Hi everyone,
Since ChatGPT’s debut, one of the most common questions has been about which jobs AI will replace. While there’s been extensive and worthy discussion on this topic, I want to ask a different question: Which of our abilities will we lose to AI? Which abilities will we choose not to let AI replace?
“Writing”
“Good Writers” and “Non-Writers”
In Paul Graham’s latest blog post “Writers and Write-Nots“, he discusses why writing is irreplaceable and why he chooses to continue writing. Here are the main points:
Writing is difficult because clear writing represents clear thinking, and clear thinking is extremely challenging.
We can glimpse the difficulty of writing through numerous academic plagiarism cases. The plagiarized content is often not the challenging parts but rather the basic elements that require only fundamental skills. This reveals that these plagiarizing professors lack even basic writing abilities.
AI has broken down the walls of writing, instantly removing the pressure to write. This will divide the world into two types of people – “good writers” and “non-writers,” with no one in between.
Is this a good thing? Paul Graham thinks not.
If you’re thinking without writing, you only think you’re thinking.
In pre-industrial revolution times, people grew strong through physical labor. Now, people need to deliberately exercise to become strong – only those who choose to be strong become strong.
Only those who choose to write will become good writers; only those who choose to be smart will become smart.
Writing Is Communication with “People”
Writing always has clear purposes—whether to persuade, communicate, convey subtext, or invite others.
These “others” include colleagues, CEOs, clients, government agencies, family, friends, lovers, crushes, adversaries, and potential connections. Often, these roles overlap.
For example: Client = adversary, CEO = adversary, government agency = adversary, family = [fill in the blank] person.
Writing isn’t just about long articles, novels, or essays—it includes written and verbal communication, presentations, summaries, and messages.
While AI can handle all these tasks, it produces standardized messages. From my personal (unfortunate) experience, AI-generated messages fail to convey subtext. Subtext is built upon the recipient’s emotional quotient, MBTI, personality preferences (strengths or flaws), market conditions, stock or crypto prices, recent interactions with the CEO, company situation, and company priorities.
Personally crafted messages can truly incorporate what the other person is thinking recently, my objectives, what needs to be expressed, my goals, market conditions, company status, and our recent interactions.
We include this background information because we’re communicating with “people.”
People are complex, full of gray areas, often irrational, sometimes highly rational, and emotional. To successfully persuade, communicate, invite, or convey subtext, we need traditional handcrafted writing, not AI-generated messages.
Only through continuous writing can we improve our communication with people.
Writing isn’t just about the probability of word combinations; it’s about the person reading or listening to our writing.
“I don’t play the odds, I play the man.”