On Dissecting the Artificial

April 27, 2026

Writer: Ana Zarate

Editor: Katherine Zubiaur

It has become an increasingly frequent issue that I’ll be reading a book and have to re-read a line until it makes sense. In the past, I would attribute this to a lack of understanding on my end, a demonstration of genius that a mortal reader like me could not comprehend, that something meaningful could be uncovered with enough patience. Now, however, I have to consider the possibility that maybe it’s not manifestation of talent, but the regurgitation of a machine that cannot feel, or think, or create. 

It’s frustrating to dissect a phrase, to try to understand the writer’s intent, when maybe there really is no intent at all. There is a difference between writing that resists easy understanding because it’s profound, and writing that resists it because it’s hollow. At the same time, the ambiguity further proves that human interpretation cannot be faked. If meaning can be drawn from writing that may not contain any, then meaning itself does not fully belong to the author. A machine may produce the words, but only a human reader has the ability of projecting experience, emotion, and context onto what might otherwise be empty language.

In that sense, the failure of machine-generated writing is also a kind of proof. Human experience cannot be replicated. Even when faced with something artificial, we instinctively try to make it real. We assign intention, we search for depth, we construct coherence. The irony is that in doing so, we demonstrate the very thing the machine lacks: the ability to create meaning, not just mimic it.