Don’t give up your writing skill
By getting AI to write ‘for’ you, you risk losing the ability to write – and think – for yourself.
We hear a lot about how important it is to gain new skills in AI. Learn the new technology. Get up to speed. Don’t be left behind.
But what about the skills you lose by doing so?
The real threat isn’t that AI will steal your skills, but that you will give them up – with your eyes wide open.
The most obvious one is writing. When you use AI to generate text, what you are doing is not writing in any meaningful sense. It is ChatGPT, not you, that is choosing and arranging the words.
Maybe you choose to ‘humanise’ (ugh) AI content, clinging to a shred of agency and control. But that’s editing, at best. You’re reviewing, not creating. You’ve become a backseat driver in your own car.
Unused skills wither and decay. The more you use AI, the more your writing muscles will atrophy. Far from making you a better writer, AI will actively make you worse. And the further you go down this road, the harder it will be to come back.
On top of that, you sacrifice the thinking that writing requires. Putting thoughts on the page is demanding but edifying work. It strengthens ideas, refines beliefs, interrogates assumptions. In the end, it makes *everything* clear – not just for your reader, but for yourself.
Over time, your writing tracks the evolution of your thoughts. Embarrassed by that post you wrote five years ago? Congratulations. That’s a measure of how far you’ve come.
The choice not to use AI is generally framed as a negative. It’s considered a vice rather than a virtue. Not using AI? You must be fearful, stubborn, Luddite, in denial or maybe just too old to learn.
Instead, we should think of this ‘refusal’ as a positive choice. It’s a choice to preserve and hone your writing skills. To retain the ability to think for yourself. And to safeguard your unique sensibility and writing voice.
You’re not rejecting AI; you’re choosing to stay human.