Write for yourself, first. Be careful AI doesn’t take that from you.
You can’t open your newsfeed or someone is posting about how AI is changing our world. An incredible advancement in technology that shows a never-seen adoption pace. ChatGPT-3 and ChatGPT-4 are making us see what AI might do for us now and in the future, giving us a glimpse of how General AI can enrich our daily lives — including writing blog articles.
Just prompt whatever you want to write about, and ChatGPT-3 will give you a perfect blog post with smart, and often valid, arguments. Great! What else do you need, as an aspiring writer? And what’s more, it’s paying off: AI-assisted blog posts and content production generate more traffic for some people.
So, why the hell would anybody write any new blog articles the old fashioned, human-only way? Why care? Why not prompt AI the thing you’d like to write about and just copy and paste whatever it spits out? Good question. And I don’t think there is one single answer to that question.
Of course, there are some good reasons why AI can help you in writing an article; “Let AI do your research, so you don’t have to” (as that’s often very time consuming), giving you a better, more informed view on what you’re writing about — in a matter of seconds. Some people will say that AI can help straw-man any argument from the ‘opposite side’, to validate or defend whatever they are writing about, as sort of a ‘devil’s advocate’ co-pilot. Super helpful. A very easy and fast way to view things from a different perspective. And then, of course, you can have AI assist in ‘cleaning up the page’ and improve sentences — as a good assistant would.
However, there is one very compelling argument for me to keep writing my own content: personal growth. I used to write a lot of blog articles because I wanted to primarily understand a topic better myself, before sharing it with the world. Whether people were actually reading those blogs, didn’t bother me.
Writing, as it turns out, is a great way discover if you truly understand something: it forces you to choose your words carefully and convert complex ideas into plain English, so that the receiver understands the point you’re trying to make in a fun, engaging or effective way. And the primary ‘receiver’ in this context, was often myself: I wanted to see if could draft and verbalize an argument, a vision or an explanation of a (complex) mental concept. To myself.
And that, for me, is a clear reason to keep writing without too much AI-assistance. I think you internalize things better when you write. There is a reason why ELI5 (“Explain me like I’m 5”) is such a popular subreddit (and, no surprisingly, there is an AI version); there is power in explaining difficult things, in simple words. For the writer, this requires for deep understanding of a topic. It was Einstein who said: “If you can’t explain it in simple words, you don’t understand it well enough.” and that’s very true. Of course, AI could help with this too: just ask it to (re)formulate an argument for a 5-year old to understand — and it will.
But — as with many things in this world — the learning is in the journey, not in the end result: trying things, experimenting with arguments and words, prioritizing and polishing text, all force you to compress your thinking and be concise. That’s the power of the writing process.
And yes, AI can still assist in the writing process.. Just be careful to stay critical, self-aware and truly invested in the message you are trying to convey.
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(Guess what? This post was written by AI…)
(No haha, just a plain old human ;)
