ChatGPT is Great News for Creative Writers With Only One Catch
Thoughts on the impact of AI on the future of writing and humanity
Within 5 days of the launch of ChatGPT by OpenAI in Nov 2022, it has gathered over 1 million registered users which makes it the fastest adoption of any new technology in history.
Its ability to respond to complex human queries with detailed and articulate answers across many domains of knowledge is certainly unprecedented, and quickly made headlines on both traditional and social media with lots of hyperboles thrown around.
One piece from the Atlantic proclaimed “The College Essay Is Dead”, while another one by a veteran English teacher saw “The End of High-School English”.
Less than four weeks later, New York City acted to ban the use of ChatGPT across all devices and networks in public schools amid fears that students could use it to cheat.
Clearly, a major shake-up is coming.
For those who haven’t tried ChatGPT, this is what I got when I asked it to “write a short essay on the history and recent development of mindfulness practice”.
Sure you or I can write something like it or better, but ChatGPT wrote it in 26 seconds with the push of a button.
If not already, the next iteration of ChatGPT or GPT-4 to be released in the coming months is guaranteed to blow your mind, according to psychologist and cognitive scientist Gary Marcus who has knowledge of the early testing of GPT-4.
Less noise, better signal
So what does it mean for human writers?
Well, it depends on the nature of the content, in particular the level of originality and creativity imbued in the writing.
If the content is essentially about organizing, summarizing, or factually presenting information that’s already out there, i.e. low creativity required, then the future is pretty grim for those writers simply because this type of content is what AI is best at, and thus most vulnerable to be disrupted by it.
Perhaps not ChatGPT in its current or next few iterations, but future AI will almost certainly wipe out all those non-creative writers and establish itself as the provider of similar services, only faster and cheaper without any human biases or errors.
On the other hand, for truly creative writers I believe AI is not only not a threat but can be doing everyone a great service by effectively displacing all the non-creative content that would otherwise flood the internet, thus improving signal-to-noise ratio for those more creative content.
I envision a future where there are two categories of clearly labeled content: AI-generated content and human-created content.
AI will likely dominate factual-based writings which among other things may include reporting of live events, literature reviews, research, and technical writings where human emotions are not only unnecessary but can sometimes stand in the way of reality.
To some human writers, this unfortunately could spell the end of their writing careers, but to many more, I believe it will be an experience of liberation that could lead to the unleashing of human creativity at an unprecedented pace.
Leveling the playing field further
One of the things that make the rich even richer is their access to capital, particularly human capital. They afford to hire other people to do certain things for them so that they can dedicate their own time to more interesting or valuable work.
In the same way that the internet democratizes access to information, the rise of AI will democratize access to the equivalent of human capital.
If we compare a newbie writer like me and a more established writer like Tim Ferris for example, one key difference is that Tim has a team of people including researchers who can help him with more routine or preparation work such as researching a particular topic so that he can focus on the more creative part of the project.
Now, ChatGPT can to a limited degree function as my research assistant. For example, I asked ChatGPT a series of questions on the topic below and within a few minutes I got enough information that would otherwise take me hours to gather.
In this example, I was happy with my AI assistant in terms of both the comprehensiveness and the specificity of its findings. It quickly put me on a more solid footing knowledge-wise and created a level of momentum for me to dive deeper into the subject matter.
The catch
The catch is that we human writers have a stark choice before us. We either choose to embrace our humanity more than ever or risk being wiped out by AI.
To embrace humanity is to embrace the authenticity of the entire human experience including technology. It is to know and love ourselves and each other.
The advancement of AI will no doubt replace many jobs of today, but humanity is far more than just jobs and there are certain things that are simply irreplaceable.
In fact, the more advanced AI gets, the clearer the difference between AI and humanity.
We are emotional animals, we have biases, and we do stupid things.
We are in general slow learners and at times we never learn.
We experience pain, fear, and death, and we know what it feels like to be loved, happy, and peaceful.
All the bugs/features of humanity make us uniquely special and human, which is what even the most advanced bug-free AI can neither comprehend nor experience.
Amos Tversky, the late Israeli psychologist and a key figure in the discovery of systematic human cognitive bias and handling of risk, was once asked about artificial intelligence, to which he replied, “we study natural stupidity.”
It was such a brilliant line: witty and profound.
If we continue with this line of reasoning and we turn out to be stupid enough to pit artificial Intelligence against natural stupidity, who will prevail you might wonder?
Though I believe that’s a silly question, it deserves a serious answer: nature always prevails and that includes natural stupidity!
