me myself and AI - the writing dilemma

In the famous Turing test, a human judge determines whether a machine and a person can be told apart on the basis of how they communicate. If the machine can fool the judge, then human specialness can be dismissed.

Light bulbs have energy ratings — so why can’t AI chatbots?

The test is not treated seriously in rigorous philosophy circles, but remains... See more

I just think the job of the artist is in part to resist the demands of the product-side (optimizing their work for the market, maximizing profit, constantly increasing production, prioritizing efficiency at the expense of creativity) as often as they can, for the sake of their own artistic, intellectual, and spiritual health.

This is a great question, not a stupid one; she has arrived at a conclusion that makes perfect sense within the logics of modern labour and production. This author views her writing as a product, and her audience views her writing as a product, and most products are manufactured in line with this logic: someone comes up with an idea, does a bit of... See more

AI now promises results without the reckoning, but frictionless creation leads to weightless rewards. No one dreams of merely pushing a button to generate their magnum opus. The struggle is what makes it count, what gives it weight.1

Chatting with AIs has already replaced a lot of brainstorming and mindmapping in my notebook for me. The evolution feels much sharper and more dramatic than the change a 27 years ago, when writing became Google-in-the-loop became the default. I can’t even remember now what it felt like to write without googling things constantly.

This phenomenal article in The Verge follows the inner conflict of a writer who started using Sudowrite to help pump out several of her self-published fantasy novels per year: “ It’s just words , she thought. It’s my story, my characters, my world. I came up with it. So what if a computer wrote them?”

When it comes to AI, we need to aim higher than the question: “What if you could press a button to generate an essay?” AI can produce infinite amounts of content; quantity is its game. Quality, intention, taste, originality, vision—that’s where we come in.