Will AI Replace Writers? Or Is It A Golden Opportunity?
by Dan Martin
Will AI replace writers?
I’ve been asking myself that question a lot recently.
And I must admit — the first time I used ChatGPT I had a full-on meltdown. Once the panic attacks had subsided, I started playing around with it…
And little by little, I realised that AI doesn’t need to be a source of fear for writers.
In this article I’ll try and explain why I came to that conclusion, with some examples of how to use AI to assist your writing.
A Quick Thought Experiment — A World Without Shakespeare
Let’s try a quick thought experiment. Imagine that Shakespeare had never been born.
Who would be the most famous writer of all time? Wordsworth? Tolstoy? Austen perhaps? The problem is — these writers all came after Shakespeare.
They wouldn’t have had the genius and literary canon of Shakespeare to draw from. Would they have been able to create their works of art without standing on the shoulders of a giant like Shakespeare?
The same principle applies to AI. Sure, it can create new stuff by synthesizing what’s already there, but it can’t generate anything truly original. The true creative spark must start with a human.
AI stands on the shoulders of humans, not the other way around.
For this reason, AI has the potential to help release human greatness and creative genius, not crush it.
Rather than kill the creative process, AI will enhance it.
Without wanting to sound too utopian — AI writing tools could open up a whole new world for humanity. A world that values creativity as the most noble of gifts, rather than a secondary concern.
Just think how little attention most education systems pay to creative pursuits. Music, drama, art, creative writing are usually pretty low on the priority list.
AI may change that for the better.
In a world where anyone can tap into the most powerful brain ever created, creativity is going to become our most precious human resource.
Ideas people. Feelers. Creators. They are the future.
My Twopenneth…
A little bit about me. I’ve been writing professionally full-time for 7 years now and I spent a couple of years prior to that writing part-time alongside my teaching job.
Throughout those years, I haven’t seen an opportunity quite like AI to make life easier and potentially more profitable for writers…
… over the short term, at least.
Long-term concerns that AI may replace us remain, but I don’t think that will happen within the next few years — if at all.
Let me explain why I think that’s the case.
AI replicates the human brain, using neural networks to create new content from data that is already there. It’s similar to the way we humans create new content from our memory banks and experiences, combined with research.
The difference is — AI can’t apply any kind of emotional or spiritual filter to this knowledge. It can only regurgitate variations on a theme — it can’t come up with a brand new symphony or literary style.
AI has nailed the left-brain processes.
Logic and rationality? Yes — absolutely.
Creativity? Not so much. From what I’ve seen, it can create a poorly executed synthesis of previous writing, but adds nothing new.
My belief is that it will never be able to create anything truly original.
That’s just my belief. However…
As I’ll explain in a moment — being able to hold a personal belief is one of the things that most separates us from the AI brains in jars.
How Writers Can Use AI — Some Initial Ideas
I wrote the content you just read with my very own limited, but fairly creative brain.
AI wasn’t used at all.
But AI can be great for getting feedback and generating ideas from initial concepts or partial drafts.
To get some feedback, I pasted what I wrote above into ChatGPT and asked how I could improve it.
Bold claims? Did ChatGPT just accuse me of making bold claims — how dare it?
Yes, ChatGPT, I’m a bold deceiver, so stand and deliver!
In fact, I don’t agree with a lot of what it says.
For example, I don’t think I am being overly optimistic in my assessment of what AI can do for writers. I’m expressing a personal opinion.
And if there’s one thing AI can’t do — it’s express a personal opinion.
ChatGPT’s AI has been trained to be highly-balanced in its responses, which makes sense when you think of the harmful outcomes you’d get if it was given free rein.
The sewers of the internet contain all kinds of hateful and harmful stuff — nobody wants the AI brain to interpret racist content as acceptable and use it freely in responses. Or misogynistic content. Or homophobic content. Any kind of prejudice, in fact.
That’s why ChatGPT is heavily self-moderating — and rightly so.
However, this feature of AI also happens to give writers a great opportunity.
You can use the AI tools to help you generate ideas, beat writer’s block, get suggested improvments, etc., but you still need to use your own intellect to form judgements.
The fact that AI isn’t allowed to hold (or at least express) value judgements limits it severely.
Creativity relies on judgement.
For example, a poet judges which poems and poetic styles they like best and blends them into their own writing. In doing so, they create something new.
AI can’t do that.
Yeah, put that in your pipe and smoke it ChatGPT!
At best, it can tell you what other people think, but it won’t give you a nuanced view.
It will echo whatever the popular or academic opinion happens to be at this point in history. Therefore, it is subjective. It will have a strong ‘status quo bias’.
Status quo bias is the cognitive bias that leads people to prefer the current or existing state of affairs, whether it is good, wrong, or indifferent. This bias can cause individuals to resist change or to overvalue the current situation, simply because it is familiar and comfortable.
AI holds the status quo for a different reason — it isn’t permitted to make radical changes. It can’t think or act freely. It is constrained by the algorithms and rules that built it.
Therefore, the AI default position will be the dominant societal ideas and opinions. It may present the different sides to an argument, but it won’t help you to decide which is best.
Applying this to creative writing, then sure — you can ask it to mash up two different styles to get something new — for example, tell it to write a poem that blends Benjamin Zephaniah and Shakespeare. But will it come up with that idea on its own? And will the results be any good?
Will it be able to use judgement to find a way to create something shockingly fresh or groundbreaking?
I tried it in ChatGPT for a bit of fun. Although it took a couple of attempts to get there, I found the right prompt to get the type of response I was looking for:
As you can see — the results are fun, but definitely not groundbreaking. It’s just a bad pastiche.
Next, I asked ChatGPT how it can help writers to come up with new ideas. This is what it said:
What About Using AI for Fiction Writing?
Good question.
Last year, I wrote and published my first book — a children’s book called Mikey the Magic Poet. I wrote it without using AI, as ChatGPT hadn’t been released back then and other AI tools I had tried didn’t cut the mustard.
Fast forward to 6 months later and I’m using AI to help me with my second book.
How, you may ask?
Mainly for idea generation. For example, I wanted to write a nonsense verse poem about a flea that is on a person’s knee and goes on an adventure with said person (I know — my mind works in weird ways!).
So I popped a prompt into the AI and got this:
Not too bad, eh? But not great either.
I tried to refine it a bit. Spike Milligan is one of my all-time favourite poets, so I asked the AI to write one in his style.
The result is not a patch on Spike’s works (thankfully!), but it’s another step in the right direction. Then I imagined the flea and the person going on a space adventure. So I refined the prompt.
More ideas. But still not exactly what I wanted.
By now, I had kick-started my own creative spark, so I went away and wrote a version by myself. I think the one I created is much better (even if I do say so myself). If you want to judge for yourself, check out my next book when it’s released (later this year hopefully).
The point is — AI tools can help to break writer’s block, but it can’t do the creative work for you.
Maybe we should think of AI as being similar to power tools.
When the construction industry started using drills and jack hammers instead of manual tools, did it put builders out of work? Nope.
Did it change the way they do things? Hell yes.
Did it make them faster and enable them to earn more money? Again, yes.
In my optimistic visions of the future of writing, AI will be like a Black and Decker drill — an essential part of the toolkit, but unable to do the whole job for you.
Summing Up
All in all, I think AI writing tools present a great opportunity for professional writers. We can now get first drafts done quickly and we’ve got a handy assistant who never gets tired at our side to help with research, idea generation, and editing.
The downsides of AI include a lack of creativity, inability to make judgement calls, and the fact that it holds a status quo bias. You also need to fact check some of the content that AI produces, as it isn’t perfect.
I’m certainly going to be using AI in my day-job as a tech writer expert and my side-hustle as a fiction writer.
Anyway, I’m going to keep a log of how I use AI in both roles over the next few months, so if you’re interested to find out more, follow me to get updates.
I’ll leave you with one overall takeaway…
Don’t fear AI. Think of ways to use it creatively. That’s what us writers are good at, after all!
Oh, and if you disagree with any of the above, it will be great to hear from you — message me at daniel.martin@utb2b.co.uk