“Relying on generative AI to tell a story, especially as a shortcut, imperils how we learn to voice our flawed, quirky selves,” warns Martha Nichols. This seemingly small concern is the world-rocking, destructive potential of generative AI that makes me cringe and inch my shoulders up to my ears, as if a protective posture might shelter my part of the work.
What if writing—especially that crappy first draft—is supposed to be hard? What if the struggle is the process, by which you learn to stay true to your voice but not hold your words so precious, kill your darlings but reveal the essence?
Over the past year, I’ve had conversations and done interviews where I’ve struggled to articulate this issue, but Nichols nails it: no matter if you’re writing for yourself, NaNoWriMo readers, or a big brand, you can’t outsource to AI the parts that humans do best. Observation, attention, and discernment—nothing can replace that process. It’s hard, but that’s the point.
When I teach my students how to conduct a content audit, we do it hard; we do it longhand. They explore websites and manually track quantitative data and qualitative observations in a spreadsheet. Of course, there are plenty of tools that could do the work more quickly and comprehensively—but they miss the point. My students aren’t learning to be complete; they’re learning to be judicious, discerning, and ruthless. They’re learning where to direct their attention and where to cut corners in content that isn’t worthy of greater analysis. They only figure out the difference by wading through the muck themselves, not outsourcing the effort to a tool. In the process, they learn to work in tight constraints of time and attention—the factors that constrain all creative projects and impart the pressure that squeezes diamonds from ordinary dirt.
Writing is a process of discernment from the initial gathering stages, whether in solitary observation of the world or a brainstorm among colleagues, through editing and publishing. Where do you direct your attention? What do you let in? What stays, what goes? What is enough, but never, in familiar moments of self-indulgence, too much?
For decades, we’ve benefited from AI assistants that underline duplicate words in red squiggles or autocorrect suspicious spelling to more or less success. But generative AI goes beyond assistance, tempting us to outsource the things we humans do best: we observe the world around us, reflect on what’s worth assimilating and sharing, and create distinct and trustworthy voices in the process.
Diamonds from so much dirt.
Why would we want to outsource insight and discernment? And aren’t we fooling ourselves to think we could?
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Originally published on LinkedIn
