Writing Manually (In Times of AI-generated Content)

In times of AI Writing, writing manually is more important than ever. As with many AI Generated texts, I’d rather see the prompts, it would have more soul and character than the output.

I couldn’t agree more with the sentiment of

I’d rather read the prompt by Clayton Ramsey (I’d rather Read the Prompt)

Writing yourself, writing manually is much nicer, to hear your unfiltered thoughts, than condensing them through an LLM, and get average-sounding sentences with no soul. To me, LLM writing is soulless. I even started to turn to Grammarly and Copilot, as these were a mere distraction to the actual task at hand: writing. Instead of writing, I was constantly grammar fixing, and ultimately, nothing got done.  Bsky

My experience is in writing, every time I use it for a bigger task (re-structure, or telling me the missing chapters), it does a very average and most importantly, distracting task for me. Instead of following my headspace, I am now adding some averaged chapters that can be found everywhere.

Also from Clayton’s article above:

I would rather see than the original prompt. The resulting output has less substance than the prompt and lacks any human vision in its creation. The whole point of making creative work is to share one’s own experience - if there’s no experience to share, why bother?

If it’s not worth writing, it’s not worth reading.

A great analogy found on Hackernews “Using an LLM to do schoolwork is like taking a forklift to the gym”.

If all we were interested in was moving the weights around, you’d be right to use a tool to help you. But we’re doing this work for the effect it will have on you. The reason a teacher asks you a question is not because they don’t know the answer." HN

More on Will AI replace Humans.

Is writing manual like driving a car manually, instead of automatic? At first, I thought yes. But on the contrary, shifting automatic is a convenience that benefits only those who drive the car. The similarities are that both are faster, easier, and do an average job. However, the quality of automatic shifting is much superior to average AI-generated content. AI models are probabilities and are not made for writing. Yes they can write, but, they all sound the same, see How to detect AI Writing.

And with AI writing, we don’t do it for ourselves; we do it to share or impress others. If we only do it for ourselves, why wouldn’t we write it ourselves?

It’s not yes or no, but it’s a bit a nuanced difference. In shifting gears, you don’t need to have character or soul. If you are a race driver, you might shift to be much more efficient and better for each situation. If you go up, shift faster; if you go down, keep a low gear to make the motor break instead of breaking. So there’s some nuance, but it’s more simplicity whereas writing is Art, a way of communication. And much more than just shifting a gear. #thoughtoftoday

Besides creating art manually, it’s more fun too. Craftsmanship will come back into vogue once we all identify AI Generated Images. It’s even more true for written words. The creator of OpenClaw just said that he is allergic to AI-written articles, but codes all day agentic.

So there is something to be said about human-made, not only Human in the Loop.

So very well explained, The AI Asterisk by Tom White.

Was it you? Who wrote it?

Without the machine would those small fragile thoughts still be nestled in the safety of your creative womb?

Maybe it’s neither extreme. Maybe the thing you made is some Ship of Theseus where AI’s planks got swapped in so gradually that nobody, including you, can point to where you end and the tool begins.

That’s the AI asterisk.

AI is very addictive, but also brings a lot of value as it can confuse us being productive versus just producing Shallow Work.

Blogging is also the antidote, if done manually. But not everyone can withstand the urge to use AI writing. Writing is hard at the end. So it’s much easier to take a shortcut. How do you withstand it? Have you come to the seduction of just having AI write it for you?

To me, it’s about the fun, and what I learn. Especially when I write connected as I explain in Future of Blogging and my essay on Why I Still Blog — and Why the Future of Blogging Is Connected.

It helped me learn what I was doing better, and it helped me to coalesce my thoughts. Hamilton Carter

I couldn’t agree more with Hamilton. Even if AI were to get better than humans, still, for the sole benefit of learning, it’s worth doing. Plus, people who follow know it’s a human with character and quirks. More on why it’s important to have a sould and character at Will AI Replace Human Thinking?.

• Jordan Tigani on AI Writing Tools Limit Clarity of Thought ^6eb012

Origin: ChangeLog Podcast newsletter by Jerod Santo.
References: AI Writing