AI is causing a rise in self censorship
9/30/26
This is the thing that people seem to have forgotten (or maybe never knew) about “AI”. It’s just averages. It gives you the most statistically likely outcome, and that is always going to lead to mediocrity.
The spread of this is the thing that’s worrying though. Human authors have been censoring themselves for a while now, removing words from their writing that are suggestive of AI authorship regardless of whether those words are ones they would have used freely only a couple of years ago.
The rare, specific details are the first to disappear. Round after round the unusual gets averaged away, and by the ninth round the thread is gone entirely.