Artificial intelligence is reshaping academic and professional writing, transitioning roles from content creation to editing AI-generated 'work' to appear more human. While it enhances efficiency, it raises serious concerns regarding originality and authenticity.
The growing influence of artificial intelligence in professional writing has recently come to light after an economist shared an unexpected reality of his daily work on social media.
Marshall Steinbaum, who holds a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago, revealed that a significant portion of his time is now spent editing AI-generated text instead of research or analysis. He shared that he removes ‘em-dashes' to make it appear more human.
"I have a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago, and my main work task these days is removing em-dashes from Claude output so it's not overly obvious,” Steinbaum wrote in a post that quickly went viral.
I have a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago and my main work task these days is removing em-dashes from Claude output so it's not overly obvious.
— Marshall Steinbaum ???? (@Econ_Marshall) April 6, 2026
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How Social Media Users Reacted?
His remark quickly gained traction online, with many users sharing similar experiences across industries.
People pointed out the irony of being tasked to “de-AI” content, especially when the AI tools are designed to assist writing. Several users pointed out that such punctuation is not inherently artificial but commonly used in high-quality human writing.
A user asked, “So, we cannot be real people if we use em-dashes?”
"The annoying part of this is that you're removing em-dashes from your work so that people who hardly ever read won't think it's an AI. When, in fact, if you read any non-fiction written by humans of any reputable prose style you'll find em-dashes on the first page,” read a comment.
Another question, “What do you replace the em-dashes with; commas or hyphens? Or you simply put a period before the em-dash, capitalise the next word, hence making the part after the em-dash a new sentence.”
“I have been using em dashes since long before any commercially available LLM existed, and I do not plan to give up on it,” said a user.
An individual stated, “Ha ha. PhD in EE and doing the same in corporate docs and PPTs these days. Not sure when the gravy train will end.”
“No matter how advanced the model, humans are still the final step of editing,” commented another.
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