Recently, I made the mistake of visiting a writer’s forum. The participants were talking favorably about using AI to improve their work.
Their logic was that AI is a tool that makes our lives easier. It boosts the quality of our work and makes everything more efficient the same way computers, cars, and kitchen appliances do.
One of the participants in the discussion compared using AI for writing to using Python to construct complicated computer code or using an Excel spreadsheet to organize mathematical calculations.
By this analogy, the writer who uses AI to either generate or edit content isn’t a writer at all. They’re a computer programmer.
Before the days of Excel speadsheets, accountants used pen and paper to keep records of exactly the same mathematical equations. Accountants could easily go back to that now if they absolutely had to.
The analogous technology that makes writing faster and easier is Microsoft Word. I use Microsoft Word. The only thing Microsoft Word does for me is to make typing, cutting, and pasting quicker and easier than using pen and paper.
The content is the same because it all comes out of my head.
Plenty of modern authors still use pen and paper. There’s nothing better or nobler about it. They do it because it helps their creative flow.
Typing on a computer helps my creative flow because I can type as fast as I can think. I word-vomit the content onto the page. Writing with pen and paper would slow me down and cramp my flow. It’s a matter of personal idiosyncrasy for each writer.
The difference here is that the reader knows—and the writer knows—that the finished product came authentically from that individual writer. AI-generated content didn’t come from that writer. It came from a machine.
Computer code serves a specific function. Its function is to execute whatever task the code is programmed to execute.
Writing also serves a function. The function of writing is to communicate the writer’s ideas to the audience. That is the only function of written language.
A writer who uses AI—or any other tool to generate content—isn’t communicating with the audience. It’s the opposite of communicating with them.
This would be equivalent to the US President sending his speech writer to negotiate with the Premier of Russia. The Premier of Russia would be justifiably offended that the US President sent someone inferior to communicate in his place.
Your reader is far more concerned with receiving your communication than with how perfectly it’s written. If you’re worried that it isn’t written perfectly enough, the solution is to improve your writing skills—not to do something that could interfere with communication.
In the worst-case scenario, your reader would correctly assume that you substituted a machine to communicate in your place—which is the opposite of what communication is supposed to be.
All people have millions of thoughts going through their heads every single day.
Written communication acts as a lens through which your reader looks into your mind and sees the ideas the way you see them. Your writing skill either muddies the lens or makes it sparkling, crystal clear depending on how good your writing is.
Written language is synonymous with thought. Your thoughts are only as good as your ability to communicate them in writing. Writing things down is literally the act of organizing your thoughts.
We can directly measure the quality of those thoughts by how well you articulate them. Any random thought doesn’t mean anything until you communicate it in a way that the rest of the world can understand.
Using AI either to generate this written content or using AI to manipulate it into something other than whatever came out of your mouth or the end of your pencil—both methods short-circuit the communication process and the process of organizing your thoughts.
Ask yourself one question.
Why do you need to use AI at all?
I use spellchecker and grammar checker on my finished documents. Some might argue that these are AI tools.
Most of the time, I ignore the tool’s recommendations because it doesn’t understand things like idiom and readability.
Whenever the tool gives me a recommended correction, I critique the recommendation compared to what I know about punctuation, grammar, spelling, and word choice rules.
I also compare it to the way I want the work to flow and the message I want to communicate to my audience.
Nine times out of ten, the recommendation is wrong. I only know this because I know more about how written language works than the tool could ever know.
Only a bad writer would need to use AI to write content or improve it. You’re showcasing your lack of skill because you can’t produce something better on your own.
You wouldn’t need AI if you really did your job—if you really learned your craft and perfected all the rules and skills you need to call yourself a writer in the first place. You would produce an even better result without it.
If you’re bad enough as a writer that you have to use AI, whatever you produce will be bad because you won’t know what good writing is.
You won’t recognize where it needs to improve. You won’t think you need to improve because you’ve outsourced improvement to a machine.
AI can never be anything more than a crutch. It’s a shortcut on the road to excellence.
If you take this shortcut, you will never be excellent and everyone who reads your work will see you as the fraud that you are.
Think about the legacy you’re leaving behind with this content. Imagine your children and grandchildren looking back on the work you produced in your life.
Imagine how proud they’ll be of the books you wrote, the blogs you authored, the legal briefs you produced, and the research you conducted.
Now imagine how they’ll feel when they find out that you used a computer to generate this content. Which would you prefer to be known and remembered for?
The betrayal and disappointment they’ll feel will be equivalent to millions of young fans finding out that Lance Armstrong used performance-enhancing drugs to win all his cycling titles.
Lance Armstrong spent years denying that he doped during his cycling career. Then the whole world turned against him when the truth came out.
No one denies that he actually cycled in those races. No one denies that he actually won those titles.
He might have been able to win those titles without using drugs. We’ll never know because he used a crutch to do it. He used a tool that made cycling easier, faster, and more efficient.
That’s what AI is. It’s a performance-enhancing drug.
It boosts your native skills and allows you to accomplish something more.
You might have been able to produce something as good or better if you only tried.
We’ll never know because you didn’t try. You took the easy way out and wound up with something mediocre and totally devoid of personality and excellence.
I could write every single one of my books using pen and paper. The result would be the same. The stories would be the same. The wording would be the same. The process would just take longer.
True greatness can’t be AI-generated. You will never be great if you cut corners, take shortcuts, and let technology do the work for you.
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