Are You Using AI (Or Is It Using You)?
The whole of life is the game of where we draw the line. Play yours on purpose.
If you’re reading this, you’re already in the game. You’re either using AI knowingly — hopefully with some intention and integrity — or you’re being used by it, because an algorithm was in play in getting this to you. You’re playing with AI, or AI is playing with you.
The idea for this piece arrived where they usually do. I go for a combined walk and run at a nearby cemetery every day — exercise for my physical body, but also for my spiritual and psychological body, because I’m there surrounded by reminders that life is finite and any meaning it has will be determined by the difference I’m making while I have time to make it.
During a recent walk, I was listening to an Alan Watts lecture I’ve listened to many times, Reality, Art and Illusion. In it, he says: “The whole of life is the game of where are we going to draw the line?”
Watts begins with the observation that we live in a wiggly world. It’s human beings who put the lines in, trying to create order out of the wiggly noise that is the cosmos, the natural world, the human mind, and our relationship with it all (not to mention with ourselves and each other).
Decision is a really interesting word here. Its root is the Latin decidere — to cut away or to cut off. The etymology of the word reveals that when you make a decision, you are cutting away all the other decisions you could have made. Caedere can also mean kill. You’re killing off every other option because you’ve decided on this one.1
In other words, the decisions that you make and act on reveal where you’re actually drawing the line in any position or endeavor you’re engaged in.
Which brings me to the line we’re all deciding right now.
A new player on the field
Substack has put a new player on the field: an AI tool, Pangram, that scores posts and Notes on pattern recognition — a zero-to-100 percentage of how much of the word choice and sequence was generated by AI.
I’ll admit that when the tool first appeared, the first thing I did was, “Holy shit, I’ve got to check my score.” My first check came back 100% human. (“Oh, thank God.”) The next check came back 100% AI. (“Oh no — what are people going to think?”)2
My friend and Circle member Seth Werkheiser asked the question that applies here: “Who’s watching the watcher?” Which begs another question: “Who’s scoring the scorer?” But the more important question is: “What exactly is the scorer scoring (and what does that score actually mean)?”
Here’s what the score tells you: how much of the word and word sequence and punctuation choices were generated by a tool.
But here’s what it doesn’t tell you: Who came up with the idea. Who came up with the outline. Who developed the intention for the impact on the reader. Who is taking responsibility for the words that get printed under their name.
In other words, the scorer isn’t (and can’t) judge the judgment (the creator’s discernment, deliberation, discipline, decision-making, and discretion).
Most of the writers I know who use AI aren’t using it to abdicate their authorship. They’re using it to amplify their intelligence — their ability to get clearer about and closer to what they are trying to accomplish on behalf of their audience. They use the tool to enhance their work’s ability to connect with and transform the readers who will benefit from colliding with their art.
Worth naming here: “AI” is two different machines wearing one name.
Generative AI makes things when you ask — drafts, images, answers. You choose it, you prompt it, and you’re responsible for what you ship. That’s the kind I use, out loud, with a disclosure on everything it helps me make.
The other kind doesn’t make anything. It decides things — about you. It ranks your feed. It chose to show you this post. The Pangram scanner is this second kind: nobody prompts it, nobody signs its verdicts, and it decides how your work gets read.
Different tools, different debts. The generative kind owes the writers it learned from, and I’ve written about paying my share. The deciding kind owes us our attention, our data, and our say — and sends no invoice.
The AI I use answers to me. The AI that uses us answers to no one we can name.
Two lines, drawn close to home
Earlier this year I published Intrepid: Dare to Make a Difference — a book of 27 questions to help people define, develop, and deliver the difference only they can make. It was written with some assistance from an AI collaborator, and it says so in an AI collaboration statement on page one, before you even reach the table of contents.
A local shop reviewed it, liked it, and asked for ten copies. Then, last week, I received an email. They’re drawing a line and establishing a position that they will not shelve any books created by AI or with the help of AI. My book is off their shelves, and no longer scheduled for an author event later this month. I’ve already picked up my book and taken the event off my calendar.
(If you’d like to see how an “AI-assisted” book can deliver a difference-worth-making with the effortful intention of enhancing a reader's experience, consdider picking up a copy!)
Sure, my feelings are hurt a bit. I don’t like to be judged or misunderstood. From my perspective, the store’s stance exceeds even that of the Authors Guild. I also believe “created with the help of AI” is doing a lot of heavy lifting — between not-touched-at-all-by-AI and completely-generated-by-AI, there is a lot of gray area and room for discussion.
But I was a brick-and-mortar store owner myself. I made lots of decisions about what I would and would not carry. I changed my mind from time to time. That’s a business owner’s prerogative. It’s a defensible position that I disagree with, and we can disagree without being disagreeable.
Here’s a bit that surprises some people who are aware of this situation. I’m still hosting a monthly event called The Good Life Gathering at their shop. Why? Because I don’t think we solve anything by disengaging.
The same weekend, a very different line. I had posted that “never AI ever” is a simplistic, rigid, and fragile position — which was, to my chagrin, an overstatement of what I’d actually written in my articles (I’m actually somewhat embarrassed I said it that way). A friend pushed back hard: after a lot of research and deliberation, their position is never AI ever — and calling that position simplistic, they said, is akin to calling “never slavery ever” simplistic, rigid, and fragile.
For me, comparing the choice to thoughtfully engage a technology with defending human-on-human crime fails on the merits. I also believe that sharing the claim that there is no ethical use of AI on a platform that is one of the biggest AI promoters and profiteers ever contradicts that stance.
Here’s what happened next, and it’s the part worth writing about.
They didn’t dig in. They showed their work. They joined that platform twenty years ago — before any of us knew what it would cost, before the data mining, before the AI none of us can opt out of. Their network lives there.
Extracting themselves comes at a price they're still finding the bandwidth to pay, and in the meantime they changed how they use it: fewer of their own words, no photos of the people they love, communities that fight for what they believe in.
That’s not hypocrisy. That’s a person holding a hard line inside a compromised world — the only place any of us gets to hold one. I still think their analogy fails. They still think my line falls short of trying hard enough. And every exchange has made both of our positions better, which was the whole point of the post.
Drawing your line on purpose
We’re all going to be complicit. It’s going to be impossible to stay clean in this complicated world where we are either using AI or being used by it almost all the time we’re online. Abstinence is an impossible choice. If you’re online, AI is part of the conversation for you, whether you want to have it or not.
My position is that it is better to make the decision consciously and conscientiously — on purpose. An informed position you’re prepared to change when you’re provided with evidence that requires you to rethink, reframe, or revise it.3
The sins to avoid are dull, distracted, and delusional.
Dull is autopilot — using the tools, or refusing them, without ever really deciding, while the promise recedes behind everything that feels urgent.
Distracted is letting the feed (or anyone else) decide for you — making more noise and stealing more attention with nothing to offer but the stolen attention.
Delusional is believing you’re standing outside the game — that your hands are clean because your line is.
The virtues to avoid these sins are receptivity, restraint, and responsibility.
Receptivity opens the floor to better thinking, better ideas, and better data.
Restraint remembers that more for more’s sake is a trap.
Responsibility takes full ownership of the words that get printed under your name. Who approved this? Me, always.
Then do some research. Figure out what your usage actually costs. By Google’s measured numbers, a year of my heaviest AI use costs about one cheeseburger. By my critics’ most pessimistic math, it costs about a weekly burger habit. I’ll accept either price.
And know where AI actually lives in your life.
For most of us, it’s the feed. An average daily Facebook scroll emits roughly three times the carbon of my entire year of writing with the machine — and the platform discloses none of it. Anyone moving toward an AI-free life will get further, faster, starting with their scroll than with their shelf. Mine included.
But don’t stop at the cost. What’s the value of your use? How does it enhance the work you do and its ability to create the change you want to make with the people you care about?4
Where I land
This article is part of an ongoing conversation I’m having with myself and my readers about trying to figure out where I am, where I stand, where I’m going, and where I need to reconsider — out loud, with the floor open to anyone who wants to weigh in.
The only game that’s worth playing is your game. Play it on your terms, with as little compromise as you can.
Where, when, how, and why will you use AI — and where, when, how, and why won’t you?
Draw your line. And draw it on purpose.
Onward.
Scott
PS. Before you post a comment shaming someone over their AI position — for using it or for refusing it — here’s a self-check you can run first. You can paste it into any AI assistant or do it yourself (which is, of course, part of the point):
Before I post a public comment criticizing someone for using AI in their creative work, I want you to help me check myself. Act as an honest friend, not a cheerleader — do not flatter me, and push back where my reasoning is inconsistent.
Interview me ONE question at a time. Wait for my answer before asking the next. Cover all six:
THE WORK. What did this person actually make, and what did they disclose about how they made it? Am I reacting to their work, or to their disclosure?
MY OWN USE. Where does AI already live in my life — the feed that showed me their post, the platform I’m about to post on, my search engine, my phone, my recommendations? List what I use daily, and note that this conversation itself is one of them.
PROPORTION. Do I know the actual measured footprint of what I’m criticizing versus the footprint of my own scrolling, driving, and eating? If I don’t know the numbers, should I be arguing from them?
MY LINE. Is my position on AI a practice I hold myself to — with reasons I can name and costs I’ve accepted — or a verdict I’m handing down to someone else? When did I last change my mind about anything like this?
THE PERSON. What do I actually know about their intent, effort, and judgment? Is there a question I could ask them that would teach me something, instead of a statement that would teach them nothing?
THE GOAL. What do I want my comment to accomplish? If it works perfectly, what happens? Would I say this sentence to their face, across a table?
When we’re done: if my criticism survived the check, help me rewrite it as an invitation to a real conversation — curious, specific, and aimed at their ideas rather than their character. If it didn’t survive, tell me plainly what fell apart, and help me decide whether the better move is a question, a private message, or nothing at all.
Disagreement is welcome. Shame is not the goal. Curiosity and offense can’t occupy the same space.
Revised August 2026: added the comparison between generative and algorithmic AI, prompted by conversations with readers. I said I’d change this position when given reason to sharpen it. This is what that looks like.
This piece is part of an ongoing conversation: Judge the Presence, Not the Score → The Debt & The Standard → Are You Using AI (Or Is It Using You)?
Written with the assistance of Claude.ai. The thinking and the responsibility are mine.
Click here to learn how and why I work this way.
I use it. I was a bit nervous about it as I thought I needed to know it rather than AI help me.
It maybe my experience of AI in a previous life of how bad it was used.
It certainly helps but you still need to think.
I always lived leaning various skills but at least I don’t need to ask an expert I can get some information then ask the expert a more expert question.
I love AI it helps me do things I thought I just was incapable of doing. Such as writing well 😂 I can write better.
By the way I did not get AI to check. Maybe I should but I didn’t
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on AI, I use AI to help me with my writing skills because of my dyslexia which can be a challenge for me.