Learn more about AI here.
It's not even the legal controversy that's got me rankled.
This is a real-life Walle. In the cartoon, humans invented a moving chair so you literally did not have to walk anymore, so no one did. People lost the use of their legs because if you don't use it, you lose it. It's why anyone who's had a limb in a cast has to build strength back in that muscle. You weren't using it, so you lost it.
Your brain is also a muscle. If you don't use it, you will lose it. Using an AI that literally thinks for you will teach your brain that it doesn't need to think for itself anymore, so it won't. It's the same reason we're told to not feed wild animals: you feed them, they lose the ability to feed themselves. You, my writer friend, are the animal and AI wants to feed you. Don't let the AI feed you.
Oh! It's tempting to let someone else do the work and you get paid for it. And as much as that appeal will satisfy this moment, it will damage your long-term. The moment you stop putting effort into thinking through hard plot holes, stop conducting your own research, and stop writing your own words altogether, you will lose your ability to do all of them yourself. And there is still danger in letting the AI write even a little for you, just enough to brainstorm and help you work out a problem, because the temptation is real and if you start, you'll make justifications for yourself and will use it more and more and more until it is writing more for you than you are writing for yourself. So you either use AI 100% or zero. "Letting the AI write for me is not a problem," you might think, "so long as AI keeps putting out."
How much of your humanity will you sell before you stop tolerating your own creative stagnation?
Authors warn writers away from using cliches, but here's one more in case writers opt for an AI to write for them so they, personally, never have to worry about writing cliches again:
"The mind is a terrible thing to waste" - Dan Quayle
I'll write my own words without an AI's help. Will you?
Will you use AI to write for you?
0%No. I will write myself.
0%Yes. I want the AI to write for me.
Photo credit is a screenshot from an animation by Steve Cutts
Comments