Objectivity Without Ego in Writing Feedback

Why a machine without feelings gives you better feedback than a well-meaning human. Hold on. Emotionless and writing? Those don’t go together, right? Well, they actually do and it even works better than well-meaning compliments.

The Ego of Human Feedback

With human feedback, you’re always dealing with the ego of the person giving it. Even professionals color their feedback with personal preferences, their own frame of reference, and cultural background.

That can be valuable if your background is the same, but it can also get in your way. An academic might find your text “too simple” when you’re actually writing for laypeople.

An older editor doesn’t get your Gen Z humor and advises you to cut it, when that’s actually your strength. You might get feedback that says more about the reviewer than about your text.

An AI has no ego or life experience. It means it can give much more objective feedback on your text than a human ever could. Simply because an LLM is a machine. It isn’t hindered by life experience, feelings, and so on.

AI Has No Personal Agenda

An AI isn’t trying to impress or outdo you. The desire to impress and compete comes from feelings: an LLM doesn’t have those. AI just wants to help.

AIs are also programmed to tell you what you want to hear to some extent. If you contradict an AI, it often agrees with you. If you tell it it was too critical, it adjusts its responses in your favor.

But this is different from the emotional people-pleasing with those you have a relationship with. And often social context forces specific (desired) behavior. The AI first just gives you the hard truth. It only gets gentler when you push back. A friend starts out mild, to protect the relationship.

Consistent in Its Judgment

AI is consistent in its judgment. You get essentially the same feedback on Monday as on Friday, at least, if the training and system prompt are the same at both times. The feedback is worded differently, but the core stays the same.

It’s true that an AI can hallucinate when it doesn’t have a good answer: LLMs are programmed to always provide an answer. So if it doesn’t know, it will hallucinate, make up information just to come up with an answer.

But if we look purely at its ability to judge, it’s consistent. It’s a machine. No Monday morning mood, no Friday afternoon slump.

No Issues with Competition or Jealousy

An AI never feels threatened by your talent or success. It’s not a creature of flesh and blood with emotions. It doesn’t have a finite life, no job where it has to compete with other, possibly more competent people.

It’s just a machine that executes what you ask, for as long as needed, without ever being colored by competitive feelings or jealousy.

Now a human. They can give feedback from jealousy without you realizing it. “Too ambitious” can mean: you threaten me. An AI just says: “These sentences are too long for your audience.” Dry, businesslike, without any subtext.

A human might say: “You’re trying too hard to sound smart.” An AI might say: “Sentences 4, 7, and 15 contain jargon your audience might not understand. Consider replacing ‘paradigm shift’ with ‘major change’.”

See the difference? The human judges you as a person. The AI looks at the text.

How to Ask for Good AI Feedback

Be specific. Don’t write: “What do you think of my text?” Instead:

“Analyze this text for:

Readability for a general audience
Structure and organization
Strength of argumentation

For each point, give three specific improvements with examples from my text.”

This way you get usable feedback instead of vague generalities. Or try asking for takes from various angles: “Be a harsh editor on this” or “Pretend you’ve never heard of this subject.” Targeted requests get you concrete advice.

Verify any factual corrections though, particularly with niche subjects. Hallucinations happen. And remember: you don’t have to accept all AI suggestions. It’s still your text, your voice.

The Liberation of Objective Feedback

Now the most important point: why all this objectivity without ego is so valuable for your development as a writer.

Feedback from a human can be very confrontational. You could say: anyone who wants to improve as a writer should be able to handle that. Fair point. Though not everyone handles it equally well.

And let’s face it: Getting critiqued on something you’ve poured yourself into can sting.

Feedback can also hit hard. It can seriously damage your confidence as a writer. Which explains why certain writers steer clear.

Sure, it looks like denial. Yet when criticism becomes crushing enough to make someone quit writing altogether, it defeats the whole purpose.

When you get objective feedback from a machine, that feedback doesn’t hit as hard. You’re more willing to submit a text to an LLM, even if you feel very insecure about your work.

You don’t feel shame, because you know you’re talking to a machine without feelings and without real-world experience. It just looks at your text objectively.

The AI remains frank about weak spots. What’s different is you won’t cringe over work that fell short of expectations. No human sits there forming opinions about you. That makes you much more open to objective feedback.

And THAT helps you develop your writing style much faster. You’re more likely to ask an LLM for feedback than a human. Plus, an LLM is always available, while a human gives feedback when that person has time.

Emotionless and writing? They DO go together. In fact: that emotionless perspective removes the barriers that block your development as a writer.