There is no I in AI

Traditionally the use of first person is frowned upon in articles, reports and professional emails that are intended to present an objective view on a given topic.

But things have changed.

In the competition for mindshare and attention with AI outputs, this presumption needs to be revisited.

The reason is, first and foremost, AI does not have an "I", but we do, and it is essential to how we behave.

When we talk face to face with people in the course of our professional work, our personal reality, our backstory, our lived experience is always running in the background, informing what we're saying and how, affecting how we interpret what our interlocutor is saying.

Our point of view and the way we express it can be mapped to the life we've lived.

This background is incoherent if not inexplicable when we look at synthetically generated material, because there is nothing there. AI-generated outputs are based on the outputs of multiple humans, synthesized and merged together, ideally obscuring their origins and making it seem as if the chatbot is creating this material itself.

Admitting the individuality of our lived experience into our professional outputs is not a license for editorialization, rather, it is the lifting of a veil of constructed neutrality, whereby we assure the reader that the things we're saying are objective facts to which any neutral observer would agree.

In a way, these old tactics are intended to avoid the accusatory query, "Well who are *you*?" The idea of the neutral voice being, "It doesn't matter who I am, because I'm just stating facts." I think we need to fight a different battle.

When we come upon an article on the internet that has the fingerprints of AI on it (circularity, sterility, word salad sentences), we might cast our eye to the byline, where we may find a convincing looking headshot of the 'author' and a generic mini-bio that doesn't include any past publications or organizations.

But where has this non-person worked in the past? What did they study in school and where? Whom have they worked with? Where have they lived?

In the competition with AI, humans need to use everything we've got - in particular, six essential traits that we have, that AI doesn't have, and whose phony equivalents would be obnoxious.

I have a backstory. I came from somewhere. I've had trouble and triumphs. I've lived and learned.

I have friends and colleagues. I collaborate with them. They have backstories too.

I have a level of humility and self-doubt. I defer to expertise where it exceeds my own. I tread carefully when I don't exactly know what I’m doing.

I have a certain sense of accountability and can feel shame. If things go bad I try to make it right.

I have a specific sense of humour. I recognize absurdity, I’m whimsical, I speak ironically.

I have a point of view, rooted in my first-person experiences.

In professional contexts, these things do not typically belong in the foreground. We need to find a way to express our humanity that is not intrusive or inappropriate, but which clearly communicates why we're saying what we're saying.

It's okay if our readers/listeners ask "Well who are *you*?"

AI will have extraordinary difficulty faking these traits effectively, because authenticity is the whole point. AI has no odour and no capability to capture it. It is a competitive advantage when our work smells like us.