Writing in The Age of AI

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Dear friends,

I have been silently asking myself why we write in the age of AI when the perfect answers are just a few prompts away.

Here’s what Perlexity said:

We write not to achieve mechanical perfection but to share our humanity, ideas, and creativity. AI can help polish and streamline our words, but the heart of writing remains a profoundly human endeavor.

AI is talking about the heart of writing. That’s profound!

When it comes to writing, I see it as a way for self-exploration and learning.

I am going inward. The answer I seek is not out there somewhere in the air. It is buried deep in my soul. I don’t expect an AI tool to help me get a better grasp of my role as a dad or why I exist in this universe at this particular moment in time. I have learned so much because I write to learn. The magic happens during the process.

Yet, what worries me is that we are starting to give AI a task it cannot fulfill. More so, I notice a pattern where people, including myself, are being so impatient with the process because the “perfect” answer is just a few clicks away.

The Cost of Seeking Perfection

The way we use AI these days has a close analogy to how we go to the doctors for their professional advice and diagnosis when we are sick. We are sick, and we visit the doctor. It’s that simple.

I am curious about what Istiaq, my favorite doctor, thinks. And my take is: No matter how good your doctor is, no one can heal you if you don’t heal yourself. A doctor can give you the best advice on the spot. But at the end of the day, we are responsible for our health once we step out of the clinic or hospital.

Today, we go to ChatGPT, Claude, and other AI tools for their perfect answers and unlimited processing power (if you have paid for the upgrades) when we are in doubt.

No matter how good these tools are, no one can replace your judgment. An AI tool can give you a perfect answer on the spot. But at the end of the day, we are responsible for our decisions in real life.

I am cautious about what these incredible technologies can or cannot do.

Yes, I would love an AI agent to help me sort my emails and even reply to a few of them. But no, I don’t want it to offer me advice on making the most rational and balanced decisions on how to optimize my life to perfection.

The Desire to Connect

The more I write, the more I think about the difference between solitude and loneliness.

One could argue that writing is a pretty lonely act. At this very moment, my wife is sitting behind me as I am writing these words to you alone. But I don’t feel lonely at all, even if I am alone with my own thoughts, typing these words into the computer. Because writing is my way to connect with you.

Loneliness is different. Loneliness is that bitter feeling when you don’t feel heard, loved, valued, seen, or connected. Studies show that young people today experience more intense loneliness than the generations before them. And why it is hard to understand the health impact of loneliness is because it is counterintuitive to what the modern world is telling us.

We are just a click away on WhatsApp from our family and friends. We can connect with others on social media whenever we want. Why don’t we feel more connected then?

One possible answer lies in our history. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors did everything in tribes. This makes sense in the prehistoric world.

Most solo wanderers were already dead in the world and you would have a much higher chance to survive in groups.

Imagine you were alone in the woods. Your heart would beat faster. You would be more alert. You were in constant lookout for predators.

Recent scientific reviews suggested that loneliness doesn’t only affect our emotions. Its influence causes inflammation with the potential impact on metabolism and brain functioning. This physiological effect explains the mechanism that helped us survive in the wild when we were alone and turned into hyperactive mode to increase our chance to reunite with our people and fight off danger.

And the paradox sets in. Our genes were not evolved for the modern world where people are more isolated than ever before.

Now, we can see how our friends are doing on Instagram at any given time. We can buy everything we need online. We can watch a Netflix series on our iPads. We can do everything by ourselves. We don’t even need to talk to another human being for a couple of days if it isn’t necessary. We have self-checkout kiosk, online delivery, and ChatGPT.

This fundamental shift in lifestyle over the past decade or so created a situation where we can easily live without connecting with other people. Technologies have solved all our problems. What used to be normal is no longer the default for our future generations.

Young people who grew up with their phones and AI have a very different take on what it means to connect with one another. From what I have seen among my younger colleagues who just graduated from college, the phone, the internet, and AI are not just a device or a tool to them, they are part of them, very much like the relationship between the iOS and the iPhone. They co-exist.

Why We Write

Let’s take a step back.

What if we got it all wrong?

What if the reason why people are having diabetes and keep eating unhealthy snacks and drinking Coke is not because they are not aware of their health, but because they are feeling lonely?

What if the reason why people are rushing to AI for the perfect answer is not because we have troubles answering these questions ourselves, but because we are feeling dissatisfaction to our identities to a point where we no longer trust our own judgments?

No amount of medicine can relieve your pain if you don’t want to feel healthy in the first place. No amount of prompt engineering can help you improve your relationship with the people you love if you don’t call or spend time with them.

Look around the next time when you are on the train or in a restaurant. How many of us are being trapped by our devices because of the unfulfilled need to connect and our inability to just be with our own thoughts?

Retreating to our phones, scrolling through social media, and watching another YouTube video is easy. It feels good, at least for a while.

Writing is much harder in comparison. But writing has a much stronger effect of kicking the confusion and loneliness out of our systems.

I am truly grateful to find my way to my soul through writing.

The Best Can Still Be Wrong

Sequoia, arguably the most legendary venture capital firm, opened an account on Substack about a year ago with their “AI-generated; human-steered” content about the latest technologies and their iconic investments.

Don’t get me wrong.

I admire Roelof Botha, Alfred Lin, Michael Moritz, and others who played a key role in driving our society forward. (Alfred Lin’s new blog is wonderful by the way.)

The one thing I can’t figure out is why they don’t write these insights themselves. I would argue that AI can’t write what they can, at least for now. Maybe they have a point to make here as people have underestimated the impact of most new technologies throughout history.

I subscribed to Inference and look forward to proving myself wrong. The perfect blog post written by AI might be exactly what my sluggish mind needs.

I love the concept of having a steady firmness of mind, or euthymia, as the Ancient Greeks called it. The Romans called it tranquility. In modern terms, we might call it a calm mind free from disturbance.

For us as writers in the age of AI, having a calm mind free from these powerful AI models will truly be a profoundly human endeavor.

Until next time.

- Franco