Writing with AI

A conversation I had with a senior UX designer several months ago:

They asked if I use AI for work, and I said, 'Yeah, I use AI for a lot of things, but only the tasks I would have done myself that I would take ages to do otherwise.'

'Yea like writing slides and web copy right?' 

'No!' I said, shocked. 

'What? Why? We do, for almost all of our copy.'

'Well, honestly because I can write better than AI.'

'Okay but you can probably do the other manual tasks you do with AI better than AI, but you let it do them to save you time right? Why is writing different?'

I simply said it was because I enjoy writing, but I think it’s more than that and speaks to my AI use more generally. 

I don’t use AI for my writing because my writing is my art. It’s how I express myself, it’s the most common way in which I create things. When I write a script for a presentation at work, or an article, or a short story, or even a long and meaningful message to a friend I’m writing for someone, to someone, I’m writing something that I hope they’ll read generously and respond to with a feeling that will bring them closer to me or to understanding what I’m trying to say. 

I feel that using AI to write reduces my art somehow. In this way AI is more than a tool. I use my computer to write most things, it’s a tool that helps me do the work but I don’t think about that as diminishing. If I apply my own logic here I should always be writing with pen on paper, or even I should always be orally communicating, because what is pen and paper if not writing tools?

The difference of course is that AI tries to do it for me. It produces words or expressions or ideas that are not mine - it’s the generative aspect that makes the work feel less honest.  And I think the answer to any criticism of this argument is really that it’s my art and so I want it to be mine.

‘If you’re prompting the AI then it’s still your idea.’  

‘No, because the AI is trained on so much of other peoples work it might be my idea, but it’s not my output.’

‘Why does it matter if AI writes for you if it gets the message across? If it communicates the idea?’ 

‘My art isn’t about getting a message across of communicating idea, it’s about creating, expression, if I’m not creating or expressing then it’s not my art, I want to produce my art.’ 

‘But if it is just for communicating to someone, not art, can’t you use it then?’ 

‘No, because I want to communicate in the same way I want it to be my art.’ 

‘Why does it matter though that it's your idea that’s communicated, isn’t the important thing that it is communicated and understood, if you can do that better with AI why not do it?’ 

‘Because it’s more important for me that I do it, that I can learn from and experience the process of generating ideas and communicating them. If it was life and death that an idea is communicated precisely and I thought AI could do a better job, I would use it, but otherwise, I do it. Because if I’m not creating, if I’m not communicating my ideas or talking to people, if I’m not contributing to my work or society or relationships myself, what am I doing?’  

That’s a long winded way of saying I use AI for things but not for writing because it’s important to me and I feel that offloading it would diminish that importance to me. I have no problem with other people using it to write, especially if as the designer mentioned to me it's because English isn’t their first language, or it helps them to communicate their ideas. 

But then I have to assume the ideas are theirs and they know what it’s saying on their behalf because while AI can generate text for a person, the person is responsible, accountable, for what they present, for what they communicate. If it reads like sloppy bullshit, it’s that person who put the sloppy bullshit in front of you. 

If it’s obviously AI it also tells me it's not something they care about very much, unless it’s obviously being used in a way that helps them. For example, if you’re a social entrepreneur, running a business to help people and you show me an incredibly detailed dashboard about your finances that you were able to build because of AI, that’s awesome. If I then ask you what your most important project is and you can’t tell me, that’s bad. You’re letting the AI do the thing you should be doing if you care. 

If your first language is Spanish and you use AI to generate the subtitles for a video you made, that’s awesome. If you then use it to write a birthday message to your dad, that’s bad.  

I’m reminded of an article my pal Hanna wrote on whether or not you could even tell the difference. It’s a good piece that makes you think but I’m positing here that it doesn’t matter if other people can tell something you did was AI, it should matter to you. And if it doesn’t then that’s fine, use AI for it, just don’t use AI for the things you want to learn, improve, create. Don’t use AI for your art, it diminishes your art.