A new servitude has arrived in our lives, and it is having to differentiate ourselves from artificial intelligence. Professionals who use writing for our jobs, consultants, columnists, students, and faculty who need it as a means of expression now have a new limit that makes the difficult art of writing even more difficult: we cannot resemble texts produced by AI. We can be accused of plagiarism, impersonation, not using our creativity... Figures like the didactic antithesis, so used by great orators, such as Kennedy's which says "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country," would now seem written by AI. The famous triad or rule of three that Julius Caesar made memorable: "Veni, vidi, vici" (I came, I saw, I conquered) is a structure very typical of AI. The chiasmus or mirror structure "Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee" by the poet John Donne, used by Hemingway, would become suspect of AI copying. And contrasts are eliminated for being AI's most frequent "tic": "No need to work more, need to work better." Imagine now, stripped of linguistic figures, without being able to use long dashes either as punctuation because they are what the AI uses, the time and effort we need dedicated to finding artifacts to replace these classic formulas of expression that everyone has used at some point in their lives.The doctor in communication from Pompeu Fabra University Frederic Guerrero-Solé wrote a few days ago on LinkedIn that he found it inadmissible that writing well could become a disadvantage in the academic field due to the suspicions raised by the perfection of texts produced by AI. Because the problem is that good students, those who write complex texts, rich in vocabulary and syntactically perfect, are forced to intentionally introduce errors or lower the level of their writing if they want to avoid suspicion or be directly accused of plagiarism and impersonation.Guerrero-Solé's thought delved even deeper, questioning which society discredits those who wish to be intellectually formed, a concept already vanished from the university. He denounced that this stance is, in reality, an anti-intellectualism that fosters populism by emptying society of complex thought.I believe we have been settled for some time in what we could call the “society of simplicity”. For years, brilliant students have not been able to stand out in their schools, institutes, or university classrooms, and they prefer discretion or even to lower their grades to avoid being subjected to mockery and scorn by a social majority that does not value effort or excellence (unfortunately, sometimes including teachers). This hegemony of mediocrity impacts all areas, not just the academic, and indeed, I agree with the UPF professor who fosters populism by discrediting students who write well and preventing the possibility of intellectual development and free thought. We are mistaken when we think that AI is inhuman: on the contrary, it is the result of thousands of excellent literary texts, also thousands of mediocre ones, many vulgar ones. It includes everything! Many of the traits attributed today to AI-generated writings are not actually its inventions, but classic rhetorical devices – elaborated by people – that have been used for centuries in literature, politics, advertising, and oratory. Language models tend to use them very frequently because they produce fluid, balanced texts and show complex thoughts in an intelligible and enjoyable way. We find ourselves, consequently, facing a paradox: what we need to produce interesting and complex texts cannot be used for fear of being accused of AI plagiarism. And this lowers the general linguistic level, as well as inhibiting the intellectual development of those who will be our future researchers, artists, entrepreneurs, and rulers. If, on top of that, it contributes to driving populism, a new model must be found where using AI is not an impediment to expressing thoughts with quality and stimulating our students towards excellence. It is not a renunciation – it is a necessity.
