#61 Tool or Replacement?: The Dilemma of Using Writing AIs
Every professional job involves some element of writing. Is the rise of writing AIs making us forget how to write?
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Whether you work as a professional writer, lawyer, creative practitioner, educator, or a corporate job, you are always writing something: emails, memos, inter-team messages, project reports or white papers. With tools like Grammarly, QuillBot and Otter using Artificial Intelligence is becoming as easy as using a calculator. A 2024 McKinsey Survey shows that 65% of organisations use generative AI tools like Chat GPT today, double in comparison to 2023.
AI is also entering the personal sphere and shaping our everyday communication. For instance, CelebrateAlly helps you craft wishes and messages for different celebrations: birthdays, baby showers, weddings, you name it. To do this, it asks very specific questions like qualities that reflect the addressee’s personality and the tone of the message. Essentially, writing AIs are completely capable of masquerading as digital humans today.
Writers and authors have also started using AI in their creative writing process. According to the Author’s Guild AI Survey, 13% of writers use AI as part of their writing process. From this, 33% use it for brainstorming plots ideas and characters, 26% use it for marketing and 13% for structuring or organizing drafts. This shows that writers prefer using AI to save time and come up with fresh ideas.
However, writers can do a few things that AI cannot. They understand the context better than any bot and based on the preferences of their readers and local audiences they flesh out stories. They can use different prompts to stretch the boundaries of their creativity. Their writing is nuanced and they can connect with different people.
Can AI lead to the decline of writing and creativity?
Civil engineer and author Mohomod Irfan Shah thinks so: “Writing is built on years of practice, skill development, and understanding of language nuances. Relying on AI could lead to a decline in the cultivation of these skills.”
Does this mean we are losing our ability to think and write? Is our vocabulary shrinking? Is automation taking away our unique voice?
On the other hand, we have Japanese novelist Rie Kudan, who has used AI to write her award-winning book The Tokyo Sympathy.
She says, “I plan to continue to profit from the use of AI in the writing of my novels, while letting my creativity express itself to the fullest.”
So is AI a tool or a replacement?
In a Forbes article, Rodolfo Delgado says, “AI can be an excellent tool for checking grammar, punctuation and style. However, the final edit should always be done by a human. AI may miss subtle nuances in language, tone and context that could make a significant difference to the reader's perception.”
All AIs need a human to input the right prompts. Sam Altman the CEO of Open AI, the company that created Chat GPT called the current 4.0 version of Chat GPT “the dumbest model”, he believes that with every version the chatbot will evolve.
Jeanette Winterson the writer of How Artificial Intelligence Will Change the Way We Live and Love agrees that currently, AI is a tool. But she’s not optimistic about the future. “An alternative intelligence will make art of all kinds – with us, and without us.”
As AI technology evolves, it is becoming more integrated into our creative processes. People now use AI to come up with book or business ideas and names, structure their arguments or even formulate their voice and tone.
Five years from now, will you be able to write a professional email from scratch that aligns with our personality? Or write an AI-free book? Let’s wait and find out.
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