Writes and Write-Nots

Posted on by Live & Learn

I’m usually reluctant to make predictions about technology, but I feel fairly confident about this one: in a couple decades there won’t be many people who can write. […]

AI has blown this world open. Almost all pressure to write has dissipated. You can have AI do it for you, both in school and at work.

The result will be a world divided into writes and write-nots. There will still be some people who can write. Some of us like it. But the middle ground between those who are good at writing and those who can’t write at all will disappear. Instead of good writers, ok writers, and people who can’t write, there will just be good writers and people who can’t write. […]

— Paul Graham, from “Writes and Write-Nots” (October, 2024. PaulGraham.com)

Photo: Todoran Bogdan

67 thoughts on “Writes and Write-Nots”

  1. I totally get it, but I hope to hell this is wrong. I just started reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Big Magic”, and she mentions that in 2008 she began a long distance friendship with another author… Ann Patchett. Instead of getting to know each other via telephone or social media, they chose to write letters to each other. A practice that continues to this day. What a beautiful thing.

    I haven’t written a letter in a very long time, and I really miss it. Maybe it’s time to start again. It feels so much more “real and from the heart” when I receive a handwritten letter.

  2. I have a tendancy to use AI in my wiriting but only as a guide. It gives me a structure that I can follow. I also ask it to review my writing. It’s involved int he process but doesn’t govern it.

  4. A harbinger – like the canary in the coal mine. There’s something tragic about choosing to leave one’s specialness at the door, negotiating with technology with the knowledge that AI will win. Cursive is no longer taught in school; thought-provoking classics are no longer part of curriculum. WE’re dumbing ourselves down, and that scares and saddens me. Clearly, to use AI as a guide is not what I’m talking about. We need to defend our individuality, for it is conceivable that we’re waving good bye instead of protecting that which is so wonderful and unique to us.

    1. I think we need to try to use the gifts we have received from all of history, and throw out anything bad. DO WRITE LETTERS. Do use AI if it improves what you create. DO NOT use AI as a crutch or to be lazy. We can’t make it go away, but we can be wise about choosing when to use it.

      PS: I have always wanted to learn calligraphy, and I am not artistic so it would have to be accomplished by “brute force repetition“. But I believe it is within my reach. I hope one day I make the time if I want it badly enough. If I never get to it, then I hope I used that time in some other beautiful way.

      1. Totally agree – I just think we have a tendency to go overboard with new and shiny things (figuratively speaking). That isn’t a laudable quality in the context of AI. And take up calligraphy, Paul – if for no other reason than relaxing your mind while using it to learn something!

    3. We really are dumbing ourselves down.
      It is similar with photography. Everyone with a decent cell phone can do it.
      Yes, absolutely, Mimi. We must defend our individuality.

    1. He’s a machine, isn’t he, Paul? Amazing! And not just *any* posts, but day upon day of offerings that delight, amuse, inspire, confound. A gift to us all….☺️

    2. Laughing! Thanks Paul. I wish I had written 8000 posts. I think I’ve shared 7900 articles and the genius of others. But thank you, I’m grateful for you following along and being part of this wonderful community.

  7. As you might imagine, this post hit me like a gut punch, pal. I have watched the erosion of writing skills with sadness for years, and now with the emergence of AI, we have a new issue with which to contend. For a while I resisted, but have come to see that AI can be of value if used as a tool rather than a solution or, as Paul says, a crutch. The ability to express oneself is so important, nay vital, and it is fading. I watch my teenage nieces struggle to use more than 100 characters, whether speaking or writing, and it saddens me. The ability to connect with another through the power of the written word is a gift and a muscle that must be exercised.

  8. I remember one of the first novels I read, “Letters of Two Brides” by Honoré de Balzac… It was great for me. Never forgot. And letters with my Dad, when I was in UK, especially he was writing in English language and I replied same. He wanted to see my English… I still keep our letters. And in the near past time, letters between me and Alaska, Fort Yukon teacher and his students… I keep them too…

    Writing is special… pen/pencil, paper,…. When technological changes started, I remember, to read books on the screen…I didn’t accept. And I didn’t read any book on the screen… I have to go to the bookstore and I should buy and I should touch the book… Usually I buy a lot of books in a month, but they wait on my desk for my reading time… To see them makes me happy. Reminds me I am here, I am a reader/even student… And all of them know what is the right time to be read… They tell me.

    The future doesn’t seem for me… I will be always an old one… This Morning I was in the bookstore for a little young lady I tried to find a book as a gift. I can’t explain how beautiful moments I lived by searching all books…

    On the other hand, yes, there is AI factor too. I haven’t read anything written by AI yet… But I saw many pictures by AI. It is a kind of fear for me… Can AI take place of me…? Can AI be me…? I am afraid to ask this too, Can AI be more beautiful than me in writing…?

    All right, I made a long comment, sorry dear David, but I have to ask some questions, what is literature… ? Do we need an human touches in these poetically written world…? Feeling, thoughts, and rhythm of sentences… as Virginia Woolf says in her letter to Vita, “Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can’t use the wrong words. But on the other hand here am I sitting after half the m
    Morning, crammed with ideas, and visions, and so on, and can’t dislodge them, for lack of the right rhythm. Now this is very profound, what rhythm is, and goes far deeper than any words. A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it.”

    Thank you dear David, Love, nia

    1. I love this comment, Nia, every word of it. I, too, have a pile of books by my bedside (and scattered on various tables around the house). Seeing them makes me happy and thrills me as a I think about the discoveries and journeys that rest within their pages. Have a great day!

    2. Wow. Such beautiful thoughts Nia. Thank you for sharing.

      Your thoughts remind me of two passages. The first from David Brooks:
      ——
      I don’t know about you, but this is what life has been like for me since ChatGPT 3 was released. I find myself surrounded by radical uncertainty — uncertainty not only about where humanity is going but about what being human is. As soon as I begin to think I’m beginning to understand what’s happening, something surprising happens — the machines perform a new task, an authority figure changes his or her mind.

      Beset by unknowns, I get defensive and assertive. I find myself clinging to the deepest core of my being — the vast, mostly hidden realm of the mind from which emotions emerge, from which inspiration flows, from which our desires pulse — the subjective part of the human spirit that makes each of us ineluctably who we are. I want to build a wall around this sacred region and say: “This is essence of being human. It is never going to be replicated by machine.”

      But then some technologist whispers: “Nope, it’s just neural nets all the way down. There’s nothing special in there. There’s nothing about you that can’t be surpassed.”

      — David Brooks, from ‘Human Beings Are Soon Going to Be Eclipsed’ (NY Times, July 13, 2023)
      ———–
      And the 2nd, I hope is our reality:

      That’s the promise of ChatGPT and other artificial approximations of human expression. The history of technology says that these things have a hype cycle: They promise; we fear; they catch hold; they under-deliver. We right-size them. We get back to the business of being human, which is machine-proof.
      — Tressie McMillan Cottom, from “Human This Christmas” (NY Times, Dec. 20, 2022)

      1. Dear David, really makes me afraid to find my humble world in high technological systems… whatever they are! I will say something but this could be another exaggeration of me, “I want to stay human…”… If we take human’s talents from him,… what will remain from us… Neither art nor literature can be made with a set of commands… Thank you for sharing with me/us, Have a nice day, Love, nia

      2. I have not studied AI (frankly, I’m not interested), but this just hit me: Machines can generate (copy?) words describing emotions and feelings, but they do not HAVE/EXPERIENCE emotions and feelings. Humans do. Also, medical science has barely scratched the surface of understanding how the human brain works. I believe there is much hidden in the human brain that AI will not replicate anytime soon.

        1. And in response to your thought on feelings, here’s another from Mr. Brooks:

          This is what many of us notice about art or prose generated by A.I. It’s often bland and vague. It’s missing a humanistic core. It’s missing an individual person’s passion, pain, longings and a life of deeply felt personal experiences. It does not spring from a person’s imagination, bursts of insight, anxiety and joy that underlie any profound work of human creativity.

          — David Brooks, In the Age of A.I., Major in Being Human (NY Times, Feb 2, 2023)

          And here’s link to the full article:

          https://readwise.io/reader/shared/01h0j87wacqad7925cnqfw45nx

  9. Sad to say,but if we are not careful,this will come to pass.Be very careful what you invest in(in terms of technology people).

  10. YOU choose the articles Dave, and often add a few words of your own. ALL the words that delight us are evaluated by you before they hit the blog. I’m giving you 100% credit!!! Thank you for sharing all of your posts. They matter. They really, really matter!!! 👍👍👍 -Paul

  11. Actually, to be here means, -by the way the Sun goes down in here at the west side of my home, but in the North there are gray sky and monster clouds-, yes to be here means always for me, to be in amazing, special, library that there is not any of them in the world… Something like that. Words are beautiful, Thoughts are beautiful, and people in here so beautiful… This should be a gift for me, believe me, in my humble world how rich I am… Thank you, have a nice day for you ALL, Love, nia

      1. I agree. When you shorten words or don’t care if the spelling is correct for the sake of expediency, you tend to forget (and care less) about correctness and form. And there goes the language.

  15. So many wise people read and comment. I fear I cannot add anything more.
    I avoid AI for writing (outside of translating – coz I guess that’s what Deepl is, right?)
    Sigh.

  17. No need to wait …. most ppl can’t write any longer already NOW. You should see some of the ‘stuff’ I get from here and there. In any language I speak – it’s not only in one or two of them, in all of them knowledge of actual writing is largely missing. Sad days…. (and with this I’ll go and prepare some overseas Christmas cards with advent calendars and tiny joy ‘spendings’)

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