Your pieces on not-x/y and paragraphing are genuinely illuminating. I wish people, especially writers, would think through these issues because they reveal something fascinating about how humans think, as opposed to the way machines process.
I especially was struck by the concern over deskilling.
This is a bigger problem than with AI generated text. It is a big problem with any use of technology to remove drudgery from a task. As a retired accountant, I had an "Aha!" moment with that, recalling my deskilling across my career as calculators and computers have degraded my mental arithmetic capacities.
I began my working life when a desktop calculator meant spending serious money, not something which came with your box of breakfast cereal. Nowadays I seem to struggle with two digit arithmetic - and no, it is not a function of my age.
I get that. This is the biggest worry about offloading the thinking to AI. It can augment analysis, but humans have to be able to work through problems. That can still happen with the aid of AI in complex analysis where humans don’t have the capacity to wrestle with the whole of a situation. But to punt analysis to AI and take its output as is represents a significant mistake.
All week I’ve been frustrated about this very issue, and I have wanted to say something. I’m sure you saw the situation that happened at Inkwell? I read one of the author’s other recent articles, and I said, “If this isn’t AI-writing, then this author needs some serious help learning to write.” I think you’re spot on with what the real issue is. I didn’t need a detector to tell me that her writing isn’t up to snuff. So now you need to write an article about how the general public’s idea of what passes as good writing allows these kinds of works to make it to publication. The young woman in question has over 1000 subscribers—not bad for someone I’ve never heard of. I have less than 200. But why was Inkwell initially fine with publishing writing of that caliber? Why is Hachette okay with MFA slop? Because people will buy it. Why will people buy it? I think this is a more important question.
I recently read a book, by a very high level public figure, and noticed the prose would go on and on about the same vague concept and not come to a firmly made point. I have since wondered if AI was used - the entire book wasn't vague like that, only those sections which were most theoretical, as if AI was being used to try to project the future. It made for a very uneven quality read.
As Kid President said, not cool, Robert Frost. Human editorial judgement (whether the author’s or their editor’s) should fix that. If we’re not developing those skills or don’t have enough time to exercise them, that’s a problem.
"If I ever write a novel, it’ll be because I finally figured out how to do it on my own. But the next question is, why would I want it to write for me in the first place?" really resounded with me. Jane Friedman (do you follow her?) in her most recent newsletter talked about how mid-life and after are often the most productive and creative times of life. But as I struggle, struggle with crafting a novel I've been working on for years, I keep asking myself, "If I am truly trying to purify my motives (not seeking praise from others) by writing 'for me,' as you put it, how can I justify these multiplied thousands of hours?" Sometimes I feel like I should just keep calling the elderly and shut-ins of my life and just listening to them. Perhaps that would be a greater service to humanity on my part.
Those are big questions. The (probably) good news is that they’re aren’t right or wrong answers. That means you have a lot of freedom to explore and work it out day by day, week by week.
Thank you for the Pangram tip. I'll have hours of fun with that.
Also, some of the things you and others have written about AI and how to tell when it's being used are things that I have used in my own writing simply because that's how I write. I used up my free credits running big chunks of my own work through Pangram and was surprised that it came back 100% human written. It must really work! :-)
My training is in poetry, and the em-dash is one of poetry's power tools. I'll not give it up! But one has to learn how to use that power tool properly, discerningly, and in my opinion, it's a power tool you graduate to when you've first learned how to use a hammer really well. AI-writing frustrates me for so many ethical and stylistic reasons, but most of all, when I read it, I think, "This writing doesn't deserve the em-dash!" 😂
I think AI overuses em dashes in part because they’re not logical or semantic, they’re statistical. They think one idea belongs with another and an em dash is the most efficient way to link them, even if it’s not the most logical or semantic. A human develops the sense to know that; an AI doesn’t.
As a professional, semi-retired dash man, I find just about everything Joel Miller says about AI and punctuation to be not only reasonable, but true. If dashes are ever declared illegal, and there is no statute of limitations, I will be in journalism jail for a long, long time. As far as I’m concerned, AI is a wonderful tool — a super spell check? — that could have saved me tens of thousands of hours of rewriting horrible press releases, police blotter material and useless filler material in the daily newspapers I worked for. If I hadn’t had to waste so much time on filling white space with ink and electrons or going to the public library to find out the name of Jimmy Stewart’s third movie for MGM, I might have won that elusive/illusive Pulitzer. (full disclosure –: – I used the voice feature on my smarter-than-me phone to “write” this.)
I think we sometimes forget that not all workaday writing—like rewriting news items—calls for artistic imagination, and AI might well save humans from the kind of drudgery that keeps them from more useful writing. It’s marginally valuable work and a lot of it (perhaps not all) serves a purpose and needs to be done. But if a machine can do some of that, why not? After you’ve read a piece seven times, it’s helpful to have an AI do a final proof; it’ll catch stuff a human proofer will glide right over. The Jimmy Stewart example is also helpful; an LLM can sometimes move you down the field on fact checking—even with the concern for hallucinations—faster than a person with Google alone.
"... the danger (with AI) is . . . you stop practicing things that are actually important, communicating, forming your own thoughts, reading, making sense of what you read."
Kind of ironic: groupthink and political correctness have already stopped people from forming their own thoughts-- who needs AI?? 🤔
Thank you Joel! I love this: "I’m ready to yell: Paragraphs are free! Available to everyone! Use them!"
Your pieces on not-x/y and paragraphing are genuinely illuminating. I wish people, especially writers, would think through these issues because they reveal something fascinating about how humans think, as opposed to the way machines process.
"Murder By Death"- this Neil Simon fan approves...
Such a great movie. Need to see it again. Some scenes just live in my head. Q: “Do you mean suicide?” A: “No it was murder. She hated herself.”
I especially was struck by the concern over deskilling.
This is a bigger problem than with AI generated text. It is a big problem with any use of technology to remove drudgery from a task. As a retired accountant, I had an "Aha!" moment with that, recalling my deskilling across my career as calculators and computers have degraded my mental arithmetic capacities.
I began my working life when a desktop calculator meant spending serious money, not something which came with your box of breakfast cereal. Nowadays I seem to struggle with two digit arithmetic - and no, it is not a function of my age.
I get that. This is the biggest worry about offloading the thinking to AI. It can augment analysis, but humans have to be able to work through problems. That can still happen with the aid of AI in complex analysis where humans don’t have the capacity to wrestle with the whole of a situation. But to punt analysis to AI and take its output as is represents a significant mistake.
All week I’ve been frustrated about this very issue, and I have wanted to say something. I’m sure you saw the situation that happened at Inkwell? I read one of the author’s other recent articles, and I said, “If this isn’t AI-writing, then this author needs some serious help learning to write.” I think you’re spot on with what the real issue is. I didn’t need a detector to tell me that her writing isn’t up to snuff. So now you need to write an article about how the general public’s idea of what passes as good writing allows these kinds of works to make it to publication. The young woman in question has over 1000 subscribers—not bad for someone I’ve never heard of. I have less than 200. But why was Inkwell initially fine with publishing writing of that caliber? Why is Hachette okay with MFA slop? Because people will buy it. Why will people buy it? I think this is a more important question.
I love that question and think I’ll take you up on the idea.
I recently read a book, by a very high level public figure, and noticed the prose would go on and on about the same vague concept and not come to a firmly made point. I have since wondered if AI was used - the entire book wasn't vague like that, only those sections which were most theoretical, as if AI was being used to try to project the future. It made for a very uneven quality read.
As Kid President said, not cool, Robert Frost. Human editorial judgement (whether the author’s or their editor’s) should fix that. If we’re not developing those skills or don’t have enough time to exercise them, that’s a problem.
If I ever become a professional rapper, I think my stage name will be Fauxetry.
It’s not a joke—it’s a promise.
Blake, I would pay money to see that!
"If I ever write a novel, it’ll be because I finally figured out how to do it on my own. But the next question is, why would I want it to write for me in the first place?" really resounded with me. Jane Friedman (do you follow her?) in her most recent newsletter talked about how mid-life and after are often the most productive and creative times of life. But as I struggle, struggle with crafting a novel I've been working on for years, I keep asking myself, "If I am truly trying to purify my motives (not seeking praise from others) by writing 'for me,' as you put it, how can I justify these multiplied thousands of hours?" Sometimes I feel like I should just keep calling the elderly and shut-ins of my life and just listening to them. Perhaps that would be a greater service to humanity on my part.
Those are big questions. The (probably) good news is that they’re aren’t right or wrong answers. That means you have a lot of freedom to explore and work it out day by day, week by week.
Thank you for the Pangram tip. I'll have hours of fun with that.
Also, some of the things you and others have written about AI and how to tell when it's being used are things that I have used in my own writing simply because that's how I write. I used up my free credits running big chunks of my own work through Pangram and was surprised that it came back 100% human written. It must really work! :-)
LOL. I ran a bunch of work through it for fun too. It’s pretty cool.
My training is in poetry, and the em-dash is one of poetry's power tools. I'll not give it up! But one has to learn how to use that power tool properly, discerningly, and in my opinion, it's a power tool you graduate to when you've first learned how to use a hammer really well. AI-writing frustrates me for so many ethical and stylistic reasons, but most of all, when I read it, I think, "This writing doesn't deserve the em-dash!" 😂
I think AI overuses em dashes in part because they’re not logical or semantic, they’re statistical. They think one idea belongs with another and an em dash is the most efficient way to link them, even if it’s not the most logical or semantic. A human develops the sense to know that; an AI doesn’t.
As a professional, semi-retired dash man, I find just about everything Joel Miller says about AI and punctuation to be not only reasonable, but true. If dashes are ever declared illegal, and there is no statute of limitations, I will be in journalism jail for a long, long time. As far as I’m concerned, AI is a wonderful tool — a super spell check? — that could have saved me tens of thousands of hours of rewriting horrible press releases, police blotter material and useless filler material in the daily newspapers I worked for. If I hadn’t had to waste so much time on filling white space with ink and electrons or going to the public library to find out the name of Jimmy Stewart’s third movie for MGM, I might have won that elusive/illusive Pulitzer. (full disclosure –: – I used the voice feature on my smarter-than-me phone to “write” this.)
I think we sometimes forget that not all workaday writing—like rewriting news items—calls for artistic imagination, and AI might well save humans from the kind of drudgery that keeps them from more useful writing. It’s marginally valuable work and a lot of it (perhaps not all) serves a purpose and needs to be done. But if a machine can do some of that, why not? After you’ve read a piece seven times, it’s helpful to have an AI do a final proof; it’ll catch stuff a human proofer will glide right over. The Jimmy Stewart example is also helpful; an LLM can sometimes move you down the field on fact checking—even with the concern for hallucinations—faster than a person with Google alone.
"... the danger (with AI) is . . . you stop practicing things that are actually important, communicating, forming your own thoughts, reading, making sense of what you read."
Kind of ironic: groupthink and political correctness have already stopped people from forming their own thoughts-- who needs AI?? 🤔