Quoting Paul Graham
Paul Graham criticizes founders for using AI to write emails, noting that the journalistic style is easily identifiable and undermines trust.
A quote from Paul Graham
Simon Willison’s Weblog
Subscribe
26th May 2026
A lot of the emails I get from founders are now written in a hard-hitting journalistic style. I know they're written by AI, because no founder ever wrote this way before. And once you realize something is written by AI, it's hard not to ignore it.
I have never knowingly finished reading an email signed by a human but written by AI. It feels like being lied to, and who would stand for that?
[...] It makes me think less of the author. It means they can't write well unaided (or feel they can't), and that they're trying to trick me.
It's not impressive to use AI to write stuff for you; any teenager can do that.
— Paul Graham
Recent articles
Notes on Pope Leo XIV's encyclical on AI - 25th May 2026
Datasette Agent - 21st May 2026
Gemini 3.5 Flash: more expensive, but Google plan to use it for everything - 19th May 2026
This is a quotation collected by Simon Willison, posted on 26th May 2026.
paul-graham 21
writing 30
ai 2037
generative-ai 1802
llms 1768
ai-misuse 51
Disclosures
Colophon
©
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
2024
2025
2026