Say you want to write a book, even though writing isn’t exactly your core strength. But you’ve lived through plenty and know a fair bit. Enough for a book, your friends and colleagues reckon. You start researching and writing. Eventually you find a publisher who wants to publish your work. A professional editor reviews your manuscript, suggests improvements, makes it more accessible and readable. Together you polish the thing until it actually gets published.
Another scenario: You run a small business offering a service. A working student with expertise in your field has been helping you for six months. They’re brilliant, contributing significantly to your company’s success. You pay them a decent wage, though it’s not much. Your business is thriving. Nobody knows there’s a cheap student with superhuman skills behind the work.
Do you feel like a fraud? Or are you simply pleased with your choice of student and that your customers are satisfied?
The Value of the Visible and Invisible
When you use artificial intelligence as a tool and get the best out of it—not just letting it hallucinate, but feeding it your thoughts, texts, and ideas from the start, keeping it on a tight, professional leash: Are you a fraud if you deliver better texts? And should you mention you used AI? Or is it simply irrelevant because only the result matters?
I think you shouldn’t feel like a fraud. Just an intelligent knowledge worker. Getting ahead through knowledge and experience.
The real fraudsters type “Write something about topic X (which I know nothing about)” and hit enter. But those who understand that AI is nothing more than an intelligent intern should quickly find one and think carefully about how to deploy them profitably and enjoyably.
Here’s what still applies: You’ll need to keep thinking, perhaps even more than ever before. You might write a bit less (I mean the physical typing of many letters), but you’ll need to read more carefully, engage more critically with text, and absolutely not forget how to rewrite. When you combine your strengths with AI’s strengths, you can harness that superpower too. No need to be ashamed. Fraud? Cheat? Those who arrive late and don’t take the next step get left behind.
Originally auf Deutsch at reinergaertner.de, running since 1997. The translation had AI help. The typos are all mine.