This column isn't so much an argument as it is a plea: Don't use artificial intelligence to help you write. Never let AI do your writing for you.

Don't use it for school papers, work briefs, letters to your in-laws, speeches at your company gathering or emails (however perfunctory) to your colleagues or friends. Don't let it organize your notes. Don't let it suggest an opening sentence, a segue or a closing paragraph. Don't ask it to write a first draft and pretend that editing that draft somehow makes it your own. It doesn't.

Do none of these things not because they are unethical. Writing with AI is unethical when it's a deception: when you pass off words, ideas and information as your own when they aren't. An acknowledgment can largely address the problem. Do none of these things, either, because you might be able to learn to write better than an AI can. Pretty soon, if not already, you won't, just as you can't outrun a car or outplay a chess app.

The problem with writing with AI is that it's mentally enfeebling--an escalator toward a result when you really need to make a daily habit of taking the stairs. As it becomes ubiquitous, it undermines not only our individual ability to write but also a society's collective ability to reason, a culture's inner capacity to create and everyone's........

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