# There May Be Nobody There > Source: > Published: 2026-08-19 11:04:38+00:00 I’ve encountered a new acronym that I immediately fell for. AI;DR. Now, it means artificial intelligence, did not read. Why does this sound good, though? People are protesting the idea of reading AI-written/generated content, though we do have conversations with AI. Why is it a special case for content creators? I notice almost immediately when something is AI-generated. You can feel it from the genericity. That’s obviously part of the resistance to AI content, but it doesn’t explain the psychology. I think there are a few things at play here. The first one I can think of is [craftsmanship](https://yusufaytas.com/does-code-quality-still-matter). We generally put more value on an item that is handcrafted. We even like imperfections rather than perfection. That goes with AI-generated content as well. We value effort. We value personality even if it means imperfections. In general, we often use the effort someone puts into something as a proxy for its value. When something is AI-generated, then the value goes down significantly because we know it took a few prompts to do that. We're looking for another mind. We want to see a person behind an artwork or piece of content because we want to be able to relate to or resonate with them. When that piece is gone, then it's pretty much emptiness. There's nobody you can feel behind the content. You can ask questions like, why did he choose Vim over Emacs? What was she trying to communicate when she thought [meetings were a waste of time](https://yusufaytas.com/achieve-more-by-meeting-less)? We seek authenticity. When someone publishes something under their name, I assume they thought about it. AI makes that assumption unreliable. I also think this is more important in a [professional context](https://yusufaytas.com/ai-balance-in-work) because I want to know what you think. I want to understand [which trade-offs you made and what your thought process was](https://yusufaytas.com/ai-broke-interviews). Not saying don’t talk to AI, of course do, but understand why you came up with a checklist. Why does that exist? Thinking this louder, it feels like craftsmanship, authenticity and personality are probably different signals for the same thing. In essence, we are trying to establish whether there is actually another person behind what we are reading. We care about effort, imperfection, personal quirks as a proxy to evidence. In my mind, that sort of explains the apparent contradiction with talking to AI. When I talk to AI, I know I am talking to AI. I am asking it to help me think, find something, challenge an idea or explain something. When I read something published under someone's name, I am often trying to understand what that individual is thinking. The other thing is the “yes, you’re right” responses. Like someone being overly fucking excited or too supportive. Humans are rarely like that. We can be supportive at times, but not all the time. Support means patience and care. When AI does that, it doesn’t really cost it anything. That’s why genuineness comes into play. I think the last one is probably [sameness](https://yusufaytas.com/where-the-automation-has-to-stop). When you see this generic marketing person behind the responses, it feels weird or off. You sense this nonsense aspect of AI-generated content. It’s generic, it’s out of the work you’re trying to do. The interesting part is that the content might be relevant and useful, yet it might still feel generic. Instead, you want to see some odd preference, unnecessary detail, a stupid joke, pet peeve or judging stance. Maybe that is why AI;DR immediately made sense to me. It is not necessarily a protest against using AI. I use it myself. I think it is a refusal to spend time looking for a person in a piece of content when there may be nobody there.