AI Isn’t Our Replacement: Why It’s Important for Humans to Keep Writing
Since Chat GPT debuted a year ago, discourse about AI in the writing world has only increased. Where do you stand on the issue?
AI is an amazing feat of engineering, so revolutionary that it’s already changing the world. But, as the saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility. Already, there’s been a sharp spike in AI-assisted scamming traps, and some have even used AI to steal authors’ audiences. I hope we can all agree that these consequences are terrible. But what about the not-as-nefarious issue of AI-written content?
If you’ve ever posted an AI-generated story or article before, I’m not here to judge you. Really. With all the content I used to publish on my blog, I was tempted to hand some of the work off to Chat GPT. I’m not here to say you’re wrong or convince you not to post AI-generated articles (okay . . . maybe just a little), but I do hope I present some points for you to think about.
Writing is hard, and many times, it’s a relief to take any shortcut available. But as I’ve learned more about AI, specifically as it relates to writing, I’ve discovered that Chat GPT isn’t really a shortcut — and you might want to think twice before churning out those robot-written articles. If you’re on the other end of the spectrum, despairing at the amount of AI-written content nowadays, I want to give you hope.
AI isn’t a shortcut, but it’s not something that should make us give up in hopelessness, either. Human writing is still important, and we can learn to treat AI not as the enemy, but as a tool in our favour. Here’s how (and why)!
Scarcity Increases Value
This is a universal tenant of humanity. Why are diamonds so expensive? Because they’re rare. Why do people sell old collectibles? Because collectors will pay hundreds, thousands, millions of dollars for a rare item. Why do we value the kindness of a stranger? Because too often, we see only hatred and anger.
Here’s the point. As AI becomes more and more integrated into our culture, more and more people are going to use it as the “easy way out.” Another universal tenant of humanity is that everyone wants to go the easiest way. Just in the past year, I’ve seen the amount of AI-written articles skyrocket. (How can I tell which ones are AI-generated? We’ll talk about it in a minute.) This will only get worse with time.
But here’s the bright side: as AI-written content saturates the world, human-written content will become that much more valuable because it will be more difficult to come by. Readers and writers desire content that relates to them on a human level, and only humans can do that effectively. If you stick it out and keep writing your own words, you’ll grow a dedicated audience that will value your content all the more as AI continues to dig its roots further into our world.
AI Is an Adaptable Tool
While it’s easy to have AI write entire articles and even books for you, it’s not great quality and you can sniff out the robot from a mile away. To create better quality content while still streamlining the writing process a bit, I’ve found AI to be most useful for ideation, outlining, and headline/title creation (though I almost always tweak any output before I use it to make it better and/or more my style). This helps me to delegate the more technical tasks to AI while still having complete control over them, and then I can focus more on creativity and post quality!
While some have found success with having AI write an article and then heavily editing/rewriting it, this actually doesn’t save me time. In fact, it often takes more time than writing the article myself. So experiment with AI and see how you can use it most effectively. If you get it right, it can help streamline your writing process without compromising quality!
Writing Is about Humanity
No matter how much AI develops, it will never truly understand what it means to be human. Our brains are so complex that biologists and scientists don’t even fully understand them yet, and I don’t think they ever will. And do you know one of those human things that’s not entirely explicable by science? Creativity. If we don’t really know how it works, AI certainly can never reproduce true human creativity. It can use formulas to emulate creativity to an extent, but creativity simply can’t be defined by numbers or letters — or anything else, for that matter.
This is why people love stories: they’re human. AI can come up with something similar, but it’s not human, and you can tell.
Bonus: How to Spot an AI-Written Article
Before we talk about how you can spot those 100% AI-generated articles, let me make it clear that seeing one of these signs — or even all of them — doesn’t necessarily guarantee that an article is written by AI. You have to use your best judgment here, and once you’ve spotted a few articles you know are AI-generated, you start to notice a pattern.
That being said, here are some of the most common details I’ve found that point towards AI-written content:
- Headline/title with a colon (such as “The Power of Emotion in Storytelling: A Writer’s Review of Pride and Prejudice” or “The Art of Character Creation: “Lessons from Middle-Earth”). I know, this article title has a colon! Remember the disclaimer above?
- Outdated or cheesy humour
- A phrase like “let’s dive in” before the article’s main points
- A generic introduction (such as “Many people wonder about ________, so today, we’re going to take a look at how to. . .”)
- Formal vocabulary in casual writing
- Abrief (and usually irrelevant) history of the topic before getting to the real post content
- A generic but polite tone
Additionally, I think most would agree with me that there’s a distinct quality in AI writing that can’t quite be described with words. Usually, it just feels a little off, especially to those who read a lot.
Human-Centred Writing
By now, I hope you understand why human creativity is so important. AI might seem worrying, it might even seem like a cheat code, but as long as we remember what writing is all about, human creativity will always be valuable.
How do you use AI? How do you spot AI-generated articles? I’d love to hear your comments!
