentic version of the idea I’m trying to communicate..

The accusation makes me wonder…. Do we only give credit to astronomers who discovered planets with the naked eye? If you use a spell checker or a grammar tool, does that invalidate your entire piece of writing?

Of course not. We recognize them as tools. How is AI different?

That’s how I see AI: it’s like a telescope. A telescope reveals what we cannot see alone, but it still requires a human—the curiosity, the imagination, the instinct—to know where to point it.

*I like it think of ai as a “macroscope” for the sort of ideas I explore. It helps me verify patterns across the corpus of human knowledge…it helps me communicate ideas that are abstract in the clearest way possible…avoid text walls

Now, I absolutely understand the fear of “AI slop”—that soulless, zero-effort, copy-paste content. Our precious internet becomes dominated by this souless, thoughtless dribble…

Worse even still it could take away our curiosity…because it already knows everything..not now, but maybe soon

Soooooo the risk that we might stop trying to discover things/communicate things for ourselves is real. And I respect it

But that isn’t the only path forward. AI can either be a crutch that weakens our thinking, or a lever that multiplies it. We humans are an animal that leverages tools to enhance our ability, it’s our defining trait

So, maybe the question we should be asking isn’t:

“Did you use AI?”

But rather:

How did you use it?”

• Did it help you express something more clearly, more honestly?
• Did it push you to question and refine your own thinking?
• Did you actively shape, challenge, and ultimately own the final result?

I’m asking these questions because these are challenges we’re going to increasingly face. These tools are becoming a permanent part of our world, woven into the very fabric of our creative process and how we communicate.

The real work is in the thinking, the curiosity, the intuition, and that part remains deeply human. Let’s rise to the moment and figure how to preserve what’s most important amidst this accelerating change

Has anyone else felt this tension? How do you strike the balance between using AI to think better versus the perception that it diminishes the work? How can we use these tools to enhance our thinking rather than flatten it? How can we thrive with these tools?

**Out of respect for this controversial topic this post was entirely typed by me- I just feel like this is a conversation we increasingly need to have..