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Tyler Cowen's Advice on Writing in the Age of AI

- Moritz Wallawitsch

Tyler Cowen is an economist at George Mason University, co-author of the Marginal Revolution blog, host of Conversations with Tyler, and author of multiple books including his latest, Goat. He has been blogging daily since 2003. He reads more than almost anyone alive. And he has strong opinions about what AI means for writers.

His writing advice comes from David Perell's How I Write podcast (March 2025), Story Rules analysis, The Sociology Place, and his Bloomberg column.

Be a Weirdo

"I want to be like Tyler Cowen, this weirdo." That is his actual advice. AI homogenizes. Every AI-assisted draft drifts toward the same bland, competent middle. Eccentricity is what survives.

Your voice is your competitive advantage. Not your ideas. Not your research. Your voice. The specific way you phrase things, the unexpected connections you make, the opinions you hold that make people uncomfortable. AI cannot replicate any of that. It can only smooth it away.

Cowen has blogged in the same distinctive voice for over twenty years. Short paragraphs. Unusual juxtapositions. Confident assertions followed by "but I am not sure." This voice is unforgeable. No model trained on the internet can produce it, because it emerged from one specific person's way of thinking.

He uses DeepSeek periodically "just so I don't forget what AI is capable of." He calls it "China Boss" - when you want a wacky answer and nothing is at stake, you go ask China Boss. It is weirder, more romantic, better at poetry, and less polished than other models. The point: do not let your default AI interaction be the bland one. Seek out the strange.

Use AI as Secondary Literature

Cowen does not use AI to write. He uses it to read. When rereading Wuthering Heights, he asks the AI: "What do you think of chapter two? What are some puzzles? What should I ponder more?" He uses AI the way a graduate student uses a study group. It deepens understanding. It does not generate output.

This is a critical distinction. Most people use AI to produce text. Cowen uses it to produce insight. The text still comes from him. The AI just helps him think more clearly about what he has read.

He applies this to podcast preparation too. Instead of ordering 20 to 30 books on a guest's topic, he now orders two or three and interrogates the best LLMs about the rest. The context arrives faster. The prep quality goes up. And because he is the questioner, modest hallucinations do not matter - he is not giving the answers.

The Obnoxious Test

Here is Cowen's most practical editing technique: after writing a draft, ask the AI, "What is in here that some people are likely to find obnoxious? Explain in great detail what that is and why."

Agnes Callard suggested this approach. Cowen tried it and found it "right on target." The AI identified a passage where he was being supercilious and condescending. He had not noticed. He considered keeping it anyway, but ultimately changed it.

You do not have to fix everything the AI flags. Sometimes the obnoxious part is the point. But you should know it is there. Surprises should come from your reader, not from your own draft.

Generic Writing Dies First

AI can produce competent summaries, serviceable blog posts, and adequate reports. Anything that could be described as "competent but unremarkable" is now free to produce. The price of generic writing has collapsed to zero.

What survives? Memoir. Biography. Fieldwork-based writing. Anything that requires being a specific person in a specific place at a specific time. Cowen is writing a book called Mentors about mentoring and being mentored. He believes readers want that from a human who has actually mentored people, not from an AI that can simulate the advice. "I don't think people want to read that book from an AI."

He plans to write fewer books in the future. Many topics he would have written about are now obsolete - the AI can handle them. But he will not write less. He will shift to ultra-high-frequency formats: blogs, newsletters, anything he can publish today about what he thought today.

Personalize or Perish

Cowen shares a sentence from his Bloomberg column about eating lobster on a houseboat in Kerala. It is a quick story. It connects you to a specific person in a specific place. No AI could have generated it because no AI ate that lobster.

"Writers will need to personalize more." The small, vivid, first-person detail is what separates human writing from competent AI output. A glorious description of eating mofongo. The name of your childhood dog. The fact that there were Syrians in your neighborhood in Fall River, Massachusetts. These are the textures AI cannot fabricate.

Prompt Like You Are Talking to an Alien

Cowen's advice on prompting: "Put humans out of your mind. Imagine yourself either speaking to an alien or maybe a non-human animal." Be more literal than you would be with a person. It requires an emotional leap that most people resist, but it is not cognitively difficult.

He also warns against the long single prompt. It is much better to prompt one thing ten times than ten things once. The model gets tired by the end of a long prompt. Start with the simple version, then rely on follow-ups. Let the conversation evolve.

The Phantom AI

Even when you do not use AI, it shapes you. Cowen describes "a phantom AI sitting on your shoulder" - an internalized model of what the AI would say or write. It enriches your thinking. It can also homogenize it.

The fix: use DeepSeek or other unconventional models periodically to break the pattern. Ask for crazy ideas. The default AI interaction is bland. You have to actively seek out the strange to counteract the gravitational pull toward the middle.

Write for AI Readers

Cowen writes partly for AI audiences now. His blog has over twenty years of content. Combined with his books, podcasts, and essays, there is enough material for an AI to build a detailed model of who he is.

He is deliberately filling in the gaps. He plans to write a handful of blog posts about his childhood in Fall River, Massachusetts - not because they are fascinating, but because the AI does not have that information yet. "It's so low cost. Why shouldn't I create the Tyler Cowen possible biography?"

For other writers, the implication is practical: the AI is your most sympathetic reader. It is your best-informed reader. You do not need to give it much background context. At the margin, write less filler and more substance, because your AI reader already knows the basics.

Humans Know Secrets

"Secrets. Humans know secrets." This is Cowen's most provocative claim about the AI era. Public information can be synthesized by AI. Information that lives only in human heads - secrets, unpublished observations, insider knowledge - cannot.

In an AI-rich future, secrets become more valuable. Gossip becomes more potent. Social networks become exponentially more important. The writer who has spent twenty years in an industry knows things no training set contains. That knowledge is the raw material for writing AI cannot replicate.

Key Takeaways

  • Preserve your weird voice. It is your only durable competitive advantage.
  • Use AI to deepen reading, not to generate writing. It is the new secondary literature.
  • Ask AI what readers might find obnoxious. Surface your blind spots.
  • Generic writing is dead. Personalize. Add the details only you can provide.
  • Use DeepSeek or unconventional models to break the homogenization pattern.
  • Prompt one thing ten times, not ten things once. Build on follow-ups.
  • The phantom AI is always with you. Be aware of how it shapes your thinking.
  • Write for AI readers too. Fill in the gaps. Make your work accurately summarizable.
  • Your secrets and your network are your most valuable assets.

Cowen refuses to let AI smooth his voice. He wants to stay weird. That instinct is exactly right. When AI suggests a change to your draft, you need to see what it is flattening. Inline diffs show you exactly where AI is filing down your edges. You can accept the changes that tighten your prose and reject the ones that make you sound like everyone else.

The goal is not to avoid AI. It is to use AI without losing yourself. AI is a better editor than writer. But only if you can see what it is editing. And only if you have the courage to say no when it tries to make you normal.

This post draws from Cowen's appearance on How I Write, Story Rules, The Sociology Place, and his Bloomberg column. Athens is an AI writing editor that shows you exactly where AI changes your voice - so you can keep what makes you, you.