Readers respond to the March 2026 issue

Letters to the editors for the March 2026 issue of Scientific American

In “ The Ghost in the Machine ” [From the Editor], David M. Ewalt writes that he talked to an artificial intelligence, which then transcribed and assembled what he said into the column. He then asks, “Did I write this? Did the AI write it? Or is the truth somewhere in between?”

Although Maxwell Perkins, for example, drastically reshaped the works of Thomas Wolfe, we recognize Perkins as an editor and Wolfe as the author. And when a book is “written by John Doe, as told to Richard Roe,” John Doe is credited with the authorship, and Richard Roe is regarded as a collaborator or ghostwriter. In Ewalt’s piece, the AI is an editor, and he is the author. Crediting the editor is optional.

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Ewalt did not write that article, nor did he provide its “soul.” It was manufactured by a machine, just like any other commodity. As he notes, he dictated what was effectively a bullet list of thoughts, which is how many competent authors begin creating their work. This is not writing but prep work.

He states that “we must embrace these tools so we can control them.” Large language models (LLMs) aren’t tools; they’re simply a means to further enshittify our lives with misinformation and spurious appeals to authority. LLMs provide nothing that a human brain can’t do. Data-analyzing AI, on the other hand, is indeed a useful tool but still requires a human to validate its results.

Regardless of the capabilities, ease or convenience they offer, I believe that as long as LLMs and similar models continue their current unrestrained demands on resources such as fresh water and power generation, use of them—especially for amusement or for tasks no more onerous than composing an e-mail or essay—is plainly unjustifiable.

My question to Ewalt is simple: If early on in your life, you had discovered a tool that could clearly organize the “rambling points” you wanted to make in essays you were writing, would you have learned to organize your thinking on your own, thereby acquiring a valuable skill? When it comes to the use of AI and cognitive development, product and production may be violently at odds.