I’ll start with the punch line: Good writing is an expression of individuality, and a communication of life experience and human thought. AI can’t do it. AI will never be able to do it.
The AI chatbots that people use to write for them tend to write bland, average prose. Worse, they use phrases, make sentences, somewhat randomly choose canned constructions that are “off.”
We can tell it’s “off,” because we are human.
Good writing and good reading is a conversation between two human beings who “get it.“ They “get it” because they have shared life experiences, they’ve felt pain, they’ve felt love, they’ve experienced beauty, they know what chamomile smells like. And they can use language to communicate experiences in a way that’s individualistic and allows the reader to understand and get to know the writer.
People can do this. Machines can’t. Machines can try to simulate it, but there’s one huge problem with simulating great writing.
Consider three of the greatest American novelist: Hemmingway, Fitzgerald, and Twain. If AI were to simulate great writing, it could try to imitate one of them, but in imitating one of them it very much is not imitating the other two.
Great writing is individualistic. The greater it is the more individualistic it is. So what would it mean for a machine to produce great writing, when it has no life experiences and no individuality?
AI has mastered generic prose. But what makes great writing great is it? It’s the opposite of generic. It’s the opposite of average.
This is great news. It means if you cultivate the art of writing well, you will always be able to do something that AI cannot do.