All posts tagged: write

Managers are using AI to write performance reviews – and it shows

Managers are using AI to write performance reviews – and it shows

Published by Miika Tikkanen

ZDNET’s key takeaways Managers are increasingly using AI to give direct reports feedback. How employees are receiving that is a mixed bag. AI fills a support gap in conversation prep. As AI use ramps up at work, where are the pros and cons, and for whom? New research from professional development firm Highwire shows where AI has entered the feedback loop — and where it’s both a potential problem and a solution for employee development. Highwire surveyed 1,034 corporate employees on how AI is infiltrating manager-employee relationships. It found that 78% of managers reported using AI to “help draft, edit, summarize, or inform feedback or a performance review” in the last year. Most of those managers, perhaps unsurprisingly, noted that AI sped up the process of prepping that feedback (Highwire told ZDNET it did not ask managers what else they noticed about using AI). Also: Nearly 70% of workers use AI regularly now – with no time to upskill However, only 16% of non-managerial employees surveyed were told AI influenced their review. Maybe concerns about …

Write your next 300K manuscript with AI for just

Write your next 300K manuscript with AI for just $37

Published by Miika Tikkanen

TL;DR: Write a 300K-word manuscript for just $37 with this YouBooks AI lifetime subscription. Writing is just one step in creating a book. Before that comes research, outlining, drafting, and editing. But for only $36.75 (reg. $540), you’ll be able to craft publish-ready 300,000-word manuscripts for life through Aug. 9 with code AUG25. Even the busiest educators, content creators, entrepreneurs, and coaches can get their words out as intended. The platform is powered by various leading AI platforms, such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Llama, to help you generate cohesive, expertly crafted, and engaging content. With it, you can use the monthly 250K credits your lifetime subscription provides for source uploads or writing. Mashable Deals By signing up, you agree to receive recurring automated SMS marketing messages from Mashable Deals at the number provided. Msg and data rates may apply. Up to 2 messages/day. Reply STOP to opt out, HELP for help. Consent is not a condition of purchase. See our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. One credit accounts for one word or one uploaded …

Stop Trying to ‘Help Me Write’ | Dan Chiasson

Stop Trying to ‘Help Me Write’ | Dan Chiasson

Published by Jenni Sidey

April 22, 2026, 5:35 AM AI has made contemporaneous self-reflexivity almost a necessary precondition for anyone who tries to write about it, now that, from behind the blinking cursor marking my every pause and hesitation in writing this sentence, a serpent waits to strike. I would prefer not to write sentences that track their own emergence from thought; I don’t like the kind of faddish writing that does this, this very thing that I am doing; but now that I feel I must actively preserve thinking as the medium in which language is generated, against Google’s satanic offer to “Help Me Write,” I also feel I should think about what it is I’m preserving, and who, exactly, the tempter is, and why they are so eager to “help me” surrender the pleasure of making the next associative or logical leap on my own, from hints and insinuations found inside a brain that can never fully know itself, or—sorry if this seems vain—tire of trying. “Heavens—it is an hour later,” Elizabeth Bishop once wrote to Robert …

Did a Human Write This?

Did a Human Write This?

Published by José Betancourt

Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube What happens when the majority of content on the internet tips over into AI slop? On this episode of Galaxy Brain, Charlie Warzel talks to Max Spero, a co-founder of Pangram, an AI-detection company. They discuss how AI-detection tools work and how effective they can be at identifying what’s made by humans and what comes from a chatbot. They explore the cultural concerns around authenticity in the large-language-model era, and whether detection can keep up as models improve. The pair discuss how the speed of AI development and synthetic content threatens to degrade the quality of human writing and pollute the internet—and what, if anything, can be done to stop it. The following is a transcript of the episode: Max Spero: I want to see people using AI to cure cancer and, you know, make senior care easier and make all of our lives better. And I also don’t want to see AI polluting the internet. So sort of like: There’s these two sides, and I want …

Excel can now write its own formulas, and I haven’t typed one since

Excel can now write its own formulas, and I haven’t typed one since

Published by Miika Tikkanen

I know how to write Excel formulas, but I just don’t need to. Memorizing argument order for XLOOKUP or counting parentheses in a nested IF has never been the interesting part of working with data. Copilot in Excel now lets me describe what I need in plain English, and it handles the syntax. It’s not perfect, and it won’t replace knowing what your data should look like, but for the bulk of my daily spreadsheet work, I’ve stopped typing formulas. Here’s why that’s been easy to get used to. Related Excel finally fixed its biggest data entry problem, and it’s a lifesaver One click in the Data tab can catch almost all issues. Plain English is all Copilot needs to build a formula The sidebar turns a sentence into a working column The whole process starts from the Copilot button on the Home tab. Clicking it opens a chat panel on the right side of Excel. There’s one requirement before it does anything useful — it’s better to have your data formatted as an Excel …

Behind the Books We Write

Behind the Books We Write

Published by José Betancourt

photo credit: Barb Kinney by Terry Tempest Williams, author of The Glorians      What if we wrote a sequel to each book we write composed of what we didn’t say in the first book? Would they be comprised of secrets? Offensive passages? The truth beyond the truth? After the facts and beyond the craft of the narrative we have constructed, what did we omit, what did we forget, and what did we come to discover, uncover after our book was published?        Here is how I would begin the sequel to The Glorians – Visitations From The Holy Ordinary now.      In the fall of 1973, I enrolled in my first poetry class at the University of Utah. Robert Mezey was a visiting poet. He was blunt and self-assured around our workshop table, and at times, a captious man. The literary critic Dana Gioia described Mezey as “brilliant, mercurial and often rebellious.”      What I remember most about my first writing professor was his first pronouncement: “I know you want to be poets, some of you will be, most of you won’t. But …