Reading intelligent thoughts stimulates my trying to form intelligent thoughts and understanding. As this is getting harder to find, it is becoming more important to find it and support it continuing. Continue please!
Algernon, I agree with everything here. But let me approach this as someone who copyedits other people’s writing 40 hours a week. Like the Atlantic author you quote, the best writers don’t need AI. It’s not going to help them—often the opposite, in fact. I’ve found that when you give AI a good sentence and ask it for improvements, it just sands down any wit or novelty and makes the writing dull and lifeless. But not all the writers whose work I see fall into this category, unfortunately, and I sometimes find myself wishing the rest of them would take advantage of AI more. Like the author of a long feature I worked on last week, with several paragraphs so convoluted I could barely make heads or tails of them. She could have done what I ended up doing, feeding each of these troublesome passages into Hearst’s in-house version of ChatGPT and telling it, “We’ve obviously lost the thread here; give me several clearer alternatives.” I used to do this on my own, and usually I still do, but for tough cases or when a deadline is looming, AI is actually really good at clarifying, and does it a helluva lot faster than I could. I still need to tweak whatever it generates, but it’s a powerful assistant—and that’s where the danger arises. It’s so powerful that some editors are tempted to let AI do all the writing, and that’s when humanity and creativity and idiosyncrasy are lost and we’re left with cookie-cutter mediocrity. I find AI a valuable tool, but it still needs a human being at the controls.
Not only is the process of writing crucial to forming a coherent thought, but by passing off the act of writing to a machine, we also cut off the process of learning the skill of writing. We need those entry-level positions to learn the craft. The next generation will be a bunch of illiterate buffoons unable to have , or follow, a coherent line of argument. It’s the end of thinking.
I’m glad you are wading in on this. I don’t identify as a purist about this topic but I do agree that the act of writing is both good for the reader and the writer.
Reading intelligent thoughts stimulates my trying to form intelligent thoughts and understanding. As this is getting harder to find, it is becoming more important to find it and support it continuing. Continue please!
Algernon, I agree with everything here. But let me approach this as someone who copyedits other people’s writing 40 hours a week. Like the Atlantic author you quote, the best writers don’t need AI. It’s not going to help them—often the opposite, in fact. I’ve found that when you give AI a good sentence and ask it for improvements, it just sands down any wit or novelty and makes the writing dull and lifeless. But not all the writers whose work I see fall into this category, unfortunately, and I sometimes find myself wishing the rest of them would take advantage of AI more. Like the author of a long feature I worked on last week, with several paragraphs so convoluted I could barely make heads or tails of them. She could have done what I ended up doing, feeding each of these troublesome passages into Hearst’s in-house version of ChatGPT and telling it, “We’ve obviously lost the thread here; give me several clearer alternatives.” I used to do this on my own, and usually I still do, but for tough cases or when a deadline is looming, AI is actually really good at clarifying, and does it a helluva lot faster than I could. I still need to tweak whatever it generates, but it’s a powerful assistant—and that’s where the danger arises. It’s so powerful that some editors are tempted to let AI do all the writing, and that’s when humanity and creativity and idiosyncrasy are lost and we’re left with cookie-cutter mediocrity. I find AI a valuable tool, but it still needs a human being at the controls.
Not only is the process of writing crucial to forming a coherent thought, but by passing off the act of writing to a machine, we also cut off the process of learning the skill of writing. We need those entry-level positions to learn the craft. The next generation will be a bunch of illiterate buffoons unable to have , or follow, a coherent line of argument. It’s the end of thinking.
I’m glad you are wading in on this. I don’t identify as a purist about this topic but I do agree that the act of writing is both good for the reader and the writer.