How to think about writing with AI
There are more and more AI “writing buddies” out there. Some are billed as helpers while others are advertised with dubious promises like “write your book in 60-seconds.”
For any writer the tools are tempting—and I think it’s foolish to refuse to experiment with them. Imagine being the last writer to switch from a typewriter to a computer. This technology is different, but it’s here to stay in some form or another.
Writing in a Chinese room
The Chinese room is a thought experiment that poses this scenario: a person who doesn’t know Chinese is given a book of Chinese phrases and their appropriate responses (also in Chinese—there are no translations), such that they can answer letters accurately enough that the recipient will never know it wasn’t written by a Chinese speaker.
Many questions present themselves. Does the ability to respond mean the person understands Chinese, or are they simply mimicking? And then: how complex does mimicry have to be before it’s indistinguishable from understanding? Would they ever be able to produce something original?
If I’m an author interested in using AI to help me create a book, the way I think about this question is critical. If I think the machines are truly intelligent, it would be likely that I’d cede more and more control to the machine. Writing a book with AI would be like having an intern or a ghostwriter write my book and then taking credit myself. If I think that the machine doesn’t understand and is simply mimicking in order to show me what I want to see, then I’ll take a more active role in shaping the final outcome and it will feel more like using a tool.
If one builder hammers and saws for months to frame a house, and another uses technology to 3-d print a concrete structure, did the second one not build the house? How independent would the technology have to become before you’d say that person was no longer a builder?
AI writing tools
Something like a year ago I wrote about this after I first looked at ChatGPT. Recently I’ve been looking at tools like Chapterly, Sudowrite (for fiction), Reword and MovableType and thinking about how authors are likely to use tools like these in the future. Most of them are trying to do too much—taking too much of the author’s role. Because I don’t believe that these programs can have original thoughts—at least not yet.
Have you used any of these tools, or another I didn’t mention? I’d love to hear about it. Send me an email or leave a comment to let me know about your experience.
I can see a future in which an author could describe their interesting new ideas in detail and ask an AI assistant to fill in the background from specific contextual notes. For example, I could coach you through developing the flow of ideas and outline for your book, and after a couple of weeks or a month, you’d have a very solid plan. Or I could send you a questionnaire and then spend a week to write a 10,000-word skeleton of the book for you. Or an AI could send you the same questions and turn your answers into a draft in minutes. Then you could give it feedback and guidance until the draft looked like something you wanted to take out and work on by hand.
When world chess champion Garry Kasparov lost a game to the computer Deep Blue, he didn’t turn against computers. He leaned in, and has become an expert on how people can do better work in partnership with machines than either could alone. Chess is an almost endlessly complex game, but writing is even more complicated. I won’t be at all surprised if one day in a few years it becomes normal for people to write with AI helpers.1
What do you think about using AI as a writer?
PS — would you believe me if I said I had help writing this post?
Of course the serious publishing world will be slower to move than many other sectors, and for good reason. There will need to be guidelines for ethical and authoritative publishing in that new world. Many publishers already have rules around this that authors are expected to follow (it probably goes without saying, but please don’t turn in a book written with AI without first asking if it’s allowed by your publisher).
What are Johns Hopkins University press' policies regarding the use of AI?