“Ideas Over Keystrokes” argues that the value of writing lies in thinking, synthesis, and intellectual leverage: not in the manual act of typing. AI is framed as a drafting tool that accelerates iteration and removes friction, not a substitute for judgment or expertise. I’m not Jack Kerouac; I’m building arguments, not mythology, and this isn’t beat poetry. The piece reframes authorship in terms of cognitive depth and usefulness rather than artisanal labour.

Contents

1. Introduction: Why I Use AI… and Why That’s the Least Interesting Part

There’s a quiet moral panic running through parts of the writing world.

It goes something like this: “If you use AI to write, it’s not really your work”.

I understand the instinct. Writing has always carried a romantic image: the lone mind, the late nights, the artisanal keystrokes hammered out one by one like some Victorian blacksmith of prose.

But let’s be honest. If you think the value is in the typing, you’ve misunderstood the job.

2. The Work Is the Thinking

Keystrokes are labour. Ideas are capital. Synthesis is architecture.

When I write about cyber resilience, governance failure, infrastructure strategy, and institutional fragility, I’m not inventing theory from thin air. I’m compressing years of operational experience into a readable form.

The value isn’t in physically pressing keys. It’s in:

• Connecting domains that don’t usually get connected.
• Stress-testing assumptions.
• Collapsing complexity into something usable.
• Turning lived experience and pattern recognition into an argument.

That’s the work. The typing is just the transport layer.

Nobody thinks less of an architect because they used CAD instead of drawing every line by hand. Nobody accuses a programmer of cheating because they used an IDE. Nobody demands a mathematician throw away their calculator to prove they’re “authentic.”

Tools change. The cognitive work remains.

3. What AI Actually Does

I use AI as a drafting partner.

It helps me:

• Explore structure faster.
• Iterate arguments quickly.
• Refine phrasing without burning hours.
• Move from rough thought to publishable form in a fraction of the time.

It does not:

• Invent my positions.
• Generate my lived experience.
• Replace my domain knowledge.
• Decide what I think.

If the ideas are shallow, the output will be shallow. AI doesn’t create depth. It amplifies what you bring to it.

And amplification cuts both ways.

• If you outsource your thinking, it will atrophy.
• If you use the tool to accelerate thinking, it compounds.

The discipline isn’t in typing manually. It’s in staying intellectually rigorous while moving faster.

Some argue that the friction of manual drafting forces deeper cognition. Sometimes that’s true. Slowness can expose weak thinking. But friction is only valuable if it produces insight. Repetition of labour is not the same as depth.

Rigour isn’t a mood. It’s a process.

For me, that means:

• Challenging the draft rather than accepting it.
• Forcing counterarguments into the frame.
• Rewriting until the structure holds without ornament.
• Cutting anything that sounds plausible but isn’t defensible.

AI accelerates iteration. It doesn’t remove scrutiny.

If anything, it increases the need for it.

4. GIGO Still Applies

AI doesn’t eliminate first principles. Garbage in, garbage out still holds.

If you bring cliché, you’ll get cliché back. If you bring shallow thinking, you’ll get polished shallowness. Prompting isn’t magic. It’s compression.

The leverage only works if you bring something distinctive to the table: lived experience, domain depth, a point of view that isn’t already averaged out.

AI can amplify originality. It cannot manufacture it.

There is a subtler risk, though. AI tends toward the statistically plausible. It smooths edges. If you’re not vigilant, your voice drifts toward median phrasing and safe structure. The discipline isn’t resisting the tool. It’s resisting its smoothing function.

5. Craft Matters. Worship Doesn’t.

Writing as craft matters. Voice matters. Texture matters. Rhythm matters.

Some people are artists of language. Their work is about emotional cadence and aesthetic precision. That’s a different trade with a different metric. If your work is about linguistic texture itself, the calculus is different. That’s not what I do.

I build arguments.

I care about clarity, structural integrity, and whether the idea survives pressure. I respect craft. I don’t worship manual effort.

Confusing labour with depth is nostalgia, not principle.

Twenty hours polishing prose that says nothing new isn’t a virtue.
Forty-five minutes delivering a sharp, defensible insight using modern tools isn’t fraud.

They are different optimisation strategies.

6. Transparency and Credibility

There’s a fair question underneath the panic: should readers know?

In institutional contexts, academia, journalism, and regulated environments, disclosure norms matter. Provenance matters. Auditability matters. I have no issue with that.

But transparency about tools is different from outsourcing accountability.

If my name is on the argument, I own it.
If it’s wrong, I’m wrong.
If it’s shallow, that’s on me.

Tools don’t dilute authorship; the presence of AI doesn’t dilute responsibility. These tools concentrate responsibility on the human who signs their name.

7. I Optimise for Leverage

I’m time-bound.

I build systems. I advise. I think across governance, resilience, infrastructure, culture, and technology.

I don’t have the luxury, or the desire, to hand-carve every sentence like it’s oak furniture.

What I care about is this:

• Does the piece move thinking forward?
• Does it challenge lazy consensus?
• Does it offer a synthesis others haven’t made?
• Does it stand up under scrutiny?

If the answer is yes, then the number of keystrokes I personally typed is the least interesting variable in the equation.

8. We’ve Been Here Before

Every major tool shift triggers anxiety.

• Calculators were “cheating”.
• Word processors were “lazy”.
• Spellcheck was “dumbing things down”.
• Google was “killing research”.

Now they’re invisible. AI is not a rupture in thinking. It’s an acceleration layer. The people who will thrive aren’t the ones clinging to manual process as identity. They’re the ones who can think clearly, stay rigorous, and move quickly.

9. Conclusion: The Real Question

The question isn’t: “Did you use AI?”

The real test isn’t whether AI was involved. It’s whether the thinking is sharper, more original, and more defensible than it would have been without it.

The real question is: “Did this change how you think?”

If it didn’t, the tool doesn’t matter. If it did, the tool is irrelevant. Nobody remembers how long it took you to write something. They remember whether it held up.

I don’t optimise for keystrokes. I optimise for ideas.