I’m going to be painfully, unapologetically honest here, probably more honest than I’ve ever been publicly about this particular topic, and I already know some people are going to be pissed. Some folks are going to feel disappointed. Some are going to accuse me of selling out, of being naive, of being complicit, of being irresponsible, or of betraying some unspoken leftist or progressive code. But it’s 2026, the world is on fire in about twelve different directions at once, and I’m tired of performing purity instead of speaking truthfully. I don’t really care anymore about being perfectly palatable. I care about being real, and this is real for me. This is about AI, artificial intelligence, and how I use it, why I use it, and why I think more leftists and progressives should at least be open to using it too, even if they ultimately decide it’s not for them.
I touched on this briefly in my music blog essay about the song “Wasteland” by 10 Years, an essay that ended up being far more vulnerable than I originally planned (you can find the post here if you want to read it: https://jaimedavidmusic.blogspot.com/2026/01/wasteland-oppression-and-world-in-2026.html). In that post, I mentioned that I use AI to help me write my long-form opinion pieces and essays, not my creative writing, not my fiction, not my poetry, not my books, not my short stories, not my art, but specifically my essays, my opinionated deep dives, the stuff where I’m trying to articulate complex, messy, emotional, political, philosophical thoughts that have been bouncing around in my head for years. I linked that post publicly, knowing full well that even that small admission might rub some people the wrong way. But the more I’ve sat with it, the more I’ve realized that a passing mention isn’t enough. I need to expand on this, because I actually think this conversation matters, especially right now.
Let me be very clear from the start, because I know how quickly people jump to conclusions. I am not using AI to write my thoughts for me. I am not copying and pasting other people’s work. I am not generating fake lived experiences. I am not outsourcing my values, my politics, or my inner world to a machine. What I am doing is using AI as an assistant, a tool, something that helps me organize, clarify, reflect, and structure my own thoughts so that I can communicate them more effectively. The ideas are mine. The perspectives are mine. The emotional core is mine. The experiences are mine. The messiness is mine. AI helps me take that mess and shape it into something coherent enough to share with others.
If you’ve ever been inside my head, metaphorically speaking, you’d understand why this matters so much to me. My thoughts are rarely linear. They come in waves, fragments, spirals, half-formed insights, emotional flashes, philosophical tangents, and sudden connections that don’t always make sense in the moment. For most of my life, that scatterbrained nature made me feel like I wasn’t “ready” to speak, like I needed to wait until everything was perfectly formed, perfectly argued, perfectly defended. And because perfection never comes, that meant silence more often than not. Or it meant half-finished drafts sitting in folders forever. Or it meant ideas dying before they ever had a chance to exist outside my own head.
Using AI for my essays changed that in a way I genuinely did not expect. Instead of feeling like I had to present a fully polished, flawless argument from the start, I could start messy. I could dump my raw thoughts, my emotions, my anger, my confusion, my contradictions into something that could help me reflect them back in a more organized way. Not to sanitize them, not to flatten them, but to help me see what I was actually trying to say. In a strange way, it helped me understand myself better. It helped me identify patterns in my thinking, themes I kept returning to, ideas I didn’t even realize were connected until I saw them laid out more clearly.
And here’s the part that I think really makes some people uncomfortable. Using AI this way has actually made me more authentic, not less. It has made me more honest, not more deceptive. It has made me more open, not more guarded. That feels almost backwards compared to the dominant narrative around AI, especially in leftist and progressive spaces where AI is often framed solely as a tool of exploitation, theft, surveillance, and capitalist acceleration. And to be clear, those critiques are not wrong. AI absolutely is being used in exploitative, harmful, deeply unethical ways. I am not denying that. I see it. I agree with much of that criticism. But acknowledging those harms does not require us to pretend that AI has no potential for good, or that every single use of it is inherently evil.
For me, AI has been a net good because it has allowed me to finally say things I’ve been holding inside for years. It has allowed me to write essays on topics I’ve always wanted to cover but never felt capable of tackling. It has allowed me to articulate political, social, and philosophical positions that existed only as vague feelings before. It has allowed me to put words to experiences that felt too slippery, too emotional, or too complex to pin down on my own. That matters to me. That feels important. And I refuse to feel ashamed of that.
I think shame is actually at the core of a lot of the anti-AI discourse on the left, even when it’s not acknowledged as such. There’s this unspoken idea that if you use AI at all, you’re somehow cheating, or being lazy, or betraying some ideal of authentic labor. But that framing ignores the reality that people have different brains, different processing styles, different barriers to communication. Not everyone thinks linearly. Not everyone can translate thoughts into words easily. Not everyone has the time, energy, or executive function to wrestle their ideas into essay form without help. If AI can lower that barrier, if it can help people express themselves when they otherwise couldn’t, that’s not inherently a bad thing.
And this is where my argument becomes explicitly political. I think it is a mistake, a serious one, for leftists and progressives to categorically reject AI as something that only the right uses, or only corporations use, or only bad actors use. Because if we abandon the space entirely, we are effectively handing it over to them. We are allowing AI systems, datasets, applications, and cultural norms around AI to be shaped almost exclusively by right-wing, conservative, reactionary, and corporate interests. We are allowing their values, their propaganda, their framing of reality to dominate the AI ecosystem unchecked.
That scares me far more than leftists using AI to help write essays.
If only right-wingers are using AI, then AI will increasingly reflect right-wing ideas. If only conservatives are feeding their narratives into these systems, then those narratives become normalized, amplified, and recycled. If leftists and progressives refuse to engage at all, then we lose influence over a tool that is clearly not going away. AI is already here. It is already embedded in search engines, social media, workplaces, schools, and creative tools. Pretending we can opt out entirely without consequences is, frankly, unrealistic.
I am not saying everyone needs to embrace AI enthusiastically. I am not saying we shouldn’t fight for regulation, ethical safeguards, labor protections, transparency, and accountability. We absolutely should. I am not an AI absolutist. I don’t worship it. I don’t think it’s a magic solution to everything. I see the dangers clearly, from environmental costs to data exploitation to job displacement to surveillance to the concentration of power in the hands of tech corporations. All of that is real, and all of it needs to be challenged aggressively.
But rejecting AI outright does not challenge those structures. It just removes our voices from the conversation.
What I am saying is this: if you are a leftist or progressive who has something to say, something important, something heartfelt, something political, something personal, and AI can help you say it more clearly, more confidently, more coherently, then I think you should seriously consider using it. Not to replace your voice, but to amplify it. Not to lie, but to communicate. Not to steal, but to organize. Your ideas matter. Your perspectives matter. And the world does not benefit from your silence.
One of the most radical things about AI, when used this way, is that it democratizes expression. It allows people who don’t have elite education, publishing connections, editorial teams, or endless free time to participate in public discourse. All you need is a phone or a computer and an internet connection. That’s it. Suddenly, people who were previously locked out of long-form writing can share their thoughts. Disabled people, neurodivergent people, exhausted people, traumatized people, working-class people, marginalized people can all find new ways to articulate their inner worlds. That potential should matter to the left. That should excite us, even as we remain critical.
I know some people will say, “But what about the artists? What about writers who are being displaced?” And that concern is valid. I am an artist. I am a writer. I care deeply about creative labor. That’s precisely why I draw a clear line for myself. My creative work is mine, start to finish. My fiction, my poetry, my books, my stories, my art, that is where my raw creative voice lives, and I protect that fiercely. AI does not touch that. But my essays are different. They are analytical, reflective, interpretive. They are about making sense of the world and my place in it. AI helps me with that in a way that feels collaborative rather than extractive.
And again, this is about transparency. I’m not hiding this. I’m not pretending I don’t use AI. I’m saying it openly, knowing it will cost me some goodwill in certain spaces. But I would rather be honest than perform some version of myself that fits neatly into a purity framework that doesn’t actually reflect how I live or think. Authenticity matters more to me than approval, especially now.
There’s also something deeply ironic about the way some leftists frame AI use as inherently immoral while continuing to use smartphones, social media platforms, streaming services, and supply chains that are riddled with exploitation. We all exist within systems we didn’t choose. We all make compromises to survive and to communicate. The question is not whether we are perfectly pure, because none of us are. The question is how consciously, ethically, and transparently we engage with the tools available to us.
For me, using AI to help organize my thoughts is a conscious choice rooted in self-understanding. It has helped me overcome years of self-doubt, self-censorship, and internalized pressure to stay quiet until I was “ready.” It has helped me trust that my ideas are worth sharing, even if they’re messy, even if they evolve over time. It has helped me see my own inner world more clearly, which in turn has helped me share it more honestly with others.
And honestly, given how many people use AI to deceive, manipulate, scam, propagandize, and exploit, there’s something almost quietly radical about using it to be more truthful, more vulnerable, more human. I did not expect that. I still find it surprising. But it’s true.
So no, I don’t think AI is all bad. I think it’s a tool, and like any tool, its impact depends on how it’s used, who controls it, and whose voices are amplified through it. If leftists and progressives abandon it entirely, we don’t make it go away. We just make ourselves quieter. And in a world already dominated by right-wing noise, misinformation, and authoritarian creep, silence is not a neutral choice.
If you disagree with me, that’s fine. Truly. You’re allowed to draw your own boundaries. You’re allowed to reject AI completely. You’re allowed to be skeptical, cautious, or even hostile toward it. I get it. But I ask that you at least consider this perspective, especially for people like me, for whom AI has not been a shortcut to dishonesty but a bridge to expression.
So yeah, that’s where I stand. This is me being open. This is me being transparent. This is me saying that I will continue to use AI as an assistant to help me amplify my thoughts, my ideas, and my voice. Not because I want to replace myself, but because I finally feel able to show myself more fully. And if that makes some people uncomfortable, so be it. We need more voices out there, not fewer. And if AI helps us get there, then maybe, just maybe, it’s worth engaging with rather than abandoning outright.