IBM wrote it in a 1979 training manual: \"A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a management decision.\" Swap \"management\" for \"marketing\" and the rule still holds. AI can help you draft and edit and plan, and it saves real time: use it. But AI should not decide, because it has no taste and no accountability. Taste is everything.
Important: AI doesn't think. Large language models are pattern-matching calculators that predict the next likely word. Let an LLM write your brand voice and you get a lot of \"quietly,\" the safe word that makes a plain sentence sound like a revelation without saying anything. This episode covers why to ban it and its friends, the AI writing tells to watch for (seamlessly, delve, leverage, the shifting landscape, the three-fragment sentence structure pattern), and my own free Claude rules file .md that strips them out since I know you're still gonna use Claude to write.
Chapters:
(0:00) IBM's 1979 line: a computer can never be held accountable, so it must never make a management decision
(1:35) AI doesn't think.
(2:28) Why \"quietly\" is the AI word to cut
(3:39) My Claude .md file for non-AI writing, words and phrases to avoid: emilybinder.com/airules
(4:30) The banned word list: seamlessly, delve, leverage, etc.
(5:50) Em dashes (sadly) and the three-fragment tell
(6:15) Write for a ninth-grade reading level (copy converts 56% higher like WSJ vs Atlantic)
(7:20) Wolf Woman and the life-death-life cycle
Links:
- Clip on computers, AI, and management decisions (Instagram reel)
- Free AI writing rules (public Google Drive file): emilybinder.com/airules
- Women Who Run With the Wolves by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés: Book on Amazon. Audiobook free on Spotify Premium.
My gear & software:
Record guests and create clips on Riverside: emilybinder.com/riverside
Record solo and edit like a Word Doc with AI on Descript: emilybinder.com/descript
My mic gear - Amazon List
Video podcast gear - Amazon List
Hire me:
Book a call - Marketing Surgery: emilybinder.com/call
Speaking: emilybinder.com/speaking
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