AI Chatbots Were Stealing My Work

In 2012, as a 33-year-old staff writer at The American Prospect in D.C., I had the opportunity to travel around the country, looking for stories that would show how real people were connected to the decisions made by politicians inside the Beltway. On a trip to Colorado, while interviewing voters in a suburban swing district just west of Denver, I met a young couple staying in a homeless shelter who mentioned that they had previously stayed at a slightly rundown hotel, paying weekly rent, until they could no longer afford it. I had been looking for a chance to write a long narrative feature on the rise of suburban poverty during the Great Recession, and when I checked out the hotel, I found many other families living in it and in other hotels nearby.