Lately, I have been posting more on LinkedIn. Most of the academic articles we write do not really circulate beyond academic circles. I see this space as an opportunity to create some impact around the issues I research and think deeply about, and I try to write op-ed style pieces by also using everyday issues as occasions to do so.

At first, some friends said, “You write too long.” As I told them, I am not trying to write pieces here that are widely read, become popular, and then disappear like soap bubbles. Let only a few people read them. Let them be somewhat demanding to read. But let them leave a residue in the reader. After all, people in this country like the op-ed form. I am also trying to develop a style that resembles that tone. I try to produce texts that are easy to read, built on short sentences, yet still carry depth.

So, do I use AI while writing these? Yes, absolutely. But AI does not write the texts. I do. Because I do not delegate the construction of the thought inside the text to an AI system. In this act of writing, I try to use GenAI not as a system that thinks or writes on my behalf, but rather, as philosophy would put it, as a “Heideggerian” tool. That is, as a tool that directs attention not to itself, but to the thought, argument, and message I am trying to construct.

In short, in the texts I share on LinkedIn and on my blog, I do not hand authorship over to the machine. I build the text, I choose, I revise, I delete, and I make the final decision. From this perspective, as Actor-Network Theory reminds us, writing is not really a singular and isolated individual activity. It operates within a network in which the writer, the tool, the interface, the platform, linguistic patterns, and the intended audience are all involved together.

But this way of writing does not mean that the agent or author, namely me, disappears. On the contrary, even if agency is distributed, it is not distributed equally. The tool enters the process. It opens up alternatives, sometimes speeds things up, sometimes clarifies. But intention, judgment, the conceptual frame, and editorial responsibility remain with me.

That is why, for me, the real question, including when I read my students’ assignments, is not “Was AI used?” The real question is: Who is doing the thinking? Who is doing the judging? To whom does the signature really belong? I believe the difference between using AI in a way that delegates authorship and using it in a way that deepens writing is something worth discussing much more carefully.

I follow the same principle when I encourage the use of AI in my classes. The problem is not the existence of AI. The problem is the transfer of the work of thinking and writing to another subject, and that becoming something normal, ordinary, and unquestioned.

In fact, everyone uses these kinds of tools. But only some of them can truly express what they mean, and even among those, only some actually have something they genuinely want to say. I am trying to be one of them. Like an expert bodywork master who knows how to use his hammer well.