AI and helping you write

We’re in a new world. And I’m excited, despite my reservations.

Everyone is asking ChatGPT (and the like) to help them write.

We’re using it to apply to jobs, finish proposals, fire employees, breakup relationships, respond to bosses, and write obituaries (maybe).

Inspired by a chat with a friend, I’ve been putting more thought into where AI should begin and our own words should end.

He confessed he’d used ChatGPT to write a message to his boss, and had been told in no uncertain terms that such actions were inexcusable.

It wasn’t that he shouldn’t be using LLMs to write, but that in the context of a relationship he was expected to bring his own words, and not those manufactured by a machine.

This from an organization that is excited about AI and encouraging it. My friend has embraced ChatGPT wholesale, using it as a tool to improve his writing across personal and professional communication. That’s a good thing, and though I suspect the AI peaks through when it shouldn’t, he’s felt empowered to write more and believes his communication is improving.

Based on feedback from his boss he’s modifying his approach and looking at ways to use AI as a launching point for his own words; a support, but not the end result.

And he’s not alone.

Writing is freaking hard. There’s a reason YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram have blown up in the last few years with short form videos. Most of us connect to video. Writing, on the other hand, doesn’t come as easy to everyone.

I happen to love writing, but I know I’m in the minority. It took years to come to love the art of putting words together. For the rest of the world, having a tool that will just compose messy ideas into well formatted prose is enticing. Why put in the work to carefully form thoughts when AI will do it in seconds?

If you’ve been involved in tech the last few years you know that AI is the hottest, not really mandatory (but kind of is), thing floating around.

Technology fever comes in waves. Remember crypto? Yeah that’s not the world changing tech we all hoped for.

This time feels different though.

My non-technical friends are turning to Gemini and ChatGPT for daily tasks. Kids are using LLMs to write essays, and bosses are getting help with rejection letters.

It feels dystopian that machines are becoming the conduits for vague thoughts between humans. But then again, Her predicated this a decade ago.

So what should we do?

Here’s where I’ve landed.

For writing that I really want to own, to be mine, 99% of the words are generated by my own keyboard. No ChatGPT used, and sometimes only a basic spellcheck (and sometimes not, my apologies to my dear readers).

For a recent post I asked ChatGPT how to use a hyphen properly, but still tweaked the paragraph to match how I wanted the words to sound.

For forms of writing that I have less of an opinion on, such as a podcast episode description, I’ll bullet point what I want, and ask AI to write it out for me. Then I clean it up and ship it.

For writing that falls between those two, where I’m unsure of my words, but know the direction, I’ll often write a first draft, ask AI to help me improve it, then write a second or third draft. ChatGPT in this case becomes a tool to support me, almost like a writing buddy, as I wrestle through the piece.

These forms of writing are the most interesting to me.

In going back and forth with the LLM I’m able to learn. I’m asking how to turn the words in a certain direction, then looking at the output and tweaking until I get somewhere better. This approach fascinates me and I may take it back into fiction writing.

Similar to how I’m starting to approach design with AI, this form of writing is exciting and something new.

Now, on this blog, where 99% of it is purely me, I’ve taken those learnings from experimental writing and internalized them.

I think it has the potential to make me a better writer.

I’m not interested in a world where all the writing I read is AI slop. I also don’t want to contribute to the arrival of such a dystopia.

However, given that the alternative sucks—short form video content is my least favorite media in existence—I see the value in AI helping improve the writing ability of more people, and I welcome such possibility.

So, if you’re on the fence about it, I encourage you to write your messy drafts, get help from AI, then go back and re-write the drafts yourself until they’re satisfied with the results. It takes a little more work, but it’s not even close to the amount of work that was required before computers came along.

And if you do that, I’lll be happy to read it. But please don’t send me AI drivel. Life is too short for that kind of crap.