Here’s why you should work on your writing even if AI may end up writing better than you.
TL;DR:
- Practicing the craft of writing has a lot of benefits, even if AI can write incredibly fast and well, its a craft worth practicing and perfecting
- Writing can help you clarify your thinking
- Writing can help you gain a deeper understanding of subjects
- Writing can help you improve your communications
There’s been a lot of talk recently about how AI is going to usher in the end of writing.
Have an essay to write?
Just ask chatgpt to write it for you.
Need to create a landing page?
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Need to write an email to send to your boss?
ChatGPT’s got you covered.
No more sitting and staring at a blank document trying to figure out what words to string together. With AI, you don’t even have to think anymore - and that’s the problem.
Sure, AI right now isn’t at the level where you’d want to use it to submit your assignments, but lets assume it continues to get better and eventually the writing that is produced is better than most humans.
Even in this case, its important for us to develop the skill of writing, and here’s why…
Clarify Your Thinking
The historian and author, David McCullough famously said:
“Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That’s why its so hard.”
This quote encapsulates why its important to keep writing in the age of AI. The more we practice the craft of writing, of turning our thoughts and ideas into words, the better we get at thinking.
Jeff Bezos famously instituted a no-PowerPoint rule at Amazon, opting instead for a 6-page narrative document as what you have to submit when presenting an idea, asking for funds, or planning out your team goals for the year.
Why?
Because writing forces you to cover all the points clearly in a structured manner. In a presentation the presenter could be very good and gloss over some of the finer details that would lead to a good decision. In writing, everything is there and you can’t really gloss over details.
This leads to better decision making as a whole - at least that’s what they believe at Amazon.
In a world where AI is running everything, who are the people that are in control? The ones that have the ability to think and make the best decisions about how to harness the power of AI, not the ones that are so dependent on AI that they can’t even formulate a coherent paragraph without AI generating it for them.
Depth of Understanding
Another benefit that comes with writing is that it forces you to go deep. A lot of times I thought I had a pretty good understanding of a concept, I’ll even have conversations with others about it, but when I sit down to explain it in writing I can see the gaps in my knowledge. It forces me to ask questions and do research to fill those gaps so that my writing is actually informative and good. In the process of creating a good piece of writing, you often have to elevate your own intellectual horizons and understandings of concepts to get there.
You may be wondering, how does this help with AI? If I can just ask AI any questions I have, why do I need a deeper understanding of subjects?
This comes back to the concept we discussed prior. If you want to truly harness the power of AI to do something different, you have to have a deeper understanding than the rest of the people using the same tools. Your understanding of the subject you’re using AI for will allow you to create something unique while everyone else is getting the same generic output.
Improve Your Communication
By getting better at writing, you actually improve your communication in other aspects as well. Of course you’ll get better at written communication, that’s what this is about in the first place.
Here are some obvious ways your communication will improve:
- writing a vision document to align your team on goals
- Presenting ideas to others via email, document, etc
- Writing scripts for videos or speeches
- Sharing your thoughts and ideas over text
But written communication isn’t the only thing that benefits. Since writing leads to clearer thinking, your verbal communication will likely also see lift due to clearer thinking. You may not be the most articulate when you speak on the fly, but you’ll have a clear train of thought that people can follow easily and not get confused.