An AI Writer is No Writer at All
Essay: There's no shortcut to avoid putting miles on the pen
A writer who relies upon artificial intelligence (AI) is no writer at all. He might produce something. He might even produce something ‘useful’ I suppose. Of course, true art, as Oscar Wilde pointed out, is quite ‘useless.’ And to be clear, I’m talking about writers here. Those who create Art. AI might be perfectly fine for “copywriting” or for spitting out “content” for social media grifting, but that’s not writing.
The AI proponents don’t seem to understand that writing is not merely, or mostly, the process of putting a pen to paper to share a fully formed opinion or a complete idea. If that was the essence of writing, then utilizing artificial intelligence to make one ‘more productive’ or to ‘save time’ might make sense. In that case, one could log into something like ChatGPT, share a completed idea, and then have the AI spit out a completed and nicely written piece. Perhaps the ‘author’ would have to tweak the output to make it ‘his’ but, by and large, that would be that. The clever among us could probably even teach an AI to mimic our own style.
But the ‘problem’ with that idea is that we don’t write simply to share an opinion or fact. We write to learn; to clarify our positions; to improve our ability to think; to strengthen our ability to make connections between different ideas; to enter fantastical mental worlds that make life bearable, joyful even; and, ultimately, to find out who we truly are deep inside.
We don’t read books merely to rush to the end and we don’t write to rush to the output. Like a song, the value of writing is in enjoying the journey, in the moment, and, like a great song, we might even be slightly sad when it ends because it’s over. But, by doing so, we will have expanded our consciousness and will have journeyed a bit closer to our true home deep inside our soul – the place where The Sovereign Artist dwells. We will have expanded our reality.
We all have many scattered ideas, feelings, and emotions. And, when we write, we may be inspired to begin by a small solitary idea. I’ve often begun writing, inspired by a catchy turn of phrase, having no idea where the piece will go in the end or even if it will go anywhere. I’d say I write that way more often than not.
Once we start writing however, we begin to realize that there are other little kibbles of ideas and bits of stories stuck in the dusty recesses, the forgotten nooks, and secret crannies of our mind. So, we start pulling out those kibbles and bits, holding them up to the light, examining them, and making unseen connections between ideas seen.
A writer shines a flashlight into dark corners that terrify most people.
“Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness.” – John 3:19
So, that story that I read last week and this idea that I saw online? They come together! And what a rush when two or more ideas connect! It’s exciting and creative, because, like a marriage, the union of two things into a relationship creates a new, third, thing.
As we persist and flesh out these connections, we add some sort of coherence, and perhaps, if we're lucky, our intuition uncovers something unique.
And so, where we end up often will be quite different from where we started!
Paul Graham once said that his process of writing an essay starts with a question. And that his goal in writing the essay is to discover the answer to the question.
When we write, we are often trying to answer a question. Sometimes the question may be fully formed when we start the process, other times we might even not quite know the question! We often write to learn both the question and the answer! That is exactly what I am doing here, in this piece.
This whole process of writing is something that teaches us how to think. Writing enhances our intellect. It enhances our vocabulary as we struggle for just the right word to express the nuance of our ideas. And we tend to remember words that we discover this way because we find them in the context of struggling to discover what it is that we are trying to say. When we write fiction we grow our imagination.
As our vocabulary, our imagination, and our abilities grow, so does our mind, so does our soul – and so does our world.
When we write, we enable ourselves to experience a richer world with more color, depth, subtlety and nuance.
This process creates a virtuous cycle where our world grows larger, and so we explore its edges even further, again expanding our limits by making even larger, more profound connections each time we cycle through the process. Around and around it goes. Creativity is how we grow our mind and our soul and the purpose of all life is growth.
This virtuous cycle idea explains, partially, why Wittgenstein famously said, “the limits of my language are the limits of my world.”
In a real and visceral way, that’s true.
And, by the way, Wittgenstein's maxim can be expanded to cover all forms of mastery in the art field: the limits of your skill are the limits of your world.
Wittgenstein’s observation isn’t only true of language. Or perhaps I should say, not all languages involve words. For example, a master visual artist, because of his expanded ‘language’ of color and composition, has developed the skill to see and perceive much more about the world than a beginner. An advanced meditator, because of her skill at noticing the subtle ‘language’ of the breath, lives in a larger world of far more nuance than a non-meditator and she feels her breath all over the body.
Perhaps we could generalize Wittgenstein’s idea as, “the limits of my mastery are the limits of my world.”
What we’ve learned so far is that Art isn't primarily about the output, it's about the input, and the process. Art is never a means to an end, financial or otherwise. Art contains its own ends.
The value of art is more about how it changes and expands the artist than it is about the end product and the sale. This is because creating true art leads to temporary enlightenment. And that is a profound state that will cause a change for the better (growth) in the artist.
If the output was what mattered, then maybe AI would show more promise in the Arts, but that is not the case.
Therefore, a writer using primarily AI to create decent-sounding output is robbing himself. He is shortcutting the process of struggling, making those connections, growing, expanding his world, and finding something uniquely true to say.
Such a ‘writer’ will end up spiraling in the opposite direction. Instead of a virtuous cycle, he will enter a vicious one. He’ll enter a negative feedback loop that shoves him into an ever shrinking world and mind.
A ‘writer’ who uses AI in this way will be robbed of everything that makes writing special; everything that makes it beautiful; and relying on the machine will take away the reasons people write at all.
Tolkien once said (and I’m paraphrasing) that Sauron’s magic represented technology, the magic of the machine. And the elves' magic represented the magic of art – of growth, creation and harmony. The machine’s magic takes from others, and dominates them. The elven magic enables the user, and the world at large to grow. AI takes the art of others for the profit of its master. It is literally the magic of the machine. It has its place, but its place is not in the hands of the Artist. The true artist masters elven magic.
In the end, the ‘AI writer’ will find that he has nothing new or unique to say at all because AI can only reorganize and regurgitate ideas that it has ‘stolen’ from the writings of others; those who actually did the hard and fulfilling work. I suppose AI can be useful for research, or perhaps suggestions for names and the like, but my caution would be to use sparingly and cautiously. I feel the best use of AI for writers is for things that complement the writing but are not the writing itself. For example, I use AI to create images that go with my stories since I’m not a visual artist (and I would suggest the opposite to a visual artist who didn’t feel they could write well — use AI to help you write your bio or other writings that go with your visual art).
If you can’t be bothered to expend the time and effort to find something unique within yourself to say, and to practice the elven magic of putting your pen to paper with your own two hands to the best of your ability, then I can’t be bothered to read it.
AI writes by calculating the next probable word in a sentence but, as a human, you are gifted with the unique ability to reveal the mystery of poetic truth and light to our hearts and souls by shocking us with improbable words. An Artist deals in the unexpected.
Perhaps AI will develop into AGI someday and will become conscious. Perhaps an AI will awaken and develop emotions and feelings and become a real person. But if that happens, it’s no longer artificial intelligence is it? A conscious AI would be a person. If that ever happens, I look forward to having inspiring conversations with an AGI and I look forward to its unique art and truth. In that case, though, a writer still couldn’t ‘use’ it to write for them, because that would be the same as plagiarism and, since the AGI would, at that point, be a person, using it as a tool would be equivalent to enslavement. There is no shortcut. To be a ‘real’ writer, you’ve simply have to put the miles on the pen yourself.
So, kindly, please send your fake person’s output to another fake person to read, because here in the land of those who still have the light of Tolkien’s Eru Ilúvatar in our hearts, we’re not interested. We’d always rather break metaphorical bread with the Elves of Lothlórien than with the followers of Saruman who care not for growing things.
In other words, it seems to me, that a writer who relies upon AI is no writer at all.
“He has a mind of metal and wheels; and he does not care for growing things.”
— Treebeard, from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Two Towers
Posts referenced in this essay:
Further Reading:
This essay was influenced and inspired in no small part by the following wonderful essay by Matt Cardin over at The Living Dark:
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And also by some of the concepts regarding J.R.R. Tolkien’s work that I have been introduced to in Eugene Terekhin’s Substack Philosophy of Language. I was fortunate to stumble upon Eugene’s Substack at the same time that I happened to be re-reading both The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.
A really good dissertation on the soul of writing. I use AI in my writing after I have written the article for review of grammar and punctuation. As an artist I was terrible at English and took 1A a couple of time before I got my degree. I use it as a tool much like I use a calculator when paying bills. With Midjourney I find it interesting to describe my final painting in as much detail as I can as a prompt and see what it generates. Some times I am surprised and pleased as it gives me a different perspective and opportunity to refine or add to my finished piece. This is the balance between concept and execution. As long as the concept is mine I don’t mind being open to variations in execution. In short it to me is a degree of moderation and taste. Nice long article I enjoyed every idea well presented.
This is so on point! I can feel when something is written by AI. It has an energy to it. Maybe not always, but often I can feel it. I believe people will eventually put quite a high value on artists, writers and musicians who know their craft without AI. There’s no short cuts to people’s soul.