“if you didn't bother taking the time to write it, I don't want to read it.”
The Space Madness Podcast · August 2026
Cain, who has been publishing space writing online for two decades, had just conceded that AI is a decent tutor if you want to understand a topic. His complaint is about reading it rather than learning from it: he says he abandons a post the moment he recognises the patterns, and this is the rule he lands on.
Transcript
…when someone does a good job of communicating that information in a human form and are rankled by the bland automated techno gibberish. So I think we're as long as like when the robots do our job better than we can, then there's a risk. But right now, I do not see that in the least. They are,
they
are laughably bad. Like this, and I don't know if what your experience is, but I'm like reading a post and I'm like, okay, this is, this was written by, by ChatGPT. I'm out. Right. I don't want to, I don't want to read another word of it because it's just like if you didn't bother taking the time to write it, I don't want to read it.
Yeah. You know, a couple of things come to mind. I wonder if people back in the 14th century when the printing press was invented were saying this thing is going to take the humanity out of whatever reporting, whatever newsletters, whatever reporting was done. I think we might have talked about…
I don't spend too much time trying to predict where it's going to go. I think it's it is right now it's it's just hot steaming garbage to read and it has been for its entire lifetime that it is it has gotten a better to be a better writer technically, but it is still awful to read. And you and as…
Sure. And I think it depends on what you're looking for. For example, if someone wanted to read the definition of space journalism, they could Google it and the AI would assemble a half-page definition with some examples. But presumably people are coming to this episode for the overt personal story…
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