Writing in the Age of AI

What does it mean to write in the age of AI? This question is especially pertinent to me as a person who never considered myself much of a writer. What do I stand to gain from writing with zero AI when AI could help me massage my writing, implement perfect grammar, and craft full paragraphs based off just bullet points that I write?

Recently, some friends were interested in seeing my writing and I sent them some of the Word docs I had of my old blog posts. One of them responded that the writing was so “me.” I never thought I had a writing style that conveyed my voice or personality. That prompted me to try to see if there was a way to recover my deleted blog more out of nostalgia for my 21-23-year-old thoughts. I obviously recovered it in some form. Once I did that, I read through some of my past writings. Writing those posts really did bring me some kind of joy and those writing really did encapsulate my thoughts as they were in my brain at that time.

So, I wanted to think about this topic of AI and writing as I reintroduce the blog. Is there something lost when we give ourselves and our thoughts over to AI? And what does writing mean to me?

I admit that I have used AI and still use AI. There was a period last year where I decided to bite the AI bullet after resisting using it and began using AI quite a bit. I used it for more than I should have honestly. The thing is, I could tell it was making me think less and becoming a crutch for using my brain. That scared me as a person who thinks my brain is the most important part of me. I still use it to some degree. I use Adobe products for my job and Adobe has implemented AI tools within its products like Photoshop. There is certainly a part of me that can see how AI can be used as another computer tool or program to speed along a process that already exists.  For example, I use Google’s Gmail AI to add my movie ticket email confirmations as events to my Google Calendar so the movies I’m seeing are blocked out in my calendar. There are ways I see AI makes practical sense and doesn’t seem far from other kinds of automated tools. But I’ve since really scaled back how much I use AI because I think an overuse of it is quite detrimental.

I fully know the big problems that exist with AI too. The environmental, the political, the ethical. This isn’t going to be a blog post critiquing all the way AI is destructive in those realms. That would warrant a separate blog post and is one I would want to seriously research more as I had done with past blog posts like Our War with China and Colorado was Made White. This is just to say that it’s hard to make an argument for AI when those global AI issues exist that directly conflict with my values.

What I do want to confront, as it relates to writing, are some of the pro-AI arguments around progress, perfection, efficiency, and art. Those are detrimental on a personal level that maybe some people have begun to realize, but some might not realize and that’s what I think it scary.

I think one of the large arguments for AI is about progress.

An AI enthusiast’s motto may be something along the lines of “do more things, easier, better and faster.” It’s progressing humans, it’s pushing us to achieve more. It will make us better, maybe even perfect what we do. In that case, maybe AI is progress. But that, to me, makes me realize we are grappling with hard questions around progress. Is that really what we want to define as progress?

The key thing I want to tackle here is perfection as progress. I’ve had a motto in my head as it relates to life that “the enemy of progress is perfection.” What AI does, especially in the realm of writing is that AI “perfects” it. It removes the grammar mistakes, the typos, the rambling sentences. It smooths out sentences that might not be rough around the edges and the unnecessary isms. But by “perfecting” it, AI removes what make it human. Or in the writing realm, the imperfections that make it personal and true to the writer. We humans are babbling idiots who do something wrong and maybe sometimes learn from it. That’s what a human is. We are not machines who do things perfectly all the time. We humans do not all have the same flow of internal thoughts that come out in the same kind of writing style with perfect structure and grammar.

When we give ourselves over AI, a machine who perfects things, we lose the chance to truly make the mistake and learn. We lose that slow process of growing and evolving through time, iteration, and understanding. We lose the ability to craft our own and develop taste and originality in the name of what something else has deemed perfect. I believe we lose a part of what makes humans, humans, for better or for worse.

But I understand the temptation of perfection. I fell into that trap years back at this point and it was destroying me… a topic for another day. When you have a machine that can so easily perfect things, I understand why people would use it. It’s almost irresistible to perfect what you do and say when it can come with the click of a button.

Now to tackle the argument of efficiency. This is where AI reeled me in. As a Type A person, you can really convince me on an efficiency argument. I love making things more efficient. Killing two birds with one stone, as they say. I love being productive and I love when I can find ways to make that productivity go farther. So, when I got sucked into AI, it really was because it made searching for something on the internet way more efficient. It made writing an email way more efficient. And it made cataloging my thoughts and free flowing ideas more efficient.

Unrelated though I was pondering my irritation at someone who was putting in half-assed effort at something they genuinely liked and valued but they simply didn’t want to put in the work. It was hard for me to relate to. I love to work when I enjoy my work. I do all the volunteer stuff, not because it’s easy, but because it’s work and effort that feels so fruitful. It makes me realize that this, the work of living, is what humanity is.

I came across when I was thinking about the people who don’t want to put in effort in the things in their life:

Now I let it fall back
in the grasses
I hear you. I know
this life is hard now.
I know your days are precious
on this earth
But what are you trying
to be free of?
The living? The miraculous
task of it?
Love is for the ones who love the work

—Joseph Fasano’s poem For a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper

This resonated so wholly in my soul. I don’t consider a good life one without struggle and where I didn’t work for something.

And by work, I most certainly don’t mean a money-making job. Work can be the toiling of the Earth to grow new life, the steady refinement of a craft, the slow gratification to focus on a book over the instant gratification dopamine hits of social media, the emotional labor of mending a relationship instead of just letting it go, the intentional act of quiet mindfulness to leave minimal impact on the natural world, the personal indulgences sacrificed in order to make community possible, the countless iterations to make sure an act of expression or a story is accurate, the constant changes to meet the needs of a partner, the boring tasks dedicated to important civic contributions, and the laborious sacrifices you have to make in order for a child to thrive.

My favorite quote is from James Baldwin in The Fire Next Time, “People who cannot suffer can never grow up, can never discover who they are.” I am not saying everyone must suffer some capital T Trauma, but suffering, struggling, or fighting for something builds character. It helps you define who you are and can grant you a deeper understanding of what living and being human means.

I want to live a life where at the end of it I can say, “I put my heart and soul into what I love and cared for.” The seductive allure of a life of leisure lacks real meaning, lacks vitality, and is more akin to spiritual death. As said in Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, “This is the great tragedy of California, for a life oriented around leisure is in the end a life oriented to death—the greatest leisure of all.”

The miracle of life is being on this planet in the first place and with that, you have the precious gift to use your life. The fact of existence is miraculous, but what does existence means if you didn’t live when you had that chance. This is the difference between existence and living. To live, to me, means to not take this miracle of life and humanity for granted. Why would I use the precious time on this Earth to let the opportunities to live, to love, and do the hard work of living just to… merely exist?

Listen are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?
—Mary Oliver from Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches?

Then comes the idea that AI can make art. Maybe I exist in a bit of a bubble, but I don’t know of a person who thinks AI can make great art.

I don’t think AI can write a story as eloquent as A Promised Land by Obama, or as epic as The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, or creative as Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang. I don’t think it has the vision and decades of expertise it took to create Starry Night by Van Gogh or Two Fridas by Frida Kahlo. I don’t think it has the emotional depth and deeply personal experience to create albums as resonant as What’s Going On by Marvin Gayve or The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.

There are some who think AI can make art though. Or think the stuff AI is producing is just as good as what us humans have outputted as art. That is a saddening thought to me.

I think it calls into question what is art? What makes for great art? Especially when we have AI technology that can replicate the styles of great artists like Van Gogh?

Whether it’s a story, an idea, or an emotion, art is expressing something deeply personal. Art is about what it evokes in another person. I have cried tears in front of a Rothko painting. I always ask this question to a person who is new to art museums and doesn’t really know what to do. It is: “What feeling does this bring up in you?” Art can unlock feelings that sometimes can’t even be described. Art is about creativity and imagination of the mind. Art can be about skill, excellence, and innovation. Art can be a time capsule of a perspective of history, politics, and power. Art can challenge, confront norms, and change minds. Art can be an experience, a piece that creates a worthwhile moment in time for the viewer. Maybe, simply put, what is art but an expression of humanness? Maybe art is what makes us human.

As a person who studied in the art world and works in an art field, it feels obvious to me that art is part of what makes us human. There are some other species who have been observed to use things as possible decoration or create designs, but we can’t know if it is art to them. It is humans who have this incredible ability to create art and make meaning of art.

I’m not too surprised that AI as a replacement for art, artists, or creators has been swift. Call it the decline in art literacy, but I know too many people who brush aside contemporary art as something their kid could do or meaningless weird stuff. I don’t think Timothee Chalamet was wrong when he said ballet and the opera were dying arts. I have loved going to the symphony and to ballet, but when I have, the crowd is full of 50+ people. I don’t know many friends who still read physical newspapers or the news generally. It’s well known that Netflix is essentially dumbing down their content because they know a lot of people watching their content is simultaneously on their phones and only half paying attention to the TV or movies. And the under funding of the arts and journalism have really shown this societal de-prioritization. So unfortunately, it’s not a surprise to me that people may be generally ok with AI replacing the artists, the musicians, the writers, and the creators.

What do we lose when we give all this over to AI?

I feel increasingly I am making the case to my friends and myself why AI is not the golden egg we think it is. There is a lot we stand to lose with AI wholesale replacing things in our society. Namely the things that make us humans.

My friend asked this question whether we think art or science has advanced humanity more? We all said art but we were biased with us all being professionals in the arts. I can absolutely see a valid argument for science. Vaccines and modern health have been undeniably amazing for humans. At least in my mind, maybe not RFK Jrs’ mind. Maybe if the question was “what has helped human species advance more?” you could have a stronger argument for science. But in terms of humanity, I feel you have to say the arts. Or… the humanities. Whether that’s the philosophical thinkings of the Greeks, the plays of Shakespeare, the music of Beethoven, or the reckoning of To Kill a Mockingbird, art has helped us relate and understand each other more. It has documented the truth in history and stories. It has brought us together and has helped us understand our purpose and give meaning to our lives.

If we lose art, I don’t think that is that progress. If we lose the act of making and creating, we take away something beautiful about humans. If we lose the imperfect process of understanding ourselves and our voice, we lose a part of ourselves.

We are the only people who know our own inner voice. Once we give it over to AI, but moreso give it to AI to shape and transfigure, we give the machines one of the few things we have that makes us unique, intelligent, creative, beautiful humans.

I focused on the art aspect of this because of the writing lens I approached it with but also because that’s the strongest argument for me.

To me, writing is an exercise of my mind. It’s an exercise of my brain with particular focus on skill and sharpening the sword of this craft. It’s a way to communicate my thoughts in a more thoughtful way. Writing like this is not the transcribing of my free-flowing thoughts, but the intentionally worked and reworked and reworked words that reflect what is more truly me. There is no better way to understand yourself than to go through the motions of constant dialogue with yourself. To write, and by write, I mean the work and effort of writing, is to not just be processing your thoughts but refining them and what they mean. It has been a way to clarify who I am.

I don’t want AI to take this away from me.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
—Mary Oliver in The Summer Day