AI is a Tool, But Not for Writing

Here’s how I feel about AI as a tool. The keyword is “tool.” Think about your dishwasher, for example, and what it does for you. Many of us have dishwashers in our kitchens. We rinse our dishes after we eat, place them in the dishwasher, add soap, and run a load with the press of a button while we move on to something we would rather be doing. The idea is for that dishwasher to save us time and labor by automating some of our more mundane household chores so we can spend more time doing the more enjoyable, meaningful things.

For the most part, the dishwasher does its job. Yes, we must rinse and sometimes pre-scrub to avoid stuck on cheese or spaghetti sauce stains. Yes, we must check the dishes before we put them away, lest something still dirty find its way into the cabinet. There are also some pieces that are so valuable and fragile that I don’t trust them in the dishwasher. Those I wash by hand. But, by and large, the dishwasher minimizes some drudgery so we can relax after a meal. The dishwasher is a tool, and a valuable one.

Consider this. Would we want the dishwasher to eat our meal for us, enjoy the flavors and sensations of our food, chat with our family and debrief about our day? This is the important part, the living (though Thich Nacht Hahn would argue that even washing dishes is important to being in the moment). We wouldn’t want our kitchen appliances to take away this part of our lives.

Would we want our dishwasher to make decisions about which pieces are sturdy enough for the dishwasher? Or would we blindly trust that our dishes are clean after a run through? Would we eat off those dishes and insist they are clean even though our eyes tell us differently?

And herein lies the problem with AI for creative use. Creativity is the essence of humanity. Why would we want to hand that over to a machine? What are we preserving or accumulating or building, if AI does our living for us?

When I was asked to catalogue the books in my classroom, I took another teacher’s advice and uploaded photos of my bookshelves into an AI program, asking the program to create a spreadsheet of the titles. It did, and it saved me quite a bit of time. Creating that spreadsheet was something I was willing to entrust to a computer, and it was easy enough to entrust. The list of books was the list of books, no more and no less.

Writing? That’s something different. The creative work is mine and mine alone. AI registers you as an algorithm. I see myself as a voice. Collaboration with a real human is a very different, and very valuable, thing.

What can Whisper Lake Writing do for you that AI can’t? I can preserve the integrity of your voice, your humanity. I can help you refine your writing without sacrificing your creativity. I will not blindly encourage you even if you are headed astray. I will communicate with you, a real give and take. I will listen and hear you. I will understand and ask questions, not just as a means to an end but as a real conversation.

Human to human, I’ve got you.