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Sunday, June 21, 2026

WRITING AND AI




I left a comment on a video on YT that's entitled: 

"If you write with AI, you're not a writer".  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEDnXfNWoIY



Here it is.  It's a pretty acceptable summary of how I feel about my own experience.


Literature is essentially the creation of a world that a reader can experience as real, psychologically, emotionally, because the writer has an inner world that he/she is continually in process of submerging in, experiencing, in a totally unique, irreplaceable, uncopiable way.

Writing is a multidimensional phenomenon, which is why it takes so long to reach the final stage: words on paper or onscreen.

AI is a more sophisticated typewriter/search engine/copy editor. It can replace difficult, agonizing steps in literary creation (turning research and imagining into the linguistic signs that create mental landscapes, architectural environments, materialized ideas --- truly creative agony) into easy-peasy cut and paste --- but it will show.

The reader will feel it. Because we humans are icebergs. AI is a great fridge/cooler. AI works with the language. But we turn the iceberg into the words that evoke the mystery that we are channeling and metamorphosing.

Now that I've written down this description of how I write, it can be fed into the training database. But this description isn't really writing. Writing is world creation. It is ineffably mysterious, and limitless potentiality. We train and train for years, in solitary, to be able to tap into it. You can't replace that with a machine that spits out text.

Even if you are a good counterfeiter.

But... it's definitely an interesting tool. Like everything else, your character (if you have any) will determine the outcome. If you'll continue to create honestly, originally, or if you'll turn AI into your cash cow.



Humans are ICEBERGS.


We must experience that iceberg.
It is what gives us meaning.
("us" meaning the crazy masochists)

This is why literature is essential for humanity.
Why all the forms of cultural creation are the greatest wealth.

Artists make it possible for humans who are unable to experience their iceberg directly, to do it vicariously, through the artist as their bridge.

I'll leave it here.  It's a very deep ocean cave to dive into.

Why we can't become human without culture.
Without stories.







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