Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has garnered a fair share of criticism from the writing crowd for creating ChatGPT, a tool that on the surface seems to banish the need for human writers at all. However, Altman recently appeared on David Perell’s prominent writing podcast “How I Write” to talk about his own writing process, AI, and what he uses ChatGPT for.

Altman and Perell talk about the importance of language for human communication, with Altman noting how he can’t imagine human life without language. AI, Altman says, is supposed to make language and the writing process “better.” In his view, that’s what computers have also sought to do: Create opportunities for humans to expand and deepen their capacities. But does it always?

I was a bit surprised that Altman came on the show, perhaps mainly because I don’t see him as a writer, but also because ChatGPT has arguably had some pretty hard-core negative impacts on the writing world. It’s been obvious that students in universities are using ChatGPT to “write” their own essays. For some reason, these students don’t seem to realize this counts as plagiarism. They’re taking a jumble of words scraped from the internet and presenting it as their own works. It’s just as dishonest as adapting another writer’s words as your own! Apparently, however, Altman once dreamed of being a novelist, if only for the romantic image of “smoking in a cafe in Paris.” He told Perell that he didn’t think he was a very good writing, but that writing had always helped him clarify his own thoughts.

Altman thinks ChatGPT is a tool that can help people think more clearly, and says as much toward the end of the interview. He still thinks people need to learn how to write, just like software coders still need to learn coding even though AI has altered the whole industry. In my view, the best way to learn how to think is to learn how to write without the aid of a large language model. However, I appreciated Altman’s closing thoughts on the enduring value of human writing. “When I finish a great book, the first thing I want to do is know about the writer,” said Altman. “I want to know their life story. And I don’t think I’ll have that feeling with AI writing. There is something about reading a book and connecting with a person even though you don’t literally know them.”

Absolutely. Altman realizes that stripping the human away from the act of writing and storytelling won’t bode well for our culture of letters. When we read, we want to hear from a human about what it means to be human. ChatGPT can improve, but it can never understand what it feels like to be a person. Human writing still has the edge on AI, folks, and always will.