Give It an Edge

AI has made fluent prose cheap. It has not made every fluent paragraph worth reading.

Relying on AI to write is reasonable. But a polished draft can still leave the reader wondering what, exactly, you wanted to say. Generating more does not demonstrate understanding. Deciding what belongs does.

In Blackadder, Baldrick laboriously describes how there used to be no war, whereas now there is one. Blackadder reduces the question to: “How did the war start?”

I often play that role in meetings. A specialist spends forty-five seconds asking something a business person could understand in ten words. I do the same with legal language. The useful work is identifying the question and preserving its meaning while removing the effort needed to grasp it.

That effort matters. Extra prose may cost its sender almost nothing, especially with AI. The recipient still pays in attention. They must separate the point from its packaging—or give up.

This gives simplicity renewed value as a quality razor: how much unnecessary work does a message leave to its reader?

The test is not word count. “It keeps going until it doesn’t” uses contrast to make a limit noticeable. A story can make an abstract idea concrete. The cumbersome setup in the Blackadder scene makes the clarification land. These words earn their place.

Nor should simplification remove a condition that changes the conclusion. Precision requires knowing what to keep.

What we call AI slop often reveals a missing act of judgment: someone generated material and passed it along without enough care. AI can help refine that material too. The person sending it must demand the refinement.

Think of a blade. More metal does not make it sharper. It needs to be shaped for the cut.

Before sending, ask: What must the reader understand? What helps that point land? What merely surrounds it?

AI can supply the prose. Give it an edge.