— Writing is about choice, but using ChatGPT to write involves few choices. Will it ruin writing?
Choosing the right words involves thousands of conscious and unconscious decisions.
Each decision is shaped by an infinite personal framework of knowledge, thought, and experience, continually tested and refined to ensure the words we choose marry with their intended meaning.
Using ChatGPT to write involves few choices – perhaps only the words used to type a prompt. That’s it – AI does the rest, using prediction to find words that you’ve thought next to nothing about.
When the process of writing has been effectively dehumanised like this, anything you ‘write’ treats readers less than who they are – humans; seekers of meaning and learning.
You might be OK with that, but what about your readers?
When intended meaning is left to a machine you run the risk of sounding bland and disconnected.
That’s fatal, because readers who sense a missing human connection to the words are unlikely to accept your message.
Competition for attention is fierce. Words are your weapons.
Don’t leave your best shot to machine generated text.
Write human for humans.