Why AI-Written Text Feels Unsettling: An Author's Struggle with Time Asymmetry

The author expresses a deep-seated discomfort with text generated by artificial intelligence, highlighting a fundamental asymmetry in the creation and consumption process. While writers traditionally invest significant time and effort, months or even years, in crafting a single piece, readers consume it in a fraction of that time. This established rhythm, where the creator's time investment is implicitly understood and respected, is disrupted by AI.

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The creation of text requires exploration, thought, and word selection, while the reader uses the given text as material to unfold memory, empathy, and imagination. The domains of the writer and the reader are inevitably separate.

AI, through large language models, can produce extensive content in mere seconds. This speed creates a jarring disconnect: readers are expected to engage with AI-generated text at their natural pace, which remains unchanged. The author notes that while AI can churn out pages of text rapidly, human cognition, involving eye movement, word recognition, structural analysis, and critical thinking, still operates at its inherent speed. This forces readers to spend considerably more time processing AI-generated content than the time it took to create it, leading to a sense of unease.

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AI, represented by large language models, unintentionally exposes this hidden asymmetry of time. Our bodies are imprinted with a history where long creation times have always outweighed relatively short comprehension times. AI completely reverses this.

This temporal imbalance is not entirely new; it exists in human endeavors like a baker spending days on bread that is eaten in minutes. However, AI's instantaneous creation fundamentally inverts the expected relationship between production and reception time. The author argues that this inversion is particularly unsettling because it challenges our deeply ingrained sense of value tied to human labor and creative effort.

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We still have the same body and brain to understand, ponder, and criticize. Here, we can find the reason why many people are reluctant to read articles that rely too heavily on AI.

The article further points to a lack of transparency surrounding AI usage, even among academics who often express reservations about AI-generated assignments. The desire to boost productivity clashes with the ethical imperative to disclose AI use, rendering guidelines ineffective. The author concludes by posing a rhetorical question about the "golden rule" of treating others as you would like to be treated, suggesting it should apply to the act of writing and reading, implying a need for greater consideration and honesty in the age of AI.

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Guidelines to transparently disclose AI use are powerless against the desire to 'increase productivity while taking advantage of being an author who does not use AI.'