Writing is Thinking

I read somewhere earlier that the lion's share of some country's parliamentary speeches are now AI-generated. Speeches that are meant to sway people's minds, convey important thoughts, share a blend of reason and passion. Outsourced with a little guidance to our new robot friends. There are many things an AI companion does well. But writing? Well, I want to talk about this with you. I've got some thoughts.

The Enemy: Statistical Probability

HOW our AI friends help us write is that they use what's called statistical probability to put together sentences. Of the many times these words were used, this is a likely way to put those words together in a sentence that should make sense. <- that is the current bar for writing. That plus trying to learn from whatever you feed it. So, right off the bat, when you ask a robot to write on your behalf, it's looking for "statistically probable" things for you to present as your thoughts and ideas.

YOU: The Entire Sum of Your Biography Plus Your Knowledge

When YOU write, though, it's different. You add and subtract thoughts and ideas based on your experiences, your wisdom, and you think about the people this writing is meant to reach, and hopefully, what you want them to do with it. Even if you're not the best writer, you're a better thinker, because your brain has so many more forged pathways that might throw something that's NOT statistically probably into the conversation.

Sure, there are downsides to writing from our biography. If you've had terrible time with consultants, and you have to write about how your team might benefit from working with consultants, you might add negative bias without thinking about it. But there are upsides to all you know. If you know that your boss is on the fence about consultants, and you want them to think the way you do, you might be able to scuttle the idea of bringing consultants in by putting something that seems objective into the writing while actually conveying a subtext that it's a terrible idea. It's hard to give a robot all the parameters to do that out of the gate.

But Also, Writing is Thinking

When you write, you take soft ideas out of your head and put them in a linear format. If you use a legal pad and draw words and circle some and draw lines between words, you can mind map new ideas. You can think about big ideas and small. Writing in nice long sentences sometimes gets you to cough up something that wasn't quite decided upon, or when you read it, you might see things differently.

Anne Frank (yes, the Diary writer) said, "Because paper has more patience than people." Her point was you can vent to a journal or diary. Paper is patient. You can write what you want to tell someone, and you can write what you guess they'll say back.

Yes, you can role play with your AI friend, too. But what they'll say back is statistically probable. And depending on how well you built the model of the other person, it will simply say what all its data has told you.

Writing is thinking.

Use The Robot After You've Written

Mike Birbiglia has a joke about going to a doctor, and when the doctor asks what he does, Mike says he's a comedian. The doctor, surprised, says, "YOU'RE a comedian? How come you're not saying something funny?" And Mike says because that's not how comedy works. He says, "This whole discussion is what's funny. You're the joke ... LATER."

Similarly, write on your own first. But then, it's reasonable to ask the robot some questions about what you've said. "Does this make sense" is a reasonable prompt. Or "Am I talking too much about my mom's chop suey recipe?" is something AI tools can do very well at assessing.

I once asked whether or not something I wrote was culturally insensitive, because for instance, there are complex historical interactions between various Asian and southeast Asian communities, and I didn't want to say something that would trigger certain communities. I don't have the history or the biography or the knowledge for that one, and the robot can go find a statistically probably way for me to say that.

The Lure of Phoning it In

Look, I get it. You might not be a writer at heart. I'm a book author and writer and blogger and general typist and have been since I was a single digit human age. Maybe you don't even like to write. It's so easy to just say, "Write me a post, robot!" and go back to that really important thing you do.

But that means you opted to phone in your intention to earn my attention. You handed over your shot at convincing me that I should pay more attention to you. You outsourced the best parts of your brain and gave a group project trained on mountains of examples the most uninspired basic human efforts, and now you're hoping that I'll find it useful and valuable.

Why? Because the robot adds emoji in key spots? Because it uses phrasing that you and I can now actually sense without knowing we're doing it? You know when you look at a photo of someone and they've airbrushed it to hell and back? You KNOW this. And you tend to make a judgment in that moment. AI-first writing is the airbrushing of thought.

You think. You write. You give me statistically IMprobable sentences. And then let the AI tidy up your run-on sentences.

It's better for both of us. Don't you agree?

Chris...