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I use AI a lot in the writing process—but not for drafting
by Jason Crawford<br>·<br>June 10, 2026<br>·<br>5 min read
I don’t use AI to draft my writing. These are fine handcrafted artisanal essays, every word placed individually with loving care.
I use AI a lot for researching, occasionally for brainstorming, and increasingly for fact-checking. But not for outlining, drafting, or directly editing.
This isn’t some principled objection to AI use, or a revulsion at the idea of letting technology intrude on my craft. It has simply never occurred to me to do it.
Why? I just don’t think AI writing is good enough today. It’s good at research reports or letters to Congressmen or anything else generic. It isn’t compelling enough to make a good blog post. And it certainly doesn’t have my voice or unique point of view. (I don’t think any AI today has a real point of view.)
Here’s an example. In revising “The Progress Agenda” for publication as a chapter in my forthcoming book, I wanted to add a paragraph on immigration.
Here was my process. First, in my notes, I wrote down several points I might want to make about immigration, off the top of my head. From that, I wrote a simple structure for the paragraph:
immigration is good/important
but it is difficult/time-consuming/uncertain
so we should make it easier (need examples)
At that point I needed data and examples to substantiate these points, which I didn’t have off the top of my head. This is where I turned to AI. I started with the promprt “What are some examples or data points to substantiate the idea that immigration, particularly high-skilled immigration, is important to the US?” I had a conversation with it from there, checking out the sources it pointed me to and asking followup questions until I felt I understood each point well. You can read the whole thing here.
Once I had enough material, I went back and summarized what I felt were the most relevant points in my notes, with sources. Then I drafted the paragraph.
Here’s what I ended up with (at the end of a section calling for across-the-board regulatory reform):
Progress in all of these areas depends on talent, and in the US, a lot of that talent comes through immigration. Immigrants are about 14% of the population, but 43% of doctorate-level scientists & engineers. Immigrants or their children co-founded nearly half of the Fortune 500 list as of 2025, including Amazon, Apple, Google, and NVIDIA, and more than half of US billion-dollar startups, including Stripe, Instacart, and Notion. But we restrict our supply of talent through a slow and burdensome immigration process. The H-1B visa used by many STEM workers is capped at a level far below demand: in 2026, there were almost 339,000 applicants, but only 35% of them were selected. The selections are done by lottery. Once here, the path to permanent residency can be epic, particularly for some nationalities: as of April 2026, some Indians even in the second-highest employment-based preference category (professionals with advanced degrees or “persons of exceptional ability”) have been waiting around 12 years for their green cards. And despite the exceptional success of immigrant entrepreneurs, the US has no startup visa. For the sake of national prosperity and security, the US should have more visas and green cards, including an entrepreneur visa; the ones we have should be better targeted to need, not assigned randomly; and processing should be made more efficient, to eliminate decade-long backlogs.
That paragraph isn’t going to win me a Pulitzer, but it’s solid and it does its part in the overall essay.
As an experiment, after I wrote this, and without showing it to ChatGPT, I prompted it:
Given all this discussion, please draft a paragraph on immigration, arguing that 1. immigration is good/important, 2. but it is difficult/time-consuming/uncertain, 3. so we should make it easier (examples). I want to insert it into this essay, near the end of the first major section, on law/regulation: https://newsletter.rootsofprogress.org/p/the-progress-agenda
Here’s what it wrote:
Immigration is another area where law and regulation need reform. For over a century, the United States has benefited enormously from immigrants, who have contributed disproportionately to science, engineering, entrepreneurship, and economic growth. Many of our most important technology companies were founded or co-founded by immigrants, and immigrants are heavily overrepresented among PhDs, inventors, and startup founders. Yet our system for admitting and retaining high-skilled talent is slow, cumbersome, and irrational. We educate foreign students in our universities, then subject them to visa lotteries, years-long backlogs, and...