We Need Writing (It Doesn't Need Us)

I can’t stop thinking about this question.

If no person bothered to write the thing, then why should I be bothered to read the thing?

This pithy query (from whom, I’m not certain) critiques the value of AI-written content creation. And it mirrors my own thinking about AI authoring tools.

AI versus human writing: Hiking big peaks in the Colorado Rockies

When given the choice, do we want to read a Chat GPT article or one written by a human?

For example, why should I take seriously something ChatGPT wrote about, say, hikers being mindful of conservation efforts when they traverse Colorado's 14,000' peaks. I would much rather read content written by a beating-heart human being who loves hiking and whose favorite fourteener is Sneffels. The invested human definitively wins in that scenario.

Then the question becomes: but can I tell the difference? And if not, does it matter? 

Cue existential crisis.

Yes, I’m a hand wringer when it comes to AI and writing.

Nobody does It better(?)

AI is genius at taking the prompts we humans provide and scrubbing them into shiny and professional content about any topic in the world, including conservation and mountain climbing. The text and images are fittingly tailored to a set of audience-focused genres (e.g., white paper, science article, YouTube video with script, podcast, blog post, you name it). Before you know it, you are inundated with information to share about conservation practices while hiking a big fourteener in Colorado.

These kinds of AI hacks are compelling, to put it mildly. And while AI writing is far from perfect, it is scarily improving every day.

Writing doesn’t need us; Any old 21^st-century robot can do it really well

But we humans need writing.

 Writing is still fundamentally a human activity that we perform to understand the world and communicate with/in it.

•  We journal to understand and articulate what we’re thinking and how we want to change and improve.
• We create all sorts of content to communicate everything important to us: from a TikTok about the lost Husky hanging around with bears captured by drone footage, to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s world-changing research on fusion ignition with the power to provide unlimited clean energy.

• We write about our deepest life experiences to share with others, such as a journey from near-death addiction to recovery.

Writing helps us think critically, expands our creative muscle, and enriches our lives as we discover new ideas and connections with others. In essence, writing makes us smarter, braver, and more invested in improving ourselves and those we impact.

Kindly suck it, AI.