Welcome to POLITY | a voice for action
POLITY represents a response - our unified response - to the urgency of this moment in the United States, a moment that requires every American who loves and supports our democratic republic to defend it through action.
POLITY - a voice for action are our actions in defense of the values The United States of America was founded on and what Franklin D Roosevelt espoused as:
freedom of speech and expression;
freedom of worship;
freedom from want; and
freedom from fear.
These freedoms should be available to everyone.
We honor and defend our Constitution and our Bill of Rights.
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Be part of a national community of people who share your interest in defending The United States of America’s democratic republic - in your unique way. Participate in the comments section, or support this work with a subscription. You can also:
Do we Have to Talk About AI When What we Love is Democracy?
Sadly, yes. This is precisely how I use - or do not use - AI on Substack.
Where Do I Use Artificial Intelligence - AI - in My Writing Process?
Substack Writers@Work, to which I am a paid subscriber, recommends stating AI usage in our writing process. The relevant posts can be found at:
Why Every Substack Creator Should Disclose Their AI Usage Policy
Substack Live video: What’s your Substack’s AI policy? And why you need one
Here are the opportunities for using AI in the writing process and how I have decided to live with it:
Brainstorming for ideas to write about - None. I formulate my own ideas and subjects to write about. There is so much happening in the world right now that I find no shortage of topics screaming for my attention.
Research: Yes. I use AI built into the search functions in the Brave (called Leo AI), Edge (rarely use it), and Chrome browsers and related search engine sites. (As a reminder, I only use Chrome for browsing when it involves a Chrome property, like Gmail or Calendar because Google is a monster culprit in data tracking and profiling.) Brave is my default browser.
A cautionary tale. “Hallucination” in AI is a phenomenon where machine learning generates or retrieves information that is not in real-world data. Basically, it makes stuff up when it can’t find sufficient resources to search, or for several other reasons. I personally review the search results for veracity and any links provided as sources.
As a subscriber to Microsoft CoPilot, I pose questions requesting its Web search for a specific item or topic relevant to my research and specifically request links be included with the results (sometimes links are not provided).
Drafting: None. I always draft my own posts and Notes (Substack’s social media).
Macro Editing and Revision: None. My revision process is to write, read and edit; walk away for some time; return to write, read and edit. I work this loop as many times as is needed until I’ve edited the topic to my satisfaction.
Fact Checking: I personally fact check AI results due to my inherent distrust of the technology, its propensity for hallucination, and on what data the AI was trained.
Micro Editing | Copy Editing | Proofreading: I subscribe to Microsoft Office and its tools. Microsoft is placing more AI into its proofing tools which I do not use because I believe those usage choices should be my own.
Image Creation: I do not use generated AI images, such as those made available within the Substack Post Editor with the "Insert Image" function. My images are either my own photographs or stock images licensed from an online stock image provider only if it’s a photo I’m unable to take myself or can’t own for copyright reasons. For each stock image I acquire, I retain its related use license regardless of usage in publication.
Reader Data Protection: I do not use AI in any processing of reader data on or off the Substack platform, nor do I process any reader data. The only reader data processed is that which is native to the Substack publisher platform commonly available to those of us who write regularly.
AI Training on my Writing: I have used the tools available to me as a Substack writer to block AI training. That does not mean all AI will be blocked. It means that my intentions are published to the ubiquitous AI content scrapers and it is up to those scrapers to honor my blockage settings. There is no way for me or anyone else to block an AI content scraper that willfully ignores blockage settings.
Audio & Video: Yes. AI has excellent capabilities for voice recognition and is quite useful for transcribing audio and video programs, inserting time stamps in the transcriptions, and summarizing descriptions. My main use for this is as a consumer of audio or video programs for future commentary. In the event I undertake publication of my own audio and video programs, I will certainly use AI transcription services as the labor-savers they are intended to be.
That covers how I use AI in my writing process. You are welcome to contact me for clarification or extended discussions on this topic.
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