I wrote most of my book years ago, so this is the first time I’ve actually run it through AI to get some feedback on structure, redundancies to trim, and grammar problems. It’s valuable, but it’s also leaving me with doubt that I didn’t have before.
Let’s say I let AI come up with a bridge paragraph that helps tie something together. Just a few sentences. Is it still my work? Am I contributing in a small way to the slop of the web?
For a blog post, this wouldn’t bother me. There is something about a “book” that gives me pause, even though it’s 50k of my own words. The tiny part that AI helped with would barely register.
I expect artists will go through the same dilemma. Art that is 95% human, 5% robot. Or podcasters that let AI edit each episode. You might think editing doesn’t matter, but there is a craft to it and how it shapes the pacing of a show.
This balance of how much of creative work we give up will be different for everyone. There will be purists for which nothing short of 100% human will be acceptable. I get that, and perhaps for some things I agree. For programming, I would go in the opposite direction, fine if AI writes more and more code.
Books and blogs are different than programming for me. I want the human voice. When I read other people’s blogs, I want to feel a connection to the authors. I want my own book to be genuine, and I think it is, even if there are bits here and there where a robot pointed me in the right direction.
