At least part of what we object to in AI “writing” is the fact that so much of what we used to doβ noodling around on blogs, putting up pictures of our lives with updates of what we were doing on Tuesday, and writing social media posts that were actually socialβ has been replaced by copy. (1)
When we started being run by The Algorithm(s), we were trained: If you write something that meanders, nobody will read it.
And if you have the audacity to write in complete paragraphs, may God have mercy on your soul!!!
We learned to use short words, frequent line breaks, and three-example something or other. (2)
We figured out that we had to add “hooks” and tease out the writing, to keep leading with another open loop so that “they” will read all the way to the end.
Because if they don’t, the algorithm will conclude, “This sucks, don’t show it to anybody.”
Then we trained machines to mimic the form of writing that came so awkwardly to most of us, and which still outperforms… unfortunately, most other things.
YOU WON’T BELIEVE THESE THREE THINGS ABOUT PICKLES!
(Spoiler: there’s nothing in this post about pickles.) (3)
I used to write essays. I still tend to write essays – attempts, not proofs. I’m trying to get my teeth into an idea, or perhaps my arms around it. I’m not trying to convince you of anything, exactly. I have some ideas of what is wrong and how we might make it better, but I want to open things up to a deeper conversation, not state absolutes.
The more I’ve learned about the world, the less certain I’ve become about anything.
This does not play nicely with our public sphere, which has become primarily a commercial space in which human beings are tolerated because we provide the eyes to absorb the ads.
Even if somebody is trying to generate an essay-like artifact with an AI assistant, they’re still going to wind up in the copy-writing space, as long as they let their LLM know that they were making a LinkedIn post.
I read an LI Note the other day that had all the hallmarks. It was long, it asked to be taken seriously… it had the pretence of being a major piece of thinking. But when I clicked through, I was presented with stilted, list-like writing, appropriately broken up SEO headers… something laid out like the structure of an argument but in its presentation I found myself skimming over what felt like one listicle after another.
I was even interested in the topic, but the soullessness of the presentation made me give up partway through.
And I’m left wondering… Are we writing for humans or for machines? I’m afraid I have to answer that for about the last ten years, we have been trained to write for machines, because if we write for humans, they will never see it. And oddly, now that we are getting machines to write for machines, the humans are starting to get miffy about the whole thing.
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1. I’m still not really sure how to use an em-dash, but I’m taking them back, by golly.
2. *looks it up* Oh, it’s just called the “Rule of Three.”
3. I can’t even write a good bad headline
Post script – also, writing is fun if you start out with a concept and develop it in your own mind as you puzzle through the words. Seriously. It’s *fun.*