TagWriting
In Memoriam: Two Prophets and a President Died This Day
The prophetic artists of the past still speak
Sam Altman Was on My Favorite Writing Podcast. His View on Storytelling Surprised Me.
When we read, we want to hear from a human about what it means to be human.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 Read More ›
Study: Writing by Hand is Good for the Brain. What Does that Say About ChatGPT?
Nothing can replace pen and paperIt might be time to get the pens and notebooks back out and shut off the keyboard for a while. Just pretend you’re back in the first grade and don’t have a minicomputer in your back pocket. Writing by hand can help stimulate the whole brain and stave off cognitive decline, according to a study by Van der Weel and Van der Meer (2024), as reported by Pamela B. Rutledge in Psychology Today. Using a more personal note, she writes, I’ve never been one to keep a journal, but I now wonder if the exclusive use of computers and the lack of handwriting practice is doing my brain a disservice by decreasing the activity of cortico-subcortical components of the writing Read More ›
“I’m Not There Yet”
Scott Galloway opens up about the writing processScott Galloway is one of the most successful writers on the planet, at least by monetary metrics. He’s also a remarkably talented presenter and appears consistently on top channels to talk about business, masculinity, finance, and relationships. In a new interview with David Perell, who founded the writing organization “Write of Passage,” Galloway said that he thinks he’s a “good writer” but not a “great” one yet. It might surprise us given that Galloway is around sixty and is a successful author, but he went on to explain how practice is key when reaching any type of mastery of a skill. Writing is no different. He described his recent encounter with a Stephen King novel, admiring the vividness of the Read More ›
Kingsnorth: How to Stay Sane in the Deepfake World
A lesson for modern people from the desert monks of antiquity
Writers Are Getting Fired for…Not Using ChatGPT?
AI detectors aren't totally accurate, and the cost is steep for the writing industry
Substack: A Return to the Golden Era of Blogging
The writing platform is friendly toward free speech. So why doesn't Elon Musk like it?
The Uniqueness of the Human Writer
LLMs are shortcuts, but sometimes the shortcut makes you miss the point of the journey
Sports Illustrated Used AI-Generated Authors
Human authors for a human audience, please.
Creativity Takes Discipline. AI Offers an Easy, but Boring, Way Out
Because creativity requires work, AI systems will stunt human creativity over time.Consider the following scenarios and compare: Leilani considered the images on the screen … choose five, copy them, and paste them from the AI generator to the AI evaluator. Two to choose from … creative juices flowing, Leilani chose one and started working on the type. Which typeface would represent the playful air the client was looking for? Back to the AI selector to describe each face. All of them were playful, but one was fun, too — that’s the right match! After a few more minutes of creative release, Leilani leaned back to consider the result. Paste a copy of the final to her local friend’s group and wait a minute … the first response was: “Wow! You’re as Read More ›
Lawsuit Champions Human Creativity Over AI Mimicry
Copyright laws can protect against sophisticated plagiarism.
Literature and Personal Consciousness: Why AI Can’t Speak to You
AI can never intend meaning like a human author can
AI Can Do It All So You Don’t Have To
Sometimes satire says it bestSatire is often best at uncovering uncomfortable truths. Much of the talk around AI progress celebrates its ability to make certain tasks way easier, such as writing essays, programming computer code, or firing your employees. While that is certainly true, the concern remains that if we depend on AI like this for long enough we might just forget how to put two and two together and write a sentence over ten words long. That’s probably cynical, but the principle is there – depending on technology to perform mental tasks will lessen the ability to independently perform those same mental tasks. The popular satire site The Onion published a paragraph about a hypothetical man who is delighted about AI because it Read More ›
Hollywood Writers vs. AI
The Writers Guild of America doesn't want AI stealing their jobsI smell something rotten in the heart of Hollywood. So do a lot of screenwriters, actors, and directors. And you probably already have seen the headlines about the Writers Guild of America (WGA) going on strike, largely due to Hollywood studios’ apparent openness to using AI to generate scripts. It feels inevitable looking back, with the introduction and consequent explosion of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, that we would quickly arrive at a place where people like screenwriters are demanding job security. New AI systems have challenged a lot of different sectors, from visual art to journalism, but right now, the WGA strike is at the forefront of the conversation and continues to rage. Maggie Harrison of Futurism reports that a good many Read More ›
The Death of Peer Review?
Science is built on useful research and thoroughly vetted peer reviewTwo years ago, I wrote about how peer review has become an example of Goodhart’s law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” Once scientific accomplishments came to be gauged by the publication of peer-reviewed research papers, peer review ceased to be a good measure of scientific accomplishments. The situation has not improved. One consequence of the pressure to publish is the temptation researchers have to p-hack or HARK. P-hacking occurs when a researcher tortures the data in order to support a desired conclusion. For example, a researcher might look at subsets of the data, discard inconvenient data, or try different model specifications until the desired results are obtained and deemed statistically significant—and therefore Read More ›
AI vs. Human Intentionality
If ChatGPT were trained over and over on its own output, it would eventually turn to gibberishWe can do a simple experiment that demonstrates the difference between AI and human intentionality. ChatGPT and the like are a sophisticated form of a mathematical model known as a Markov chain. A Markov chain is based on the Markov assumption that the future is entirely a product of the recent past. In other words, if we know the recent past, then nothing else we learn about the more distant past will improve our ability to predict the future. In ChatGPT terms, this means ChatGPT is based on the assumption that everything we need to know to predict future words is contained within a limited window of previously seen words. ChatGPT’s window was 3,000 words, and I believe the newest version has Read More ›
Learning to Communicate
Why writing skills are so important, especially in today's artificial worldEducators have been shaken by fears that students will use ChatGTP and other large language models (LLMs) to answer questions and write essays. LLMs are indeed astonishing good at finding facts and generating coherent essays — although the alleged facts are sometimes false and the essays are sometimes tedious BS supported by fake references. I am more optimistic than most. I am hopeful that LLMs will be a catalyst for a widespread discussion of our educational goals. What might students learn in schools that will be useful long after they graduate? There are many worthy goals, but critical thinking and communication skills should be high on any list. I’ve written elsewhere about how critical thinking abilities are important for students Read More ›
Separating Fact from Fiction?
This sci-fi journal is being flooded with A.I. generated submissionsThe major science fiction/fantasy magazine Clarkesworld recently announced that it will be closing submissions for the foreseeable future. Why? A.I. generated stories. The magazine has long been the recipient of open submissions and is interested in publishing new voices, but because of an influx of poor A.I. written works, is now overwhelmed. Editor Neil Clarke wrote on Twitter, “Submissions are currently closed. It shouldn’t be hard to guess why.” Clarke said the closure wouldn’t be definite, but also noted with some severity that this will be an ongoing problem and that there’s no evident solution in sight at the moment. He continued in the Twitter thread: We have some ideas for minimizing it, but the problem isn’t going away. Detectors Read More ›
Awash in a Sea of Digital Information
In the age of infinite online text, maybe less is moreSome days after I close my laptop, I’d like to pick up a novel and read or work on a short story project, but then feel like I just need to empty my mind of all the snippets and clips of textual information I’ve consumed that day. News blurbs, thought pieces, emails, provocative tweets, more emails, more news blurbs… Frequently I’ll turn to a TV show or a social media binge in place of the novel. My brain can’t take any more text. It’s burnt out. It’s no secret contemporary Americans live in a sea of images and videos. YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook all vie for human attention through images and color schemes designed to catch the distracted eye. Read More ›