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Episode 9: Panic is a Terrible Editor · HumanPrint: How to Use AI Without Losing Yourself

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  Foreign.
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  Welcome to Human Print. I am Christine Whitmarsh, and if
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  you are open to collaborating with AI but you're not interested in disappearing
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  into AI, you're in the right place. Each week we will
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  look at one place where your authentic human signal is at risk for drift
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  and one way to shore it up. Oh, and Human
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  Print is brought to you by Abby AI Brand bank intelligence
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  that helps authors, thought leaders and enterprise teams train
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  AI on their voice and point of view so written content stays unmistakably
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  human, consistent and on brand. Learn more@abbey.ink
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  a b b I.ink
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  like you write with. Let's begin.
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  Hi everybody, and welcome back to Human print.
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  So in May 2025, the Chicago Sun Times ran
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  a summer reading list in its weekend section. Fifteen book recommendations,
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  real authors, apparently great titles. The problem was
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  that 10 of the 15 books didn't exist.
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  The authors were real, but the books were completely fabricated
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  by AI. The freelancer who submitted the piece,
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  Marco Buscaglia, said afterward, I do use
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  AI for background at times, but always check out the material
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  first. This time I did not. And I can't believe I missed it because it's
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  so obvious. No excuses. So that statement again,
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  I do use AI for background at times, but I always check out the material
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  first and this time I did not. That sentence is not
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  a story about someone who doesn't know how to use AI responsibly.
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  Margot is only human, just like the rest of us. He knows about AI,
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  but under deadline he slipped and skipped arguably the most important step
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  of the AI process, especially as a journalist, fact checking.
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  And I think this is the thing that gets missed in most conversations about AI
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  errors and AI overuse, which is that the people making these,
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  these mistakes usually aren't careless people with no standards. They're people who
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  are tired, behind, overloaded,
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  trying to get just get to the end of the task so they can get
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  to the next thing. And the AI output was right there and it looked fine.
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  And they'd already been staring at the screen for six hours and the deadline was
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  in 20 minutes. I can also relate to this because my first
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  career as a nurse, the reason for countless training and drilling and
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  procedures baked into everything that you do in healthcare, everything that we did,
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  this stuff existed as scaffolding, especially for when things got
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  hectic, which is like in nursing most of the time setting
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  up and drilling procedures ahead of time before the crazy stuff set in that was
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  like insurance to increase the odds that we would make the right decisions when things
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  were hectic Marco had a rule, just like the nurses
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  training. It was a good rule, good training. He just slipped up when things got
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  hectic. And I'm not saying that to pile on him. I'm saying it because I
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  think most of us can recognize that exact moment, that moment
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  where you know what you're supposed to do and you're just too depleted to do
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  it, and the thing in front of you looks good enough and you tell yourself
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  you'll catch it later, except later you don't. And then the reading list
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  prints in a major newspaper with 10 books that don't exist. So here's,
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  as usual, the book coaching connect to this idea.
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  Almost every author I've worked with starts out with some
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  version of the same plan, which is that they're going to find a big
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  uninterrupted stretch of time to write their book. Usually described as a
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  cabin in the woods or a sabbatical when things slow down at work or in
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  life or after the kids go back to school or some other condition that implies
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  the rest of life is going to pause and. And cooperate while they do the
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  thing that matters to them. In this case, write their book.
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  So here's what I've learned in 25 years of working with authors. Life doesn't
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  care. Life doesn't care about your book ambitions at all.
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  The authors I see that are actually finishing books are the ones who integrate
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  writing as a habit into usually very chaotic, very busy,
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  very normal human lives, not the ones who wait for conditions to
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  be ideal. And interestingly, I think it actually works better this way,
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  because motion breeds motion, the writing muscles stay warm, the object in motion
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  stays in motion, all of that and you know, the book gets written in the
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  cracks of a real life experience, just a real human life, instead of waiting
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  for a hypothetical clearing the cabin in the woods that never materializes.
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  So when I start working with a new coaching client, the very first thing we
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  do, like the first month of the coaching program, is to set the writing habit
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  and pressure test it. Not outline the book, not map the chapters, but just
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  set the habit. Because the faster the habit gets locked in and
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  proven and tested under real conditions, meaning real life with all its usual drama
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  and nonsense. The better the habit will hold when things get harder,
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  which they always do, because again, life doesn't care about your timeline and your big
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  goals. And this is exactly the same principle I want to apply to
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  how people work with AI. Most people think about their AI
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  governance. You know, what they will and won't hand over, what they will always Verify,
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  you know, where their human judgment stays in the loop. They think about that.
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  When things are going fine, when they have time, when the stakes are low,
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  when a deadline hits or a project blows up, all of a sudden,
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  oops, someone's sick, the client moves up the timeline. Suddenly all that
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  thoughtful governance, all those rules that they had surrounding how they
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  would use AI responsibly, the stuff that they meant to implement,
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  that's the first thing to get dropped, because it feels like friction
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  and they need to move fast. The problem is that deadline
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  pressure is exactly where the governance matters most. Because deadline
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  pressure is when AI outputs get the least scrutiny, when the
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  sniff test gets skipped, when I'll check it later becomes the
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  plan, and then later turns into a reading list full of books that don't exist
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  in a newspaper with your name attached to it. So again, Marco Bulascagli,
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  he didn't. He didn't need a better process. He had a process. He needed his
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  process to be set firmly enough and rehearsed enough that it survived
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  the moment when he was tired and the deadline was close and the AI output
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  looked fine. And this connects to something I think gets confused a lot, which is
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  the relationship between AI speed and actual efficiency.
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  Because AI can absolutely make certain parts of your process go faster, and that's
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  genuinely useful. But faster is not the same thing as efficient if the speed
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  is creating downstream problems that you then have to
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  spend time fixing or explaining or apologizing for.
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  And with something like your writing voice, you know, your point of view, your values,
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  language, the personal stories that drive your work, your lived experiences,
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  the factual claims you're making about your field of expertise.
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  The downstream cost of getting that wrong isn't just time.
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  It's credibility and credibility. It's slow to build and
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  fast to lose, which means the efficiency of skipping that check,
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  that last minute check, it doesn't survive contact with the actual math.
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  So here's what I want you to do, and I'm calling this the red folder
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  rule, which is that before you're under deadline pressure,
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  decide in advance what AI cannot finalize
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  without your review. It's like put a check mark. Put a. I don't know
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  the word I'm looking for. Fail safe. A fail safe in there, you make
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  the list when you're calm and thinking clearly, not when you're staring down a deadline
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  and looking for any way to save 20 minutes. For most people, that list
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  probably includes things like factual claims, legal or medical or
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  financial specifics, personal stories that have your details that
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  an AI would Never know. Values, language, your actual point
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  of view on something. Any sentence that's going under your name,
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  somewhere public. Now, your list might be different. The point is that make
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  it before you need it, when the cost of making it is basically zero.
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  Do it then instead of discovering it after the cost has already been paid.
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  Because Marco had a rule. His rule was right. The rule just wasn't set
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  firmly enough to survive the moment when he was tired and pressed. And the AI
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  again, it looked good enough. So, two things to do this week. First,
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  make a two column deadline list. Left column AI
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  can help me move faster with blank. The right column AI
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  cannot decide the following things for me, no matter how pressed I am.
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  So the left column has stuff that AI can help you move faster with where
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  it's not going to be, you know, a huge cost or reputation intact. The right
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  side is AI cannot do these. Absolutely not. Putting these in
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  the hands of AI, so to speak. Fill in both columns
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  when you're not under pressure. That's the version of you that knows what matters.
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  Keep it somewhere you'll actually see it when things get crazy.
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  Second thing, if you're working on a book or a big writing project and you
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  don't have a writing habit yet, you know, not a plan, not an outline,
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  an actual recurring writing habit. A habit.
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  When do you. I always ask my clients, you know, where, where, where am I
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  going to find writing on your schedule? And if it's nowhere, good luck writing your
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  book. So. So that's what you need to set first
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  is the writing habit that you've already tested and you already have in place against
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  a bad week. That's the thing you're gonna set up first before the rest of
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  it. Because the process you build when things are calm is the one that will
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  hold up when life is not calm. Make the
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  boundaries before the panic, because panic is a terrible
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  editor. All right, that's it for today's
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  episode of Human Print. Until next time, use the tool if
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  it helps, just don't hand it the pen.
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  And that's it for this episode of Human Print. If you want a
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  practical framework for protecting your voice amid the AI noise, please follow
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  the show. And before you go, take a minute and ask yourself, as the AI
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  noise grows louder and louder, which areas of yourself do
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  you need to protect the most? I'll see you next time,