Essay 1 Draft

AI in Writing: Striking a Balance

In our study of AI, one idea we’ve heard many times surrounds the need to dive into AI research because AI is the future of our society and will eventually replace a lot of the menial tasks that people have to do now. However, while AI offers numerous efficiencies for businesses, its increasing use threatens to undermine the credibility and connection between authors and their audiences.

In some cases, people argue that AI will open a whole new world of possibility for jobs that can be done. In the words of Kyle Chayka, “It’s not hard to imagine a future in which every white-collar worker is equipped with such writing robots” (Chayaka 3). Writer, the AI chatbot used in the article is a company which targets itself to other businesses, allowing them to “automate” the process of writing. Chayka’s ideas about the streamlining of the business world has resonated with many people who embrace it in their everyday lives. In my own experiences, I have encountered many organizations and people who are very willing to use AI at the expense of actually good descriptions and papers (Chayaka). As people have shifted towards a more positive stance on AI, big tech has responded by pouring billions of dollars into AI research and integration into already popular platforms. Instagram and Facebook have “Meta AI” which does anything and everything for the user, including the generation of AI images. OpenAI has accelerated the production of new ChatGPT features (Field). All signify examples of big tech responding to the increasing positivity of their new platforms, and viewing the new markets as profitable.

While I wrote this essay, Matthew Kirschenbaum’s arguments in AI Is Ushering in a Textpocalypse stood out to me. The idea of online text becoming meaningless seems all-too achievable; a scary subject knowing a great number of people rely on social media or online news sites to receive updates on current events. He discusses the idea that “you may not always be able to presume human authorship behind whatever it is that you are reading” (Kirschenbaum 2). The ideas presented here are fundamentally key because they destroy what is, in my opinion, the underlying foundation of our society as a whole. There exists an ethos (trust) in everything published, from social media posts to academic writing. As a reader, I would want to know where an author gets ideas. If the reality Kirschenbaum talks about becomes true, I do not think I would be able to trust the newsletter I get from my local newspaper the same way I do now. I trust local authors who understand my community. AI destroys that trust as it does not understand the context of life. It only has the limited description the user provides and the billions of words off of the internet. The machine cannot create the same trust and meaning a true writer is able to.

All of this is not to say AI has no foreseeable place in the future, it inevitably does. It is a concept I think many writers against AI frequently miss, including Kirschenbaum. We have to understand that AI isn’t going anywhere, even with its downsides. AI has ingrained itself into our culture, used to do everything from menial blurbs on the internet to real-life academic studies. While I, at the current moment, do not see a perfectly defined role of the technology, I understand the technology will be used for a niche specifically carved out for it.

Defenders of absolute AI use are contradicted by the simple idea of ethos. I, like most people, rely on the credibility and context of the person who writes what I am reading. AI, in my view, destroys a great deal of that credibility of the author. Even minute changes in the wording of a sentence alters the overall message and connection every reader has with the author. Chayaka sees AI as dominating industry, which I say will destroy the connection between companies and their buyers as well as companies and their employees. If we, as a society, allow ChatGPT and other LLMs to dominate our writing, then we allow them to dominate our understanding of the world and its happenings. Regulation, in my view, is key. We need to define our use of the technology in order to prevent the endless spam talked about in Textapokalypse. Regulation is able to protect the ethos of every author.

What makes the conversation surrounding AI so complicated is the need to balance perspectives like Chayaka, Kirschenbaum, and my own in this regulation. There exists such a broad spectrum of opinion because it is a topic that will have a great impact on modern society. On one hand, if we do end up in a state where every white-collar worker uses AI, then AI writing will be a big part of everyday life for everyone and we will end up in a textapokalypse, losing the connection between author and reader. On the other hand, if we neglect the technology, we waste a great opportunity to make everybody’s life easier. Striking a balance is key to protecting the credibility of our writers in a way that is efficient and productive.

Honor Pledge TH

Works Cited

Chayka, Kyle. “My A.I. Writing Robot.” The New Yorker, 11 July 2023, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/my-ai-writing-robot. Accessed 14 September 2024.

Field, Hayden, and MacKenzie Sigalos. “AI craze getting funded by tech giants, distorting traditional VCs.” CNBC, 6 September 2024, https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/06/ai-craze-getting-funded-by-tech-giants-distorting-traditional-vcs.html. Accessed 19 September 2024.

Graff, Gerald, and Cathy Birkenstein. They Say/I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing. W.W. Norton & Company, 2010.

Kirschenbaum, Matthew. “AI Is Ushering in a Textpocalypse.” The Atlantic, 8 March 2023, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/03/ai-chatgpt-writing-language-models/673318/. Accessed 14 September 2024.

Revised 9/24