I’m not sure how this little essay, entitled Writes and Write-Nots, landed in my feed, but it includes some wonderful thoughts on writing.
Starting with this prediction.
I’m usually reluctant to make predictions about technology, but I feel fairly confident about this one: in a couple decades there won’t be many people who can write.
Not sure that’s a “technology” prophesy, but it’s probably accurate. And he’s also correct about why.
The reason so many people have trouble writing is that it’s fundamentally difficult. To write well you have to think clearly, and thinking clearly is hard.
Despite the fact that many current jobs require some level of writing, will that always be the case? After all, won’t we have AI bots in the near future who can do much of that work for us?
Writing might be one of those human skills that are eventually made obsolete by technology. Is that so bad?
Yes, it’s bad. The reason is something I mentioned earlier: writing is thinking. In fact there’s a kind of thinking that can only be done by writing. You can’t make this point better than Leslie Lamport did:
If you’re thinking without writing, you only think you’re thinking.
So a world divided into writes and write-nots is more dangerous than it sounds. It will be a world of thinks and think-nots. I know which half I want to be in, and I bet you do too.
Writing does require thinking. Like any other skill, doing it well is a difficult process. I’m not convinced AI will change that any time soon.
For the first half of my career, teaching math to middle and high school students, I didn’t have much need to do the kind of “thinking” writing discussed here.
I only started to take writing seriously relatively late in life, in the mid-90’s when I both started working with adults and producing for the web. If I was just starting today, I wonder what level of writing skills I would need.
Anyway, take a couple of minutes and read the whole essay.
Most of the results from a Google image search for “writing” were of people writing longhand, many with fountain pens.
While I agree with the author’s comments about the link between thinking and writing (“I don’t know what I think until I write it down.”? Joan Didion), he fails to address the fact that there are many types of writing: expositiory, narrative, poetry, technical, etc.) While some types (technical, perhaps) might be best done by AI, I think it unlikely a great novel or moving poem or insightful autobiography will be a part of the future.
This reply was written by my electric toothbrush so I didn’t have to think too hard about the topic.
I wonder if AI can even do a good job with technical writing, at least in the near term. Having done a lot of it during my career, I know it’s tricky genre since the end result is often used by users who are unfamiliar with the technology. I’ve also read too many poor examples, ostensibly written by humans. If they’re using that stuff to train AI, technical writers can rest easy. :)
I’ve always thought a lot of technical writing (instructions for device usage, for example) was done by non-native English speakers. Do AI bots consider English as their first language? Hmmmmm…