The silent AI tax

“If I’d had time, I would have written you a shorter letter.”

It’s a quote that gets attributed to Pascal, Twain or Churchill depending on who you ask, but the point's well made: 

Brevity takes effort.

I was reading a document the other day - or at least trying to. It was well structured, neatly written, well formatted and entirely sensible on the surface. But about halfway through, I realised I had no idea what it actually wanted from me. So I went back to the start and read it again. Still nothing.

What followed was me sitting there with a fat highlighter doing the work the document should have done: trying to work out what was being asked, what mattered most, and what the actual point of view was. The information was there, but the “so what” was conspicuously absent.

I’m noticing this more and more. Briefing documents, summaries, scopes of work - all with the hallmarks of something generated quickly and efficiently, seemingly churned out by someone's AI tool of choice. Hey, I understand the appeal. From the sender’s perspective, it's a blissful time saver. But from the receiver’s perspective, it’s the complete opposite.

The effort hasn’t disappeared. It’s just been transferred.

That’s the silent AI tax.

Not a financial tax, a cognitive one. A quiet shift where the burden of making sense of something moves from the creator to the recipient.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not railing against AI. It’s here to stay and can be hugely powerful. The issue is not the tool, but how it’s being used - and how it’s undermining trust and influence when used poorly.

There’s a clear difference between using AI to sharpen your thinking and using it to avoid doing the thinking yourself. One creates leverage; the other creates noise and pushes effort downstream.

The real work is not the writing - it’s the distilling of meaning. The act of deciding what matters, what doesn’t, and what you actually think, and making sure that’s what stands out.

When that hasn’t been done, you can feel it. Not because the document is poorly written, but because no human has taken ownership of ensuring the “so what” is front and centre.

By all means use AI to sit alongside you to help produce the work. But never abdicate the most important role of all: editing until it's truly yours.

Until next time,
Simon