Out-human the machine

The AI question runs under all of these entries, since many working writers now write alongside the machine. In a workshop discussion of George Saunders's The Braindead Megaphone, our writers converged on what reads as human. As one of them, Sairam, put it:

Most people just prompt and get the first average outcome… it doesn't have a certain quality to it that really feels like it's been marinated.

Sairam · Workshop discussion · June 2026

The tells of the machine

The tells they named: an overly formal register ("do not" for "don't") and a reflex toward excessive, tangential detail meant to seem grounded. Em-dashes and the Oxford comma raised suspicion but proved weak signals on their own.

What reads as human

Cohesive structural layering, personal stories, and a sense the piece had been sat with. The defence isn't to out-formal the machine; it's to do the things it doesn't.

Don't try to out-formal the machine. Do the things it can't.

The five human moats

A whole talk on this named five skills the machine can't take, each a way of doing what it can't: a voice grown from lived experience; metaphors that come from a body; rules broken on purpose; writing done under real stakes; and whimsy — following a thread into the unknown. The through-line is the one the workshop found on its own: being alive, having a body, having something at stake. That's your moat — use it.

Don't cede your tools to the panic

There's a failure mode on the other side of sounding like AI: mutilating your prose to avoid the accusation. It's the driver who thinks a headlight might be out, so he switches the lights off and drives blind — trading a visible risk (a ticket) for an invisible one (a crash). Writers do the same when they strip every em dash to dodge the AI witch hunts: they swap a hypothetical accusation for the real problem of comma splices and clunky, less-clear sentences. The em dash is ours — one of the most powerful tools in the toolkit. The answer to AI's fingerprints isn't to abandon your instruments; it's to play them well, which is exactly the thing the machine can't do.

Try it

1. Lead with specific lived detail and a thesis you actually had to think your way to.
2. Make something change; give the piece a true turn.
3. Let the material marinate — the human signal is a voice that has sat with it.

Drawn from

• William, The 5 Writing Skills A.I. Will Never Replace (Writer Science, 2026) — the five human skills the machine can't replace.
• William, The Em Dash, Explained (Writer Science, 2026) — don't cede legitimate tools to the AI panic; the visible and invisible risk.