💡 sunday tea: substack's anti-AI detector sparks a witchhunt + how to serialize your memoir
Some thoughts about the error-prone AI detection tool Substack rolled out + some interviews you might like!
For those of who you haven’t seen yet, Substack is rolling out an AI detector for posts, partnering with Pangram.
While I’m supportive of cutting down on low-quality “slop” (both human- and AI-generated) across platforms, I have to say this is a major hit for Substack as it’s ignited a witchhunt across the platform — because Pangram’s AI detector is faulty most of the time.
I know this because I ran some quick tests: stuff I’d written by hand in a coffeeshop was flagged as AI generated, whereas something I had Claude write for me as a test ended up being analyzed as 100% human-written when it was in fact 100% AI generated.
I was honestly shocked how wrong the detector was within the first 5 tests I ran on it! And this is coming from a company who says their error rate is insignificant.
Also — love this video breakdown on it:
So what feels like a good problem to solve — let’s cut down on slop on feeds! — is “solved” instead with shaming of people who are perceived use AI tools (even if they didn’t!), and the discourse around this has heated up as more people are finding out that these AI detection tools (and particularly Pangram’s tool embedded in Substack) aren’t accurate. Not by a long shot, as other writers are pointing out.
I wish the platform wasn’t feeding into the moral panic about AI (to be clear, as a San Francisco-based author I am not anti-AI), and instead focusing on lifting up good quality publications — independent of what tools writers and publishers choose to use.
An easy way to do this? Substack could continue to see what publications people are reading and paying for, and continue to incentivize top performing publications just like they do with their bestseller leaderboards, and their rising leaderboards (especially the new publications category, to help bring discovery to new writers!)
I’d be curious of your thoughts if you want to share in the comments:
💡 you’re invited to the 10x Your Freelancing virtual summit hosted by solidgigs on August 25-27!
I’m speaking at the virtual 10x Your Freelancing Summit about how to AI-proof your freelancing career! You can RSVP to hear me and other amazing speakers talk on August 25-27.
Solidgigs, Preston Lee, and the whole team over there are awesome, and I know this is going to be an epic few days of talks and virtual Q&As and evenets.
Lots of cool stuff, check out the full listing of events below:
🍵 let’s catch up over tea: serializing memoirs on substack, preparing for your book launch
If you didn’t catch my interviews on Make Writing Your Job this week, you can catch up below!
The below chats are especially relevant if you’re curious about serializing your memoir on Substack or if you’re gearing up for a book launch of your own:
Do you have a book coming out that you’d like to share with our 44,000+ email subscribers at Make Writing Your Job? I’ve just created a guest application form below if you’d like to be considered for an upcoming interview. As a heads up, I’m prioritizing fiction authors for the next round of interviews!
