AI is Rewriting the Future of Writing - should we all be worried?

I’m someone who considers writing a kind of religion. I take time out of my day to listen to the ideas swirling around in my head, churn out words when the muse inspires me, meditate on my progress. And sometimes worry that I’m not a good enough writer.

It takes time to channel the spirit of the young poet I once was, and though it helps to surround myself with writers and other dreamers, it is best to try to work from my heart, wherever it takes me.

But as I look around, I see emerging technologies giving me the ability to be a writer in ways that I could never have imagined. I can now spend more time thinking about what I want to say, and less time figuring out how.

These new technologies — AI and Machine Learning — are being harnessed to create useful tools that make the act of writing easier and more engaging. AI is helping writers compose sentences and paragraphs faster and more concisely, and also assemble old ideas and observations in new creative ways.

For some people, that’s great and inspiring. But others are suspicious of any tool claiming the ability to do the dirty work of a writer.

Because good writing is hard.

Due to the many challenges that writers face in creating a good story, an algorithmic solution seems like a godsend in helping them string together the words that make up a coherent whole.

But at what point do talented wordsmiths come under threat from AI? Will writing for the masses soon be turned over to these algorithms?

This is the big worry.

Humans are driven by the need to create. We want to test ourselves, we want to know that what we’re making is valid, and something we want to hang onto.

A writer has a unique skill set — the ability to take words and words alone and somehow transform them into an outcome.

Writers challenge themselves to find new and interesting ways to transmute, to mirror, engage with, remind us of the virtues and weaknesses of our humanity; to recall the lost and misunderstood, the triumphant and the ridiculed, to communicate truth and authenticity.

If what is considered good writing becomes autonomous then human writing will be a thing of the past, replaced with computer code. The writers of the future will be programmers, not writers.

If algorithms are given the power to rewrite the future on their own, it raises the question of whether humans will lose our freedom and agency to write altogether.

Another risk is that AI could be given the ability to censor and whitewash our stories, and enforce their expectations in ways we would never expect.

If humans relinquish writing to machines, and it’s the best code that gets recognition, and not the best writer, then what will we see coming down the pike? A new form of writing? Something more artful? Or just plain ugly?

If machines are allowed to go it alone, without human agency, the quality and depth of the craft will become an abstraction. No one will be able to tell what’s real, or know how to feel. If it reaches to a point when decisions in writing aren’t made with emotions but with numbers - that would be tragic.

The future has made its own choices. Now we need to make ours.

The meaning of writing is not just the form of the written word. And cannot just be framed within the generic descriptions of academia or journals or punditry or the rest of the newspaper commentariat. Neither is it only Art — songs, poems, novels, scripts, and the like. The meaning of writing is also dependent on the nature of the society doing the writing, and how that meaning manifests.

The internet has emerged as a kind of society. It has enabled people who are strangers, with not a single connection, to forge tight bonds with each other. As a result, they write in an ecosystem of intense connections where shared identities, promises, and threats are baked into the pie.

Many consider themselves “outsiders” — be they small groups of scholars, independent journalists, bloggers, entrepreneurs and so on. They don’t have the usual limits on their decision making, their mission statement, their intellect and actions. They are writing to say, to think, to love, to be.

They are writing because they value the kind of freedom that has grown from the conversations and moves of thousands like them. They are open-ended, honest, and curious. They write with authenticity — and they write because they need to be believed by their readers and audiences. They want their work to touch hearts and minds, to solve problems and advance causes. AI couldn’t replace this.

But we’re human, and we often struggle with expressing our thoughts, feelings and ideas in the most efficient way. This is where AI is giving us an advantage. The ability to tell stories in ways that no one could have done before. To open up our minds, and provide us with tools that help us set our words on fire, and make them whistle, hum, sing, and roar.

The best writing, I believe, is a bridge between the old traditions and the new, a bridge that nurtures ideas not in spite of the existence of the digital revolution, but because of it. As of now we don’t know how writing is going to evolve with AI. But we know that the quality and the exclusivity of the writing, and the voice of the writer will still be the deciding factors for what qualifies as good writing.

Whether AI is on a collision course with human nature, is still yet to be seen. But we are at the start of a new day when writing is not just for professionals and for people who know how to write — but for every single human.

It’s now up to us to figure out how to use the new tools we have in our hands and to make them part of the creative process — or not. I believe we agree that whatever benefits AI brings cannot be to the detriment of our freedom to create in which ever way we choose. Nor our ownership of that creation.