(James Taranto WSJ 3 Apr 2026)

AI is going mainstream fast—doing exactly what it’s designed to do. And already we’ve got pieces like an WSJ op-ed calling AI detectors a defamation machine.

So what’s actually happening? Is AI destroying writers’ careers? Or are the people using it doing the damage?

The battle is on.

If you spent your whole career developing and perfecting an idea, you’re naturally going to feel like someone using it is stealing your IP—especially if they pass it off as their own. Attribution matters. You owe the author that.

But can you still use it?

I think yes. If I couldn’t, I’d be living in the dark ages. I wouldn’t be able to make the hour-and-a-half commute I do each way every day. I use other people’s work all the time. I pay for a lot of it—sometimes more, sometimes less.

But I don’t tell my boss to credit part of my paycheck to Ford. I buy the car, and then I use it however I need to.

Is AI really different?

When I build an Excel model now with Claude, it’s as good as—or better than—the models the YouTube experts who originally taught me would show. Is that stealing? I don’t think so. That’s the point. The model is just the tool for analysis.

If AI improves that analysis—even refines it in new ways—that’s not theft. That’s progress.

Someone like me, who doesn’t have time to deeply understand every tool I rely on, can now sound like an expert analyst. And for most work, that’s the point.

So is AI coming for my job?

Yes—if that’s all I do.

But the real value isn’t in the basic output anymore. It’s in what you do with it. The next step. The judgment. The application.

AI lets someone writing English as a second language produce emails as good as mine as a native speaker. That’s not a loss—that’s a leveling

And that’s where all this turmoil comes from. AI is making everyday people sound like experts.

So what?

A Ford makes me move faster than the fastest human on earth. Should we call in lawyers to discredit my “superhuman” speed?

God forbid. Another gold mine for the legal profession.

No—I like what AI is doing. I like the speed of the democratization. It’s disruptive, sure. But that’s the point.

Think about how many tinkerers are out there right now with tools that someone like Steve Jobs didn’t even have in his garage.

That’s progress.

The slick writing isn’t the product. The real product is the idea—the insight, the feeling, the originality behind it.

We need to get used to that.

The means are becoming commodities. The ends—the new ideas, the things that actually move something forward—those are what command the premium.