I have been inspired to write again by AI. By bad AI writing, to be exact. You know the sort. I don’t even need to elaborate at this stage.
I’m by no means anti-AI. I use it constantly at work. It has transformed what I am capable of getting done as a software developer. I’m not anti-AI; I am pro-human.
I like people and I’m interested in their ideas. For that reason I really hate AI writing. I hate to read an article or social media post and be left with no idea about whether the author actually shared an idea of their own. Maybe the article did start with their own idea which they fed to the AI to “make it sound good”. But on the other hand maybe they just prompted the AI to “write me a blog post about something that will get engagement”. I have no idea either way.
I don’t care if you are crap at writing. I’d rather read clumsy-but-authentic than slop any day of the week. It might be crap but it is our crap.
When I was younger I read the Chicago Manual of Style and from that I learned about correct usage of semicolons, em dashes and so on. Who knew that the entire field of punctuation would be completely poisoned and devalued by AI?
I do make an exception for what I’d term “functional” writing. A changelog, release notes, product description copy. Stuff that is mainly conveying some factual information. That’s fine, but is also always better if you tell the AI to not make it sound like AI.
Anyway, this is just a long-winded way to say that I intend to do more writing after a four year hiatus. I have some thoughts from time to time, and I intend to record some of them here.