How I work

I write the work on this site. I choose the subjects, read the sources, make the notes and build the argument. I write alone, without an editor or staff, and I do this alongside a job and a family. So I also use an AI model, currently Claude, made by Anthropic, in the way a writer with a research assistant and an editor would use them.

I use it most for research. It helps me find and read sources, pull out what matters in long reports, check facts and figures, and argue the other side of a case so I can see where my thinking is weak. I use it as an editor too, to point out where a sentence fails or a claim runs ahead of its evidence.

Sometimes I write with it. It may help me finish a piece, rework a passage or draft a section from my notes and argument, and in every case the thinking is mine and I read, test and rewrite what it gives me before anything goes out. It also helps me with titles, summaries and short posts. My fiction and poetry I write alone.

I do not publish anything I have not weighed and do not stand behind. I check every source I cite and every quotation can be traced, and if I get something wrong, the mistake is mine. If you find one, tell me and I will correct it.

I think AI is a new way of working, and one that is here to stay, but it is a tool in my work and not the author of it. The message, the thinking and the work are mine, and what I aim for in every piece is quality and clarity.