AI can do many things. But it won’t help you with this

As I write this, Microsoft’s Copilot is offering help. I just need to press the icon and it will help draft whatever I’m trying to say. It’s the AI equivalent of the same company’s dancing paperclip, that horror of the ’90s: “You look like you are trying to write a letter …”

Back then, I never used the paperclip. Right now, I never want to use Copilot.

The writing’s on the wall: AI is trying to deskill me, but I won’t let it. Credit: Getty Images

The world of artificial intelligence is trying to deskill me. That’s my sincere view. It’s trying to put me in a position in which I can no longer write something – a letter, an email, a report – without its help.

Writing is a muscle that needs to be worked on. Relying on AI to help you write is like tying your Fitbit to the dog. Your short-term results might be impressive, but there’s no future in it.

I’m sure there are things that can be achieved by AI programs such as ChatGPT. Some writing is so routine – receipts, bills, quotes – that it can be generated from plagiarising previous examples of the form.

Yet fans of AI misunderstand what most writing is about. The starting point of all AI assistants is that you already know what you want to say. “Write a letter to Qantas with the following details about our terrible flight and demand a refund while quoting appropriate Australian consumer law.”

In this supposed nirvana, AI writes your letter and Qantas’ own AI replies. You get a free pack of peanuts next time you fly, with both parties spending zero effort on the interchange. You could call it progress.

But in reality, effective communication usually involves something that’s personal, or odd, or eye-catching. It requires something that breaks with the conventional – which is a problem for AI, since “conventional” is the entirety of the beast.

A good message requires the human brain, plus time. We sit with a problem and start teasing at the edges of it, and then halfway through we have a sudden insight into what might make this email (or letter, or report) effective. We hadn’t thought of it when we first sat down, but we’ve thought of it now.

There’s a name for this process. It’s called writing.

Writing isn’t something that happens after you’ve had some time thinking. Writing is the process of thinking.

When novelists or great thinkers are interviewed, the question is often put: “Where do you get your ideas?” The expectation, I think, is that the answer will be “under the shower” or “walking along the beach”.

Perhaps that happens sometimes, but the more truthful answer is: “When writing. With bum in chair. When thinking hard about what I’m trying to say.”

One of the glories of writing – particularly by hand, but a keyboard also counts – is that your thoughts have time to catch up with your fingers. The mechanical effort of writing allows the brain the time to realise what it wants to say.

The full message is not there when you start – despite the sales pitch of Copilot, or ChatGPT or Microsoft Word, which now tries to complete my sentences in a way that would be frowned upon if it was a first date in a crowded bar.

Here’s a random example. You’ve ended your rental agreement and want the real estate agent to repay your bond. ChatGPT will certainly compose the email. In theory, you could instruct it to include some chatty detail.

My contention is this: it’s only when involved in the effort of writing the email that you remember that the real estate agent is, like you, a fan of the Penrith Panthers – you saw the poster in the office! – so you throw that detail into the email.

What do you know? They’ve decided to cut you some slack on the broken light in bedroom two. Could it be your nod to the Panthers? We’ll never know. But maybe it was because you were human. Because you noticed. Because you took the time to say. Because the real estate person is human too.

It’s a trivial example, I know, but don’t you think most human interaction depends on these tiny acts of courtesy? Moments in which we take the time to acknowledge each other, to see each other?

My email system – AI assisted – gives me a range of perky answers to any email that appears to demand a response. The choices are things like: “Thanks a lot. I’ll get right on to it” or “I’ll have it done ASAP”.

Should I just tick one of these approved replies, reassuring my Spectrum editor that I will have this column in on time, despite what was essentially the removal of my left leg (see last week’s column)?

Maybe I should – although I’d never use the term “ASAP”. But wouldn’t it be better if I composed my own reply and, while I was typing, gave my brain the time to remember that last week’s Spectrum cover was particularly spectacular and that Melanie should be told that all my friends noticed how good it was?

Here’s my point: writing is not something that happens after you’ve had some time thinking. Writing is the process of thinking.

And a world without writing can easily end up a world without thinking.

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