I was thinking about this AI writing thing, where there is so much concern about students cheating, and now I am suffering from memories.

Laughing at a memory of sitting along the wall in my college’s typing pool room off the side of the library, waiting for a typewriter to free up, and listening to this one fellow who always vocalized his writing. It astonished me how confident he was to loudly project what he was writing emotionally as he wrote it… in a crowded room. Confident or crazy, either way I thought it was awesome.

I still write my first drafts on paper. Way back when, the first three drafts were pen on paper and the fourth typed out (on paper). Second drafts were always completely different from the first. I basically rewrote the entire thing. It was never necessarily from scratch, as the first draft was fresh in mind, but it was always completely different. The third draft had many spelling and grammar errors and plenty of stylistic issues to iron out. And the fourth draft required just a few small fixes on the fly, or I had to use the dreaded whiteout and try to line up the type stroke to hit the right spot again.

Since then I have evolved. I still write the first draft on paper, but I type the second draft into the computer. The second draft is still, and probably always will be, completely different from the first. It is my opinion that this is why people have such a hard time writing these days. They type their first draft into a computer and then try to massage it into shape without allowing any major overhauls. That would drive me nuts.

In the end, I think the AI writing will be just like calculators. For the average person, knowing enough math to properly work a calculator is good enough. For the average person, knowing how to get the AI to write what they need and to be able to judge that the AI produced something adequate will be good enough. But a calculator will never be good enough for those who value the process of math, and AI will never be good enough for we who value the process of writing.