Most Writing Already Sounds Like AI, Anyway

In search of meaningful writing, written by humans

What AI is doing to writing is awful, but writing as a general concept has been on its way to ruin for years.

Twitter came along and told everyone to write in 140 characters, so we did, for years.

Google wanted us to stuff 'keywords' into our blogs, and overnight the internet became unreadable.

Then the gossip blogs started using hooks to reel you in. You'd be half way through an article before you realised the title beared no relation to the content you were reading.

And now most online journalism consists of shock headlines, like "MANCHESTER UNITED PLAYER FURIOUS WITH MANAGER." You have to scroll through eleven paragraphs and 22 adverts just to find out that Manchester United's reserve goalkeeper is slightly aggrieved because the manager made him train on a Tuesday when he thought he'd be getting the day off.

Social media became a place where writers and creatives had the possibility of crafting something meaningful.

Yet 90% of these sites are scam artists trying to teach you how to get rich. "EARN 50k a week on TikTok, it's easy!" Or "Here's how to get 10,000 subscribers on Substack in the next month."

Bad, non-authentic creativity is already everywhere.

And now, AI is here.

Many people use it to write.

And most of those who don't use it to write, at least use it to research. Used to be if you were writing an article about airplanes, you'd spend days or weeks researching and maybe if you were lucky you'd get an engineer from Airbus and he'd tell you everything you need to know. Now you can just ask ChatGPT how airplanes are built and it will know the answer.

But just like with SEO stuffed blogs, and just like with those finance bros on TikTok who know how to ‘get rich’ -- we can CHOOSE to not partake in the game.

The great writing of history is still available. For me, a week doesn't go by without my picking up my favourite book, 'Up in the Old Hotel' by Joseph Mitchell. His writing about the characters of New York - the bums, the misfits, the forgotten - the words fill me up creatively. His writing still excites me and inspires me, even though I've read each story a hundred times.

You have your own version of that - a writer who has that spark. It might be Nora Ephron, it might be Ernest Hemingway or it might be a poet on Substack who has only nine subscribers.

Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

Yes, AI is taking all of our jobs. And there will undoubtedly be people who will sit on a beach reading an AI novel and they'll be none the wiser. But you're not one of those people and neither am I.

Humans need humans. Some don't, some are happy to spend the rest of their lives in a computer simulation. But for the rest of us, we're still searching for words. Real words.

The human mind is an incredible thing. When someone truly writes from the heart - and when they're open enough to let their subconsciousness seep into the writing, magic happens.

Now, let me tell you how airplanes are built…