Writing with Machines

For me, the goal is always to use AI to help people think better. Writing is thinking. That’s it. And if we don’t forget that, I believe the future of writing is going to be very exciting indeed.

I think the best way to understand what an “idea” really is as a node in a network of other ideas, and large language models like GPT-3 are the best maps we currently have of that network. In general, having a map makes you much better at navigating terrain.

Writing gave words permanence. Typewriters reduced the friction between having a thought and transferring it onto a page. Computers reduced the cost of editing thoughts after you typed them. The internet made it possible to send your words anywhere, instantly, for zero cost. And now AI will help you think through ideas more completely as you type t... See more

I think this is the way we’ll use AI to write in the future. We’ll interact with AI in a continuous, back-and-forth way. We’ll write a few sentences, and then we’ll ask it for suggestions. We’ll write a few more sentences, and then we’ll ask it again. We’ll keep going back and forth like this, and over time the AI will get better as it learns more ... See more

The way I see it, AI is already incredibly good at priming us while we’re writing. It can show us the way towards ideas that are adjacent to those we’re currently exploring, much better than we could see on our own.

What humans do best is see information in our environment, synthesize it, and connect it with related ideas in novel ways. But it’s much harder for us to come up with something out of nothing. It helps a lot to have something to react to.