I’ll be honest, part of the reason I haven’t been posting is because of the explosion of generative AI discourse.
When the writing you create goes from “maybe” being scraped, digested and churned badly into free, unattributed content to “guaranteed”, the futility monster moves in and sets up house.
It’s made me think less of writing.
It’s made me think more of writing.
What’s the most important part of it? Is it the ideas? Is it the word choice? Editing? Sweat and tears? Is it the fact that certain people have an innate skillset towards it and I happened to be one of them?
Is writing a privilege?
Is the perseverance part of the value?
Is AI cheating? Or is it just another tool?
Existential crises rise up for each technological leap. I can only imagine the frustration of realist painter when the photograph was invented. What about portraitists? Did they see their livelihood slipping away and bemoan the crassness of almost immediate satisfaction? The limited interpretation of life that just happens to be in the frame.
We never think of the limitations of photos anymore. The fact that it is a split second and not hours. The snapshot’s lack of artistic stamp. Have you ever taken a photo and thought…that’s not what I see, not at all. Is this what AI writing is? How we will come to see it? Invisible except at the moments when we have something to say and no way to fix it?
But, writing isn’t just writing books or blogs. It is the creation and refining of thought. All types of thoughts. And when you don’t start from a blank canvas, your thoughts are by necessity limited. You are already pinned to the start of a smaller maze.
And these small thoughts will crowd out all the rest.
Even the bad thoughts.
That might be used to get to the good ones.
The Friend Manual: How to make friends when you're bad at it 