The future of writing -- for you and your kids

Something truly BUZZ-worthy

A ripple effect of today's AI that not enough folks are considering is how much we rely on writing, for better or worse, for assessment: well-written essays get you into college, well-written resumes get you jobs, well-written emails get you promoted, etc.

That signal is gone.

Ethan Molluck, A.I. thought leader and associate professor at the Wharton School of Business

If ChatGPT can write you anything, what’s the point of teaching the skill to our kids?

At the most basic level, we can compare it to the calculator. We still teach kids basic arithmetic even though their phone could tell them what 2x3 is. They need the basics to navigate everyday life. Similarly, basic writing skills aren’t going to be eliminated from any formal education.

But as kids grow and start to understand the power of the calculator, they do start to ask, “Why am I even learning this?” And it’s reasonable to expect the same question about writing.

Previously (currently?) writing in schools has focused on the mechanics: how to write well. But as soon as you get to the professional world, you’re faced with a different focus: why to write well..

Why to write at all.

Unpaid novelists have the luxury of focusing on the craft alone. Writing for writing’s sake. Beautiful prose. Getting your thoughts down on the page.

But everyone else? They write for a reason. Their “why” is the most important part. (But they won’t ever get to their “why” with a poorly done “how,” so those basics are still important.)

Professionals in any industry — corporate or nonprofit — are trying to accomplish a task with their writing: convince their reader to do something, to buy something, to change their mind. And A.I. can help them do that.

But before any of those tasks can be completed, the writer needs to get the reader to pay attention.

Like bees in a hive

Over the summer, The Atlantic interviewed ChatGPT’s creators. The broad-ranging, mind-bending article is called, “DOES SAM ALTMAN KNOW WHAT HE’S CREATING? The OpenAI CEO’s ambitious, ingenious, terrifying quest to create a new form of intelligence.”

It’s long and winding and too technical in some spots and thrilling in some spots and downright chilling in others.

But one single paragraph stood out to me and pops into my head on a daily basis as I scan the A.I. news.

“We’re not talking about GPT-4. We’re talking about an autonomous corporation,” Sutskever said. Its constituent AIs would work and communicate at high speed, like bees in a hive. A single such AI organization would be as powerful as 50 Apples or Googles, he mused.

Buzz about autonomous A.I. “agents,” or in this case bees, has been at a fever pitch lately, and it’s hard to imagine what they’ll really be like. What our world will really be like when we all have them.

But bees in a hive? We know what that looks like. We even know what that sounds like. We know the feeling we get when we come across it: a little scared and a little awed.

A.I. has never felt that.

The bees don’t need us

Let’s say a writer is trying to give its reader a bunch of facts and figures. Can an A.I. do that? Sure! Just upload the info you’d like to share.

But the writer needs to tell its readers why the info should be learned. Can an A.I. do that? Probably, given enough information.

But the reader needs to look at the piece in the first place. Can an A.I. get them to do that? Definitely. ChatGPT is great at creating headlines you can’t help but click.

But the reader needs to remember the information. Can an A.I. do that? Yep. Microsoft’s Copilot is available to enterprise clients now. It can read your email, figure out what info is needed to draft your response, go find that info in your older emails and files, and send it off.

Hmm. So, where do we come in?

Maybe we don’t.

In a situation like this — trading facts and figures that we don’t really need to touch, to remember, to feel — maybe we just don’t. Maybe it’s OK that my A.I. is talking to your A.I., and that’s all that needs to happen. Task: complete.

Honey, flowers, and life itself

When studying a hive, it’s easy to get lost in the workings of the bees. But stepping back, we remember why those bees are working so hard.

For the honey.

As writers, we need to step back and look at why we’re writing in the first place. If A.I.s are doing the busywork of writing to the other A.I.s to get specific things done, that leaves room for the humans to write to the humans about the bigger picture.

And when humans are writing for humans, we need story to make it stick.

We need to start — today — teaching our kids how to incorporate storytelling into their work. A.I. can do wonders with the inner workings of the hive, but only we can add color and life to the story through experience.

Add color and life to the story of the worker bees, and you get the flowers. While most people aren’t too interested in looking at bees for very long, the flowers they pollenate each spring? Paintings and poems and baby names are crafted around those!

The flowers blossom from the hard work of the bees and are the picture perfect symbol of the story of those busy bees.

But you can argue even the flowers aren’t really the point. Bees pollinate the food we need to live, and there’s nothing more big picture than that.

What if the most powerful piece of advice we give to our kids is to step even further back and take a look at how that hive contributes to life itself? How that dynamic, industrious little world (a business, perhaps) is a critical, but tiny piece of a larger puzzle.

What if we teach our kids to spend time doing things that interest them and then writing about that? If they grow up into a world where computers can write anything informational, the leg-up they have is in their ability to tell about their experiences.

Whether they become a lawyer arguing a case, an engineer explaining her ideas, or a straight-up business writer getting his boss’ message out into the world, the colorful, meaningful, authentically experiential story is what will stick. Just like honey.

Practical writing tips for today’s* A.I. world:

1. For writing that matters to machines, use A.I. for your first draft.
   It’ll save you time coming up with ideas and by creating an outline that works best for what you’re working on.
   
   For example, if you’re writing something for a website to increase your SEO, something like ChatGPT can help you get more bang for your buck.
   
   Tell it exactly what you’re writing, who you’re writing it for, and that you’re looking to increase SEO. Then, let it work its magic. Afterward, go in with a heavy editing pen and add your (or your organization’s) personality.
   

2. For writing that matters to other humans, use A.I. for your second draft.
   Don’t let the lure of the button distract you from the ideas you already have inside. Often, the act of writing lights a fire of ideas, not the other way around. So, don’t stomp them out before you begin by skipping that brainstorming-while-writing step.
   
   Once you’ve got your first draft and have organized your ideas, use A.I. to read it over, and let it know exactly what you’d like it to do: check for grammar, make it more concise, elaborate on a spot you find lacking, etc.

*Today is a key word here. This is advice for November 2023. Advances are happening too quickly to assume this will be the same advice next year, or even next month.