A fellow writer just asked me whether I use AI to improve my writing productivity; if I do, what tips would I share with beginners, and if I don’t, what would help me get started? I sat with that for a bit. Then I chose Option 3: I don’t and I won’t and here’s why.
Artificial intelligence stole my best writing trick awhile ago. My secret weapon used to be that I type so fast, I can get every word you say while I’m interviewing you. This allows me to “write” pieces in the voice of any given person, because I can literally cut-and-paste their stream of consciousness into polished prose bridged by my understanding of their style.
It’s been a few years now since AI bots became capable of transcribing your boss or client’s babbling into a tidy Word doc for you in seconds… and lately, they can do a pretty darn good job of digesting the raw transcript into at least a starting point for whatever speech, op-ed, or blog post you want. Need a limerick? No problem, here’s a dozen decently funny ones. (I’ve tried it, 10/10 would recommend.)
But I don’t use AI. Not even for transcription, let alone for writing.
The thing is, I sense that people have their guard up just a little when they know they’re being recorded and transcribed by a bot. When it’s just me doing my One Weird Trick – especially on zoom, where the person I’m talking with can’t see my fingers flying – there’s a feeling of intimacy and connection that gets disrupted when Otter or its cyber-siblings are in the room.
For the kind of writing I aspire to do – for the kind of person I am – that’s what I thrive on. I love the deeply personal story; even if we’re doing a thinkpiece on a cerebral topic, I want to know why you care about it. I want the unguarded, inartful phrasing that comes when you’re speaking from a place so deep in your heart that your brain hasn’t yet found the words for it.
And that’s the next thing, the main reason I don’t use AI when it comes to the writing itself. It does solid work, yeah. But I’ve never yet had a project where I needed to write a limerick. For the things I do write, I’m still better than AI. AI doesn’t know the happy jolt that happens when the exact right word drops into place, the one whose resonance evokes the precise feeling I’m after – and it shows.
Of course I’m speaking from a position of privilege. Currently, I have the freedom that comes from working on bespoke projects where I’m not operating under the level of time pressure that would “force” me to get a head start from AI. I can take the time to cook everything from scratch, instead of going the fast-food route.
That’s the third reason I don’t use AI: because, like fast food, it’s bad for us in so many ways.
I’m not comfortable with the environmental impacts of getting all that “cheap” product to market. I’m not comfortable adding my client’s unguarded words and my own unique work into its everlasting slurry of ingredients from everywhere and nowhere. I’m not comfortable stealing the labor of others, whether that’s minimum-wage workers on food stamps so McD’s shareholders can increase their profit or artists and writers whose brilliance is getting bottom-scraped into the stew without compensation or permission. I want my writing to advance justice, and that ain’t it.
Maybe I will start using AI, sometime in the future. Hopefully not a future that looks like The Matrix or Terminator or 2001 or WarGames or any of the movies where this whole AI thing does not end well for our species.
I know, I know. Add this to the growing list of useless gestures I’m making these days, like showing up at protests and not shopping on Amazon. I have the personal resources to refuse compliance, but my tiny refusal is not holding back the tide for the rest of us.
Does that make it pointless? I’m not sure. But I don’t see the point of giving up, either.
Onwards. ❤️