Contentions: The editing opportunity

With more people interested in writing with A.I. and A.I. word processing software, there’s probably going to be even more words floating around online.

While it solves the problem of actually putting words on the screen—an A.I. can spit out hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of words in a second—some really important problems still remain:

The words might not actually make sense.

The words might not convey what you’re actually trying to say.

You don’t even know what you’re trying to say, because you didn’t write it—the A.I. did. You can use it as a starting point to reflect (“Oh, this isn’t what I meant to say!”), but it wouldn’t be wise to use it as a generative point (“Hm, what do I want to say today?”).

You also miss out on a chance to think new thoughts; after all, writing is thinking.

The words might not be original. You may unintentionally plagiarize. 

The words need to be fact checked, verified, and edited for actual humans to read.

All of this means what used to be difficult for many people—getting words down on the page—will be much easier now, and the difficult part will be actually making these words say what you want to say. 

In other words, the constraint is no longer writing; it’s in editing, revising, and rewriting.

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