To Write or Not to Write, Right?

By Brian Crawford

What is the point of writing? 

With the explosion of ChatGPT last December, this question has been bouncing around the web. In his recent article in The Atlantic, Daniel Herman, an English teacher, ponders the question. If an AI-fueled tool can produce writing that is fluent and cogent, should we even be teaching students to write? When, he muses, do we actually write in the “real world,” and why can’t we use AI to get the job done–especially if the AI produces content that communicates what needs to be communicated?

Good questions. 

As a writing teacher, I’ve been following the buzz around AI, and I too have been musing upon its ramifications. Part of me is immediately unconcerned; people are just panicking at a new technology, something Douglas Adams was on to when he wrote,  “Anything that's invented between when you're fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.” And let us not forget that Socrates thought that books would destroy our minds. After all, with books, why would we need to remember anything? Right?

If the goal of writing is solely to communicate ideas effectively, then I’d be inclined to agree with Mr. Herman’s musings. Why learn to build a car when you can buy one already made? 

As it turns out, communication is not the sole purpose; writing does so much more. And it does things AI will never be able to do. 

Such as?

Teaching us to think:

Laying out your ideas in a clear manner requires you first to clear up your own mind. Why do I think that? How do I know what I know?

If I’m going to communicate an idea to you, I need to clarify it in my own mind first; otherwise how can I possibly get you to see what I see? Doing this requires me to interrogate the evidence behind my idea, the biases that fuel my idea, the flaws and weaknesses of my idea, the relevance of my idea (to you and me), what seemingly related ideas are irrelevant to the point I’m trying to make, and the hidden assumptions and fallacies that might make me think my idea is good, when in fact it is built on shaky ground. In doing all of this, I clarify my own thinking and declutter my mind. I learn to articulate to myself: This is why I think what I think.

AI can’t do that for me.

Growing Our Empathy:

Research shows that, the more you read fiction, the greater your ability to feel empathy. Why? When you read fiction (though the same could apply to any narrative–say, memoir–that centers around a main person), you must become another person for a while, as you navigate the story by proxy. You see what the character sees, you hear what they hear, smell what they smell, feel what they feel. In effect, you must leave your own mind to inhabit someone else’s. This is the very definition of empathy: you feel what someone else feels. Cultivating empathy is a hallmark of social-emotional learning.

The same applies to writing. To be an effective writer, you must get out of your own mind and see your topic from the perspective of someone who is not you: the reader. What do they know that you don’t? What do you know that they don’t? How might your topic confuse them? Anger them? Delight them? What about your topic will make them want to quit reading? Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker has attributed ineffective writing to the curse of knowledge, which is basically caused by our not seeing things from another’s perspective. By getting out of your own head and into the head of your prospective reader, you are practicing empathy. And the more you engage in this reader-centric writing (when you write for the reader, not yourself), the more your empathy grows.

AI can’t do that for you. 

Giving Your Communication Purpose:

I’ll be the first to admit: I talk too much. Loquacious, I like to say.

Knowing this, I have been working on decreasing the amount of my talking and increasing the amount of my listening. Over the past five years or so, I have asked myself more and more before speaking, “Why am I saying this? Is it to make another person feel good? Is it to make me look good? Is it to get someone to laugh? Is it to navigate social spaces and establish my place in a group? Is it to show someone that I am listening?” Way back when, Aristotle spoke of telos–our purpose in doing something. Whenever we do anything, we should first ask ourselves: why are we doing this? Knowing why can clarify give your actions more meaning, because the “why” becomes the goal for you to reach for. Same goes for communication: Why am I saying/writing/texting/posting the thing I want to say/write/text/post? By clarifying our why, our what becomes clearer. If my goal in writing is to show you how to use literary devices to support your story,  for example, then I can remove anything that does not directly relate to that topic. I separate the wheat from the chaff. And the more I do this, the better I get at identifying what is relevant to a situation, and what is not. While I am still working on my former high-school teachers’ comments to “rein in the side chatter,” I have found myself speaking less and less in some situations, because I have been doing a better job of identifying why I wanted to say the thing I was going to say in the first place. Seeing that my telos was out of alignment with the situation, I have stepped back more and more. The more I practice this, the better I will continue to get at keeping my thoughts relevant and to the point and, more importantly, to make space for other people.

AI can’t teach me that. 

I could go on. Yes, we need to communicate in writing, in ways many students may not have yet fathomed: cover letters, evaluations, grant requests, product reports, press releases, legal communications, work presentation scripts, social media posts, work proposals, sabbatical requests, work emails, guidelines for conduct, employee manuals and revisions, and yes, stories, poems, novels, memoirs, autobiographies, histories, and scientific and academic papers. Good writing skills are not only invaluable to your social-emotional growth; they are invaluable to your professional life. Yes, because we can communicate effectively. But also–and perhaps more importantly–because becoming a good writer goes hand-in-hand with becoming a clear and empathetic thinker who prioritizes connecting with others over just making themselves heard.

AI can’t teach us that.