In Calculators & Writing, Chris Coyer points to something that’s been lingering in the back of my mind when using AI for certain tasks. My partner actually brought this up to me a while ago, and at the time I thought they were wrong – but I’ve come around. The quote below gets to the heart of it:
… with writing, humans are thinking, feeling, and communicating. Computers do not do these things.
Using AI to write means you’re robbed of the thinking and feeling it takes to write, which is (most?) of the value. Communicating, I suppose, you’re doing either way, you’re just communicating something you didn’t think about or feel if your writing is generated, which is fucked.
Despite remarkable progress in AI, some tasks still demand our effortful engagement. Learning, for example, requires one “to make eye contact with the idea” because the value lies in the effort, not just the outcome.
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