In a recent National Post article (December 6, 2025), How a ‘bleak’ job market is pushing white-collar workers to train AI that could one day replace them, Joel Blit, an economics professor at the University of Waterloo brings to our attention that “To some extent, workers are training the very machines that are going to take their jobs. That much is very clear”. AI is ubiquitous, we have to be very diligent and intentional to keep AI from permeating into most every aspect of our being. Personally, I refuse to lose the individualism, character, and personality that resonates in all of my writing and much of everything that I create. But without taking that proactive and consistent effort to keep AI from taking this away from me I must turn off the integration of AI into the technology that I use and not allow anyone to “help me out” by sending something through AI or produce something on my behalf.
I refuse to let AI take away who I am but I won’t be left behind because if I don’t harness its power I will surely be left in a 21st century type of dark age. I’m sure there is a fine balance and I am also sure that I have not found it.
Maybe you, like me, find that AI takes the you out of your writing and creations.
The above was a brain dump and it is all me, my words written in my style. It has ethos and pathos because I am driven to not let technology rob me of my identity.
Now let’s see what CoPilot produces when I ask it to “make this better for my target audience of like-minded educators”, which will be my prompt.
Okay, CoPilot realizes that it has been criticized for robbing people of their authentic self. It preluded the “polished” version with this statement, “Here’s a polished version of your blog entry tailored for like-minded educators, keeping your authentic voice while making it more engaging and structured:” Now how does it know what my “authentic voice” is by this one short passage? Anyway, here is what it came up with.
In a recent National Post article (December 6, 2025), How a ‘bleak’ job market is pushing white-collar workers to train AI that could one day replace them, Joel Blit, an economics professor at the University of Waterloo, warns:
“To some extent, workers are training the very machines that are going to take their jobs. That much is very clear.”
AI is everywhere. It’s woven into the fabric of our daily lives, and as educators, we must be intentional about how we engage with it. Personally, I refuse to lose the individuality, character, and personality that define my writing and creative work. These qualities are not negotiable—they are the essence of who I am.
Yet, here’s the paradox: if I ignore AI completely, I risk being left behind in the 21st-century dark ages. The challenge is finding that elusive balance—leveraging AI’s power without surrendering our identity. I’ll admit, I haven’t found it yet.
If you, like me, feel that AI can strip the “you” out of your writing and creations, you’re not alone. This post is raw and unfiltered—a brain dump driven by ethos and pathos because I believe technology should never rob us of our humanity.
So, how do we navigate this? How do we teach, create, and inspire while embracing innovation without losing ourselves? That’s the conversation I want to have with you.
I could go down many rabbit holes by accepting its offers to elaborate on this response but that’s not my intention for this blog. My intention is to raise awareness that AI is robbing us of our uniqueness in our writing, trading that for efficiency and nothing else.
I stopped reading at “warns” because that is not even a simple synonym for “brings to our attention that” so it fails on the simplest level. But, I’ve underlined phrases that I would either never use or twists my argument into something that it is not.
Please, for the sake of your audience, remain who you are by taking the time to write for yourself. There is no better time spent than sharing your ideas in writing or by whatever means you prefer.
“That’s the conversation I want to have with you.”? Oh please AI. We need people to stop training these platforms and just stop trying to find the path of sheer (cognitive) laziness and continue to produce for our own sake and the sake of our audience.
HKKS Education 