Resisting the Seductions of AI Fluency

Most pitches I now receive are clearly leeched from large language models (LLM). About once a week I come across an article in a magazine, or a newspaper, that clearly depends on artificial intelligence. One of the more subtle clues is the way writers rely on it to generate references, especially to a particular cultural artefact, or historical gobbet. Why should that matter? Surely, it is much like using the Encyclopaedia Britannica, or Google, to give the writer the information they need? It is true that using a reference without an awareness of why it is being invoked, and what role it plays in the argument being made, is common to most writers, especially those who lack confidence in their own voice.