Mike Masnick is well known in tech policy circles as an extremely astute commentator, not afraid to dive in -- at considerable length -- to a wonky discussion on the minutiae of any proposed law or action. (His TechDirt profile suggests he has written more than 50,000 posts.)

Given the onslaught of regulations on tech companies lately, he's been busy, but thankfully not too busy to write this extremely detailed piece on how he uses AI to aid his work. He focuses on Lex.page - an AI tool that runs on GPT but actually pre-dates ChatGPT. (I wrote a column about it for the FT in November 2022.)

Masnick writes:

Almost every case I’ve heard of journalistic outfits using AI are examples of the dumbest fucking ways to use the technology. That’s because addle-brained finance and tech bros think that AI is a tool to replace journalists. And every time you do that, it’s going to flop, often in embarrassing ways.

However, I have been using some AI tools over the last few months and have found them to be quite useful, namely, in helping me write better. I think the best use of AI is in making people better at their jobs. So I thought I would describe one way in which I’ve been using AI. And, no, it’s not to write articles.

It’s basically to help me brainstorm, critique my articles, and make suggestions on how to improve them.

The post details how he uses Lex.page's assistant function to help tighten his work. He asks it to assess the clarity and whether his points have been substantiated. It then asks it anything is "missing" - i.e. any aspect of the subject matter the AI thinks is worth mentioning. He says:

I don’t always agree with its suggestions, but it often makes me think carefully about the arguments I’m making and seeing how well they stand up. I have strengthened many of the things I say based on the responses from Lex that just get me to think more carefully about what’s written.

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