Don't Let AI Write For You

The title and of this article is Don't Let AI Write For You, when its point seems to be closer to Don't Let AI Think For You (see "Thinking").

This distinction is important, because (1) writing is not the only way to faciliate thinking, and (2) writing is not neccessarily even the best way to facilitate thinking. It's definitely not the best way (a) for everyone, (b) in every situation.

Audio can be a great way to capture ideas and thought processes. Rod Serling wrote predominantly through dictation. Mark Twain wrote most of his of his autobiography by dictation. Mark Duplass on The Talking Draft Method (1m): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsV-3wel7k4

This can work especially well for people who are distracted by form and "writing correctly" too early in the process, for people who are intimidated by blank pages, for non-neurotypical people, etc. Self-recording is a great way to set all of those artifacts of the medium aside and capture what you want to say.

From there, you can (and should) leverage AI for transcripts, light transcript cleanups, grammar checks, etc.

Mark Duplass on The Talking Draft Method

YouTube

Writing is, however, a uniquely distinct and well-studied way to facilitate thinking.

I've definitely lost something since migrating my Artist's Way morning pages and to the netbook. (Worth it, though, to enable grep—and, now, RAG).