Two people collaborating at a screen

The desire to write a blog was very much on my mind well before AI entered into the picture. I have written a number of posts on this blog before, but never got the writer fluids flowing freely. I am not born a natural writer. I also find it particularly difficult to write when I lack clear insight — now fully resolved and condensed into the SPLectrum seed.

My journey into AI is about one year old. As a software engineer, it started with AI as a helping hand for writing code. But soon I took a collaborative approach: solving problems through discussion became more important than the implementation. The collaborative engineering work is still in full swing — in fact that is where the name SPLectrum arose — but in this post I want to concentrate on collaborative AI while researching, writing and thinking.

The software engineering AI collaboration had reached enough maturity that I decided to apply it to my research and writing. At the same time I was able to help others with AI-assisted research for academic use, which gave me a taste and hands-on experience of its strengths and weaknesses. I was impressed. Many tend to emphasise the weaknesses, AI being mistaken or hallucinating. But that is like blaming a junior member of the team for being a junior. It is very important to be the senior in the collaboration.

The alter ego AI collaboration on the software engineering side started as pair programming — using Claude Code. Two individuals who collaborate on a project — discuss, decide, create and review. I found it liberating to chat conversationally in my language, my words, and pretty seamlessly AI would run with it and infuse me with the proper vocabulary in the process. Such a satisfying and intense learning experience. As typically happens in pair programming, one has the hands on the keyboard with the other engaging from a short distance. AI as hands and me as head — essentially one body. And so the alter ego was born.

How does that translate into shared authorship for my blog, or for my research and thinking for that matter? The output is different — it is a public voice. There is still only one author, a combination of a head and a pair of hands so to speak. But any division of labour between head and hands is only going to work well when the same language is spoken.

I could decide to ignore co-authorship. The voice is mine and the ideas are mine — should I acknowledge that inner collaborator? I believe I should. Not only to recognise the work done by my alter ego colleague but more importantly to draw attention to the future ahead. The hands-on collaborator gives me more space and time to do what I really want to do: think, analyse, research and get better at putting it on (virtual) paper. Where the internet gave us the capability to easily search, AI gives us the capability to do it in collaboration while discussing and thinking about it at the same time. That, more than anything else, is what my alter ego and I aim to achieve on this blog. And share it at the same time.

More on the human-AI partnership on the HAICC page.

Photo: Mushvig Niftaliyev / Unsplash