The One Hard Thing You Shouldn’t Outsource to AI

Here’s something besides my 5-month old son that’s been keeping me up at night:

In almost every AI meetup I attend, B2B marketers and creators are salivating at the idea of using AI to create the first drafts of their thought leadership content.

I get the logic: First drafts are hard and time-consuming — precisely the type of task that AI is supposed to help you escape. And the instructions from AI marketing gurus make it all seem so easy. All you need to do is ask ChatGPT to a) come up with headline ideas b) create an outline based on those headline ideas, and c) write each section in that outline and — voila — you have a first draft of your post.?

Just woosh that sweet AI-generated content through a plagiarism detector, add a few original thoughts, and you’re ready to publish.

It seems like a dream until you stop to ask yourself … why?

?What is the point of publishing something that’s the thought leadership equivalent of a Walmart hot dog?

And what will we lose if we stop challenging ourselves to come up with our own ideas?

The hard things we should keep

First drafts suck—quite literally. And the process of creating that suck can suck — the procrastination, the self-flagellation as you grope for a hook, the early thesis that turns out to be nonsensical.

But first drafts aren’t a nuisance. They’re one of the hard things we need to keep.?

First drafts are an intellectual and creative journey; the process by which you learn new things and question your own ideas and explore rabbit holes that stood invisible just seconds before. They’re a portal to flow. To twisting an idea until you’ve escaped time itself. They’re the catalysts of long walks where your own arguments play in your head like a podcast, where you rearrange a story 20 different ways, where you earn that satisfying high of creating.

First drafts are where you discover the article you shouldn’t be writing, and find the ones you should.?They're where you find the ideas and pieces that are actually worth publishing. The stories where the goal isn't to rank for a long-term keyword or manufacture impressions but to resonate with your audience, helping them see the world in the new ways.

When we write first drafts, our brains light up ; we boost our problem-solving capabilities and learn to think in a more organized and coherent way. We find stories hidden deep in the recesses of our minds.

What happens when we outsource that to AI?

How many great, new, weird, bad, incredible ideas we lose?

If stories are one of the things that make us most human, what happens when our stories go untold?

I’m an AI advocate — hell, I’m on its marketing team, throwing regular AI events to promote our AI practice at A.Team . And I believe there’s plenty we should outsource to AI. BDR emails? AI all day. Facebook ad headlines? F*ck yeah. Flowcharts? Inject that ChatGPT plug-in into my eyeballs. Copyediting? Please. Data analysis? Duh. We should welcome AI’s ability to free us from grunt work.?

But we need to keep a few hard things. The hard things that open our minds and help us grow.

First drafts are one of the hard things we can’t afford to outsource.

What are the others? Leave them in the comments.?

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