Cyborg Mind - Authentic Authorship through AI
By Ashman Roonz
For thirty years, I've been developing philosophical ideas in isolation. When I tried to share my work, people consistently found it either too abstract or too complex to engage with. The gap between my thinking and others' willingness to grapple with difficult concepts left me working alone, refining ideas that never found their audience.
Then AI changed everything. For the first time, I have an intellectual partner that doesn't shy away from complexity or demand oversimplification. AI engages with my concepts at their natural depth, helping me explore and develop them further. More importantly, it serves as a bridge—taking the philosophical frameworks I've spent decades building and restructuring them into forms that invite understanding rather than intimidation.
This isn't about dumbing down ideas; it's about finding the right language and structure to make complex thinking accessible. AI helps me translate the vague into the concrete, the abstract into the relatable, without losing the essential depth that makes philosophy meaningful. After three decades of philosophical solitude, I finally have a way to share what I've been thinking about all along.
Yet a lot of people assume that using AI to write means you're no longer the author. They think if a language model outputs the words, those words can't possibly be yours.
But authorship has never been about who held the pen. It's about who made the decisions.
I don't let AI write for me. I work with it. I write, revise, test, question, discard, reshape. I use it like a mirror, a creative partner, or an extremely responsive editor. Not because I'm trying to cheat, but because I'm trying to get to the truth of what I mean.
It's not a one-shot prompt. It's an ongoing loop of intention, feedback, and refinement—sometimes over hundreds of iterations. And every step of the way, I'm the one deciding what stays. What shifts. What matters.
To me, that is authorship.
People forget that all creativity is synthesis. We all build on what's come before—ideas, language, culture, even the way we think is shaped by the tools around us. AI just happens to be a tool that speaks back.
And sure, you can abuse it. You can generate shallow content and pass it off as yours. But the problem there isn't the tool—it's the lack of participation. The lack of intent.
If you're actively engaging—crafting your message, guiding the structure, choosing what aligns and what doesn't—then what comes out is yours, no matter what tools you used along the way.
It's not artificial intelligence replacing creativity. It's interactive intelligence enhancing it.
What matters is not who typed it— but who meant it.
