The necessary struggle of writing (don’t let AI think for you)
Writing is a product of thinking. What people see after I press post is simply the end product of the hours spent thinking, writing, deleting, re-arranging, and thinking some more.
It’s not uncommon to spend several days on a single blog post before it’s remotely ready to be released. Trust me, in a perfect world, I would probably spend an extra 20 hours perfecting each post. That’s not the point of my blog though - here, I am devoted to writing and sharing whatever I want. It’s not always the prettiest or clearly niched, but it’s all me.
writing = thinking = self expression = HUMAN
The ease of using AI to generate anything we want puts human expression in supremely dangerous territory. I’m sure AI feels like a godsend to people who struggle to write, but TRUST ME: leaning into temporary pain will benefit you tenfold in the era of AI dependence.
Children are now living in a world where entire essays can be generated with a click, and they gladly do so. Who can blame them (with their underdeveloped prefrontal cortexes and all?!)
We’re all familiar with writer’s block; there’s something so very organic about it. On earth, our human experience grants us the ability to write novels, poems, letters, encyclopedias - to scribble ideas in notebooks just to cross them out. The ipad’s ancestor was a stone slab. The Original Tablet, if you will. Did we really come this far to outsource our brains to large language models? Chatgpt will never know the joys of a hot summer picnic, the smell of grandma’s cooking, how it feels to lose a pet, or fall in love for the first time. Asking it to create something empty in place of our human hearts is an absolute desecration and disservice to free thinking, free will, and creativity.
AI pushes uniformity. But we are humans, not robots.
Writing is a choice. It grants us the privilege of accessing a quantum creative dimension where millions of decisions take place between each letter, word, and sentence… no wonder it takes time!! We’re literally creating an extension of our reality!! While AI churns out soulless crap, every single person, regardless of writing skill/talent/experience, exudes their own unique human scent. It’s kind of the secret sauce that attracts like to like.
In other words, when you let something generate words for you, your voice gets flattened and loses its human spark (no matter how much you try it edit it back into our own words). I can always tell when something is written by AI, even when people try to be covert about it.
credibility or convenience? choose one.
I recently stumbled upon a brand strategist whose website was entirely written by AI. My first reaction was skepticism (and a little suspicion). If this person had relied heavily on AI to create their own brand, what’s stopping them from doing the same for clients?! Would I, as a client, be receiving answers to my questions from ChatGPT or Claude…? Did they truly possess the skills advertised, or just the ability to click “generate”?
Sure, they had solid testimonials and the website was aesthetic. But knowing they blatantly chose to use AI felt like a cloak on their vibes - I learned nothing of who they actually are, what they’re about. No way to tell if the vibe was right.
Part of the problem is that most people won’t call out AI copy when they see it (and it’s possible some people don’t care at all). Therefore persists a cycle of deception: the perpetrator generates with AI, unaware how obvious it is. The people who can tell can’t do much about it, and the people who can’t are deceived.
Why is it deception, you ask?
I believe decisions change based on how much you know.
I’ve often rescinded “likes” from posts once I realize it’s AI. Not from spite, more because I want to consume stuff born from human experience, expertise, passion, or lifelong interest. Most of all, I refuse to accept a reality where it’s acceptable for non-human homogeneity to stand in for human creativity and labor. It’d be one thing if everyone who generated AI copy credited their post to Chatgpt, but that’s not going to happen, is it?
A good way I’ve seen it expressed is: if you couldn’t even be bothered to write it, why should I be bothered to read it?