Writing in the Age of AI
I have been thinking about my relationship with writing now that we have large language models that can write thousands of words a minute on any subject.
Is it even worth writing anymore? In fact, if we zoom out and consider all the general tasks that AI can now accomplish, and the oncoming wave of intelligent robotics that is coming our way, is it even worth living any more?
Ok, perhaps we jumped off the deep end there. This essay is supposed to be on writing, not a trigger for an existential crisis.
So — is there any point in writing any more?
Well, it depends on why you write and how you perceive artificial intelligence.
If you are writing purely for the end goal of having an article or an essay, then perhaps you will have an existential crisis. Even a relatively small AI model that I can run offline on my Macbook Air can easily create a decent-quality essay on any subject that you can think of. The exponential curve of technological advancement will take care of the rest. In ten year’s time we will have ridiculously powerful AI systems that can run on hardware that is available to any child.
However, it is a different story if you are more interested in the process.
It is still worth taking the time to write because writing is thinking. There is value not just in the writing but even in the breaks between the sentences as you think about what to write next.
That’s where the magic happens.
You reflect. You try to understand yourself and what you actually think, and then become a slightly different person. Each paragraph, each thought you have, nudges you in a particular way.
Something also happens after you have written something. You come to the realization that you started and finished something, and this is no trivial matter.
You accomplished something end to end, which is a lot more than most people do, where everything is always an idea that may or, most likely, may not happen tomorrow.
If you look at things this way, AI is not a threat to writing; it is just a tool like any other. It can help you brainstorm, correct and check for mistakes in your writing, and find quotes and facts more quickly than manually searching for them across the internet.
So I continue writing as is, with some changes to my workflow to brainstorm and get examples. In general, I have been quite unimpressed with AI as a writer. I think because of the underlying technology, it seems to relish clichés, and the writing appears very… artificial.
I guess large language models are, by definition, writing on the average of the data they have been trained on, and perhaps this is why the writing is so bad.
I am sure this will change, and you can drastically improve an AI’s writing quality purely by prompting.
However, just because we have advanced cars, does not mean that walking is irrelevant. In fact, perhaps it is more relevant than ever.
I do wonder about the generation that will grow up with these automatic essay-generating machines. Will that blunt their critically thinking, or having an omnipresent teacher that can challenge their ideas and teach them concepts in ways that they understand, improve their critical thinking?
One thing is for sure, we’re living in interesting times!
