Why I’m leaving Medium: AI policy
It is with great regret that I am leaving Medium and will no longer write for the platform. I will leave my account active for a while so that my readers will understand what happened, but this is the only article that will remain, explaining why I will no longer support Medium.
To leave was not an easy decision. I had written about forty articles and some of them were quite popular. In total, I probably got at least five thousands claps and hundreds of comments. What’s worse is that most of the comments I received were supportive and encouraging, and I genuinely loved engaging with all my readers. So, I give a heartfelt thanks to everyone who has taken the time to engage with me.
It gets worse. I actually like Medium a lot, because they use an approach different from advertisements to monetizing content and I really applaud that effort. So, that made the decision to leave even harder. But I did, and I deleted all my articles from my account. But for all my readers, don’t worry, you can still find all my writing on my own website, including all the articles I wrote for Medium.
So…why?
It’s Medium’s AI policy. Before I talk about that, I must say something that many of you know:
I am absolutely against artificial intelligence.
Unlike many, I don’t sit on the fence. I hate it with a passion. I think it’s an affront to humanity and will ultimately cause our downfall. If an article uses AI, even just for header images, I don’t read it. I’m also a professional writer and several companies have contacted me to work with me, and when they have generative AI as part of their product, I turn them down instantly.
As Medium is a writing platform, I’d expect that they would have an anti-AI stance as well. After all, writing is all about expressing human and natural perspectives, and not for artificially boosting popularity with trash from an AI program. But now let’s check out Medium’s AI policy. In particular, they say:
AI-generated writing (disclosed as such or not) is not allowed to be paywalled as part of our Partner Program. Accounts that have fully-generated AI writing behind the paywall may have those stories removed from the paywall, and/or have their Partner Program enrollment revoked. […] AI-generated writing that is disclosed as such and is not behind the paywall is eligible for General Distribution, but it is not eligible for Boost distribution. [Boldface mine.]
Absolutely unacceptable. AI writing should be banned. But what Medium is saying here is that: people can use AI all they want. Moreover, even though they restrict it from being monetized, people can create accounts that produce some AI-generated articles to gain rapid attention, and then post some human-written ones under the same account to monetize them.
Regardless of monetization, Medium is using AI content to its advantage. Even if AI-generated articles are not monetized, they can bring in additional traffic which will increase signups, so they are definitely benefiting from AI-generated articles.
They also say:
We allow the responsible use of AI-assistive technology on Medium. AI assistance empowers an author to level up — to make their ideas clearer, for example, or help them express themselves in a second language
I don’t want to read any AI-assisted articles, nor do I want to see them. And also, I vehemently disagree with this statement. Flaws express personality. And I’ve read plenty of articles by people who were not writing in their first language. Even fairly rudimentary users of a language can be clear enough, and such writing can even be charming.
AI doesn’t empower anyone. It only creates a dependence on technology and filters the flaws of being human through a machine so we have even fewer ways to connect with another by recognizing the personality in all of a person’s flaws. And finally, also in their policy:
AI-generated or assisted images are allowed on Medium
To me, any modicum of support for human stories and human-generated content is eradicated in terms of its goodwill by this hypocritical statement. Fully AI-generated articles are forbidden from being monetized, and yet fully-generated AI images are allowed? To me, this is a classic example “who cares, I got mine”. In other words, allowing AI-generated images is an insult to human-generated art, but it’s allowed because it has nothing to do with writing.
Get with the program. If you want to support human-made creations, don’t just restrict AI-generated content with respect to your bread and butter of writing. You’ve got to take a unilateral stand against it, regardless of whether you allow it to be monetized. If Medium announced a complete ban on AI-assisted writing and AI-generated articles, I would come back.
In short, Medium’s permissive AI-content policy to me is unacceptable, and I will never support Medium as long as they allow any AI-generated content on their website.
Of course, I understand that avoiding AI completely is impossible. I guess if you buy a computer these days, its design might have been AI-assisted. And many websites don’t disclose their use of AI. If Google uses AI here and there, that’s one thing. You expect that, just like you expect dirty needles on the ground when visiting a seedy part of town.
But Medium being this permissive with regard to AI?
That’s especially disheartening, because I thought Medium was a place for human beings to share their own stories.
Guess I was wrong.
— Dr. Jason Polak, PhD in pure mathematics, professional wildlife photographer and writer
