(4) AI Redefines Bare Minimum of Writing

“Our need will be the real creator”, said Plato in his Republica. Plato was one of the countless thinkers and philosophers across human history who tried to understand the complexity of how humans think and express, especially through literature. Writing has been one of the oldest forms of not just communication but also a tool of creativity and an infinite space for human imagination. Humans have evolved and so has our writing. So much so that today, we have created artificial intelligence to do our expression for us. 

Going by what Plato said, what has led to the need to create such artificial interference in our writing? This becomes an important question to ask ourselves. I believe it could be because of two developments. First, is the digital age of information overload we have built, that has consequently led to the drastic reduction in our attention spans. The result is the desperate need for the quickest solutions. What AI does is reduce the days or weeks a writer would put into their piece to a few minutes or seconds. Data is scrutinized all over the digital space and a well organized, informed, write-up is provided to the user through AI inventions like ChatGPT. The USP of these AI interventions is the time it saves for its users and the effort it covers. 

But, what about the content? The language, the information, the structure, everything qualifies to give straight As for students. As Brad Smith, CEO of Wordables and also the CEO and founder of Codeless points out in an interview with the Forbes magazine, “Most good content builds on itself, So you might lay the groundwork for an argument in the first section, and then come back later to build on top of that reader’s new understanding in the fourth section or paragraph.” AI cannot build such a connection with the readers as it works in isolation. 

The connection and the conversation I have as a writer when talking to you through this article cannot be established by AI. Coming back to the question of what has been the need for us to build such AI. The second reason, according to me, is the intellectual evolution we have undergone in the past few decades. We want to work above what we consider as minimal, mechanized work of accumulating information and making reports. We don’t want to be mere documenters of happenings, we want to analyze, experiment and create. AI does the mechanical work of curating content from across digital sources, so that we can analyze and work on our creations.

On the other hand, there has been panic about AI replacing humans as writers and artists. But that is only possible if the writers and artists merely curate information in a well-versed language. Then, definitely it's easy, convenient and profitable for organizations to use AI in place of a human writer. But, those writers who do a lot more than just putting together data are irreplaceable. They provide alternate ways of thinking, unthought possibilities, revolutionary reflections of realities, which are unique to humans. AI is not capable of that as these qualities are unique to each and every one of us and establishing a workable universal pattern is impossible. 

An upside of AI’s intervention in writing is the need for writers to do much more than the bare minimum. If AI can pick and present our own existing ideas and impressively convince us into believing it as good writing, shouldn’t we hone our skills and expertise much more efficiently to create and communicate our own ideas? We have outsmarted every one of our creations and so we will AI too, as already seen in the counter use of AI in plagiarism checking. I, as a journalism student, believe that Artificial Intelligence is not even close to what writers, journalists, artists are capable of.