Is everyone wrong about Hank Green?

So many people I know are absolutely giddy these days about the ways AI is able to help them super-charge their research — whether it’s reading through tomes of papers or recommending itineraries for a big vacation. 

OG YouTuber Hank Green, who reaches millions with his personable science videos, had been using a chatbot to help him out with this sort of background research, too. But he recently found himself at the center of a massive and very public backlash for it — which senior Vox Future Perfect reporter Marina Bolotnikova finds both hugely unfair and extremely illustrative. 

In her helpful analysis of the controversy, she agrees that when a chatbot becomes your research partner, “it can become hard to know where your own brain ends and where AI begins.” But in that state, we lose the ingenuity and creative human touch in our work. That’s why everyone could benefit from deciding on their own AI guardrails, Marina argues. She also offers four smart tips for AI use hygiene. 

This kind of very human writing is made possible by Vox Members. If you would like to support this kind of work and make more stories like this possible, please consider becoming a Vox Member today.

—Katherine Courage, deputy editor Future Perfect

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