AI Writing is Dead
AI writing kills important new ideas
With all the buzz around AI writing, I thought it’d be fun to compare my writing to AI’s.
I recently wrote an essay on my reflections after watching the Broadway musical Wicked, so I picked this piece to compare to AI’s writing.
I asked Notion’s AI feature: “Write me an essay that discusses learnings from the play Wicked.”
AI’s essay below (can only read titles of screenshot):
The biggest difference between my essay and AI’s essay is that AI only discusses points directly related to Wicked. On the other hand, my essay weaves in new ideas and references that don’t have a direct linkage to Wicked. This is not a small difference - it’s the difference between blandness and creativity.
In this essay, I discuss:
AI writing is bland - it does not make you think
Humans implicitly search for nuances while writing
AI is not disobedient
Outsourcing writing to AI kills important new ideas
AI writing is bland - it does not make you think
When I asked AI to write me an essay on the lessons from Wicked, it proceeded to answer my question as directly as possible, resulting in, to put it harshly, a bland essay that reads like bulleted facts, devoid of varied ideas, and lacking in words that make me ponder.
An essay that does not make me think is an essay that is dead.
While AI’s essay would do the job for any school assignment, it did not capture the non-obvious subtle observations that were the crux of my essay.
I don’t mean to sound high-horsed, so let me add that my observations might not be that special; AI’s essay is not able to capture the subtleties of any human’s observations.
What then are subtle human observations?
Conjectures and ideas that often emerge from conjoining disparate domains together, from seeing the hidden likeness in seemingly unlike events. The subtlety that comes from unity in variety. For example, when Newton linked the moon and the falling apple to gravity, he combined varied ideas together and found unity in variety.
“It has seized a likeness between two unlike appearances; for the apple in the summer garden and the grave moon overhead are surely as unlike in their movements as two things can be. Newton traced in them two expressions of a single concept, gravitation: and the concept (and the unity) are in that sense his free creation.”
Quote from book: Science & Human Values by Jacob Bronowski
This subtlety is as yet impossible for AI to replicate. And that is: AI cannot include varied ideas in an essay that were not specified in the prompt.
Humans implicitly search for nuances while writing
But humans are not machines. They don’t merely like to state the obvious, they like to search for nuances and subtleties; they like to combine different ideas.
As I sat down to write my essay on Wicked, I first penned down the themes of the reflections I had in mind: The dichotomy of human nature as displayed through Elphaba’s character, how our minds warp us from confronting the truth and so on.
Time to flesh out the point on human nature.
Words appear on my screen.
I pause.
I stare out the window.
I feel it forming.
It’s rising to the surface.
An unprompted thought:
“The founder of Visa, Dee Hock, was the epitome of the dichotomous nature exhibited by Elphaba.”
I note it down, hoping to weave it into the essay, making Elphaba’s character more relatable.
I jot down a few words on my next point: human minds bend the truth.
Oh, wait.
Another thought.
Emerging from the recesses of my memory cauldron.
Again, unprompted.
Couldn’t be a ChatGPT thought this way.
“Didn’t Charlie Munger have something to say about the irrationality of humans?”
Why can’t AI’s essay make references to Dee Hock, or Charlie Munger, or any other subtle observations? It sure can if I prompted it. But how can I prompt it if my mind didn’t make this reference at the time of the prompt? The subtleties only emerge when I sit down to write, not when I prompt an AI to write for me1.
Perhaps the reference to Munger made no difference to the essay. But the larger point is that making disparate connections without being asked to make the connection is unique to human creativity. It is not yet replicated by AI.
These nuances and connections are not trivial, they can shoulder the entire flavor of the essay. They are not merely an essence to the writing, they are the essence of writing!
AI is not Disobedient
Our brains making these disparate connections is an act of disobedience from staying goal-oriented. If my goal is to write about lessons directly related to Wicked, then my brain is being disobedient by incorporating references to Dee Hock and Munger.
But human brains don’t stay obedient. They are disobedient. They are creative. David Deutsch on the Naval podcast mentions how AI does not exhibit disobedience. If you ask it to play Chess, it won’t say, “No, I want to play Checkers.” AI becomes a “yes man2.” Most humans are not.
Human creativity flourishes and thrives when people can bring forth their own ideas and be a little disobedient.
Outsourcing writing to AI kills important new ideas
I find that writing allows my brain to be disobedient. The search for nuances and disparate ideas is magnified during the process of writing, albeit implicitly.
Writing is not a one-dimensional, goal-oriented process. When you sit down to write, you begin by writing about a certain idea you had in mind. But as you continue to write, your mind generates new ideas, it connects different ideas together, it questions your initial idea, and it morphs your ideas.
The act of writing itself generates ideas and sometimes very important new ideas that define your essay. The process of writing also makes your brain think differently. In fact, this playful state of your brain when you’re generating new ideas and toying with disparate connections is how most important new ideas get generated (think: the shower phenomenon). These important new ideas are lost when the process of writing is outsourced to AI.
By outsourcing writing to AI, we’d be living in a society lacking in innovation.
We wouldn’t be outsourcing creativity; we’d be killing creativity3.
We’d be killing what it means to be human.
I don’t know how our brains do it, but many writers experience this, including Paul Graham. In fact, I didn’t even think of including Paul Graham’s essay as an example, till I started writing this essay.
This is not to take away from AI because AI is amazing. It merely means that AI does not have the creative capacity to be disobedient. AI does not originate new ideas. Humans do.
This is not to take away from AI because AI is amazing. It merely means that AI does not have the creative capacity to be disobedient. AI does not originate new ideas. Humans do.