Call Me Old School...
A Few Thoughts On Using A.I. for Creative Projects
The other day, I was sent a pretty incredible video showing how someone had turned some of my writing into a beautiful presentation1.
With minimal effort, they fed my text into an A.I. program, and it generated a beautiful set of slides along with a pretty effective script. Suffice it to say that I was blown away by the output.
This feeling—that is, being blown away at A.I.’s capabilities—happens to me somewhat regularly. Why?
Because I hardly use A.I. in my work or otherwise. So, whenever I see what A.I. is capable of, I sometimes have to lift my jaw off the ground because I can’t believe what’s possible in such a short amount of time. It’s pretty freakin’ wild.
Despite that fact, I generally don’t have much interest in using A.I. in my work. Given that I write for a living, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told that A.I. could help me with my writing (while saving me loads of time), so why not use it for all its worth?!
First of all, its writing doesn’t seem all that great. It overuses the word “quietly” as an adjective far too often, it uses em dashes in places where they don’t make sense—which, I should know since I love em dashes and have used them much longer than ChatGPT—and they love to say “It’s not about X. It’s about Y.” to the point that it’s unnatural.
Because, of course, it isn’t natural. It’s A.I. (See what I did there?!)
There are quite a few other tell-tales, but none of those annoyances are the main reason I try to steer clear of A.I.
The primary reason I refrain as much as possible is because I don’t want to shortcut my own thinking.
Paul Graham2 has said,
“The reason so many people have trouble writing is that it's fundamentally difficult. To write well you have to think clearly, and thinking clearly is hard.”
While it could be argued that my writing isn’t all that great3, I can only imagine how bad it’d be if I outsourced my thinking to ChatGPT.
The truth is, I don’t want to make writing easier. Much like Graham alludes to, writing is the primary tool I use to think, which is an underrated aspect of writing.
For instance, when I started this very article, I had no idea where it might go. Had I handed some A.I. program a prompt to write it, I’m sure I wouldn’t have learned anything at all, because I wouldn’t have had to think my way through the idea.
Beyond that, writing is fun because it’s hard. Like most good things in life, it’s supposed to be hard.
Intuitively, you know that you won’t get any stronger without pushing yourself in the gym. You have to lift heavy weights.
You won’t become a better piano player by watching YouTube videos on how to play the piano. Your fingers have to touch the keys.
And you’re not going to get better at art by inputting clever prompts into Midjourney.
In much the same way, the only way to learn to think (or write) better is to challenge yourself to think (and write) for yourself. You can’t outsource it.
I’m sure A.I. is good for lots of things4, but if I start replacing my own thoughts with a prompt, I potentially sacrifice my native ability to reason and think for myself. That doesn’t sound like a worthwhile tradeoff to me.
Until next time.
It was from a member of my writing business, seeing if it was okay to use publicly. It wasn’t, so there’s no way to share what he provided. But it was an impressive output nonetheless.
I don’t claim that it is…
I have found that it’s quite good at finding sources to support the arguments I’m trying to make. It’s also good at finding specific data, but you may have to ask it a few times. However, a word of warning: Make sure you check its work, because it’s notorious for making up data. Thus, I only use it to find actual source data.