WHERE AI LEADS

To have a voice, you must write it yourself.

I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO SAY.

But that’s a lie, isn’t it? I have a lot to say. My trouble is that it’s been hard to discern what deserves my attention, lately. I misappropriate my focus time; I fixate on syllables. Easily an hour goes by while I carefully refine a single thought in 5-7-5.

I’m an interdisciplinary writer. An average workday begins by setting my indexes on [F] and [J]. My thumbs hover over [SPACE] while I internally-process. When I’m in the flow, my right hand leads – right thumb hits [SPACE], while the left hangs loose so that my leftmost finger’s free to [SHIFT] at any time. My hands are synaptically mapped to the QWERTY keyboard. All that said – I write all the time, so it’s sometimes hard to spot when I’m fighting writer’s block.

But I finally faced the wall of held-back ideas when recently, my husband offered a review of my then-latest haiku:

“I like it alright.”

Well it’s not finished, I qualified. Yuck. I felt called out. I then threw up my hands and attempted ESC before more discussion could take place –

Then we had a good talk, and it solved a lot.

What about all those topics I always talk about wanting to write about? I’ve considered one such issue since I wrote “FOR WRITERS” way back in 2023:

AI cannot write
BOLD TYPE like I do – it mimes
Generative pros(e)

There’s a lot I want to say. And I’m glad the person who knows me best is brave enough to point out that I sure have been writing a lot of haikus…

ChatGPT does not make writing easy; in fact, relying on it removes you from the writing process entirely.

The Writing Task

Plenty of people have asked me what I think about all this AI stuff. It’s not that I don’t have something to say, but I rarely say much. A thousand thoughts run through my head, but I hold back because I’m pretty sure most people aren’t asking for all of that.

But the question has been put to me in every one of my circles. Familiarity with the app that’s “#1 in Productivity | Utilities” varies. You might even be one of these who happen to like how ChatGPT makes emails and texts quick and easy. All you’ve got to do is tell it what you want to say, and the chatbot “spits it out” – this phrase is now common enough to make me frown. For a lot of people, this app’s output is good enough to copy, paste, and send.

Wow – the time (and thought) saved.

The real problem is that I hardly know where to begin. I tell myself, Next time I get asked, I should say back: You really want to know? So far I haven’t said that, but, I stand by the fact that I should. Because all of this is moving very fast – pressure mounts in my chest with every subvocal hot-take I suppress. If I don’t chime in soon, I’m afraid I’ll be too late.

The implication of phrases like “spits it out” is that the writing task takes too long – it asks more time than most people feel they have to spend. I honestly get it. Who isn’t worried about saying ‘the right thing’ – whatever that might be? After all, I’m an early ’90s Millennial, so obviously I’ve done my fair share of overthinking the length, tone, and candor of a text message, an email. I am a skilled communications professional, as well as creative, and so on occasions others have assumed the task of writing is somehow easier for me, and surmised that I must like performing the very same tasks which others dread – and I must be such a fast typer!

Here’s what I really think:

I am wary of ChatGPT (and the like). I think the choices I make – like whether to give my full-sentence best effort, or not – stack up. And besides, the app’s advertised claims fill me with indignation.

Writing Inspired

Believe it or not, I’m as qualified as anyone to tell you that you won’t find Inspiration on the Internet.

Every kind of artist knows what Inspiration is. We could all use It in a sentence; we could apply each of Its iterations and parts of speech. Every artist I know can recall a moment of It, and point to something they’d done in light of It.

The problem with AI-generated content in general is what it robs from, well, artists. I mean who can say whether the style of an AI-generated image qualifies as plagiarism? Isn’t it simpler to say that ChatGPT was inspired by a server-sourced blend of tastes, the artists unknown?

Admittedly, I’ve had limited talks with ChatGPT. I’m often asked if I’m offended that someone would turn to an AI rather than ask me to lend my skills, and the truth is… uh, no, I am not offended. I am deeply troubled. There seems to be this growing idea that ChatGPT and I effectively do the same job, and listen – that’s ludicrous.

I did an experiment a few months back – one of the limited, choice sessions I’ve had with ChatGPT – and was stunned by what I discovered. I entered a prompt, curious if this newfangled AI could serve as a tailored thesaurus. This was my prompt:

Can you find a word that describes: the feeling of mixed shame, defiance, and fun experienced by someone who laughs, despite themselves, in support of a bully’s antics?

Yeah, that’s perhaps an odd window into my writing process. I take to heart C.S. Lewis’ advice to ‘know the meaning of every word you write.’ I am often driven to look for exactly the word to meet the moment (because it’s motivation that leads to search, search that sometimes leads to inspiration). Suffice to say, ChatGPT made me mad right away:

There isn’t a single dictionary-defined word that perfectly encapsulates shame + defiance + fun in complicity with cruelty, but here are a few suggestions that come close, or that might inspire the coining of a new word:

[…]

I’m not going to share the list the app spit out. Most of the “coined blends” that ChatGPT provided were difficult to pronounce, being that they are not words that exist in the English language. I would have preferred that the app simply confirm that there was not “a single dictionary-defined word” that fit the rough definition I’d provided; instead, it made up words without my asking. This wouldn’t spark ire in most people, I know. But I have spent my life dedicated to English Language Arts. Our words have roots. They have history and contextual meaning. We have regional slang and dialects, even hyper-local terms (see: cricker) that groups of people have collectively defined and adopted over generations. I am deeply troubled by a language model’s supposing that its amalgamated “invention” would impress me more than an existing English phrase I was hunting for:

“Complicit glee.”

It is better to be like Shakespeare – make up words! I’m sure you’ll have reason and purpose for it. But keep your reason. Do not let AI trivialize our language and undermine our literacy.

I mean that. I fear a world that can no longer read or write. The obstacles to community and connection are already so imposing. If we shrug and say that ChatGPT’s stolen styles of writing, music, and illustration are “good enough,” we’ll lose the abilities we’ve honed over lifetimes, skills of craft that at their roots help us relate to one another.

Interconnectedness

I don’t want to live in an echo-chamber. Doesn’t it seem like all our online spaces are morphing into that kind of thing? The algorithms that run our feeds are incessantly serving up the same old stuff that’s engaged us before; I see less from my friends and more and more ads and promotions for things clearly pulled from my search history on other applications.

My main battle these days is with impulse control. My thumbs hover over apps, and my muscle memory commands me *tap* — Now I’ve got sore knuckles and wrists, since I picked up this bad habit of holding tension.

I’m a writer. My hands do important work.

Besides, I know what I’ll see if I *tap* — All my feeds are seeded with tragic eyes and twisted frowns… how do mouths even say so many things in the turned-down position? There’s always a fresh WARNING, or new ‘SCATHING’ reporting. If I choose to tune out for a day or two, I’m sure to miss something BREAKING, and I fall behind in the conversation when I’m not up on the LATEST. Yes, I care deeply about what’s happening, and I’ve been held captive by my own writer’s block.

It stems from rejection-sensitivity. I don’t want to say the wrong thing; I don’t want to engage the bots or human trolls in the comments. But these are not good reasons to bury my wealth of thoughts in syllabic lines; they are certainly not reasons not to write. This piece was hard to draft, at first, because I’m out of practice. I’m not done writing haikus (I may never be), but I can’t keep downing them like energy bars so that I feel productive. I have more to say than can be said in three lines.

More another day; for now, this:

Practice. Even mastered skills can fade. It’s easy to fall out of touch, and I don’t want that for you. I want to know what you think. ChatGPT can’t do what you and I do. With the exception of quoted sections, this content is completely AI-free.

I wrote this for you,
hoping it might make you think…
And maybe it did ~

09-01-2025
@bykaileyann