I’ve watched the advance of AI technologies with a mix of admiration, skepticism, hope, and frustration. As a writer, I battled spell- and grammar-check. After years of writing bad prose, studying the craft, immersing myself in classics of the trade, including Strunk & White (The Elements of Style), Harry Shaw (Punctuate it Right) and William Safire (Fumble Rules), I learned what it meant to write in my voice. Pacing matters. Colloquialisms matter. Bending accepted rules matter. None are allowed in the world of cyber spell- and grammar-check tsars.

Predictive AI feels a lot the same to me. While it is useful—truly!—to get thoughts started, frame documents, and even lay down preliminary specifics of estimates, speeches, contracts and the like, my worry is that with such ease the human mind will find its way to perpetual vacation.

As in: AI will do a better job than I can. As in: I’m just not feeling this right now, so what AI can do will be far better than what I might come up with. As in: writer’s block is my bane at the moment, so AI can keep this moving forward.

All true! All siren songs.

I love predictive AI (ChatGPT) as a thought starter and a framework provider. I don’t love it as a thought ender and an arbiter of correctness.

I also don’t love it because it reminds me of friends I had in high school and college who found ways to ditch their work, have a blast being “free,” and ultimately compromised their intellectual and emotional growth.

Yeah, I know that sounds judgmental. Some of them are way wealthier than I am and have far more assets. But I wonder how much they conceded along the way. The human spirit is pretty feisty. When it is squelched, it tends to rebel.

That’s my worry with AI. Let’s use it where it stimulates and resist it where it suppresses the best of our humanity.