This is how I was taught to write up to highschool. Very “professional”, persuasive essays, arguing in favor of something or against it “objectively”. (Assignment seemed to dictate what side I could be on LOL.) Limit humor and “emotional speech.” Cardboard.
I was taken aback in my first political science course at the local community college, where I was instructed to convey my honest arguments about a book assignment on polarization in U.S politics. “Whether you think it’s fantastic or you think it sucks, just make a good case for your opinion.” Wait, what?! I get to write like a person?!
I was even more shocked when I got a high mark for reading the first few chapters, skimming the rest, and truthfully summarizing by saying it was plain that the author just kept repeating their main point for like 5 more chapters so they could publish a book, and it stopped being worth the time as that poor horse was already dead by the 3rd chapter.
It was when it hit me, that writing really was about communication, not just information.
I worry about that these days: That this realization won’t come to most, and they’ll use these Ai tools or be influenced by them to simply “convey information” that nobody wants to read, get their 85%, and breeze through the rest of their MBA, not caring about what any of this is actually for, or for what a beautiful miracle writing truly is to humanity.
That isn’t what I mean by cardboard. Persuasive, research, argumentative essays have been taught to be written the way tou described. They are meant to be that way. But even then, the essays I have read and graded still have this cardboard feel. I have read plenty of research essays where you can feel the emotion, you can surmise the position and most of all passion of the author. This passion and the delicate picking of words and phrases are not there. It is “averaged”.
I think we’re saying a similar thing, but I understand your point better.
I have read plenty of research essays where you can feel the emotion, you can surmise the position and most of all passion of the author.
Exactly! That’s what I mean. There’s so many subjects I expected to be incredibly dry, but the writing reminded me it was written by a person who obviously cares about other people reading the text. One can communicate any subject without giving up their soul.
(I am always surprised, but I find this in programming books often, haha.)
But that’s what I meant by cardboard as well, I think we might be in agreement:
We expect to see a lot more writing that comes across like “This is what writing should look like, right?”
Writing that understands words, and “averages” the most likely way to convey information or fill a requirement,
but doesn’t know how to wield language as an art to share ideas with another person.
the writing reminded me it was written by a person who obviously cares about other people reading the text.
This is what’s missing being discussed in nearly every online argument about AI art that I read online, there are rarely people who make the actual argument that the whole purpose of art and writing is to share an experience, to give someone else the experience that the author or artist is feeling.
Even if I look at a really bad poem or a terrible drawing, if the artist was really doing their best to share the image in their head or the feeling they were having when they wrote it, it will be 1000X more significant and poignant than a machine that crushes the efforts of thousands of people together and averages them out.
Sure there are billions of people who are content with looking at a cool image and think no deeper of it and are even annoyed at criticism of AI work, but on some level I think everyone prefers content made by another human trying to share something.
This is how I was taught to write up to highschool. Very “professional”, persuasive essays, arguing in favor of something or against it “objectively”. (Assignment seemed to dictate what side I could be on LOL.) Limit humor and “emotional speech.” Cardboard.
I was taken aback in my first political science course at the local community college, where I was instructed to convey my honest arguments about a book assignment on polarization in U.S politics. “Whether you think it’s fantastic or you think it sucks, just make a good case for your opinion.” Wait, what?! I get to write like a person?!
I was even more shocked when I got a high mark for reading the first few chapters, skimming the rest, and truthfully summarizing by saying it was plain that the author just kept repeating their main point for like 5 more chapters so they could publish a book, and it stopped being worth the time as that poor horse was already dead by the 3rd chapter.
It was when it hit me, that writing really was about communication, not just information.
I worry about that these days: That this realization won’t come to most, and they’ll use these Ai tools or be influenced by them to simply “convey information” that nobody wants to read, get their 85%, and breeze through the rest of their MBA, not caring about what any of this is actually for, or for what a beautiful miracle writing truly is to humanity.
That isn’t what I mean by cardboard. Persuasive, research, argumentative essays have been taught to be written the way tou described. They are meant to be that way. But even then, the essays I have read and graded still have this cardboard feel. I have read plenty of research essays where you can feel the emotion, you can surmise the position and most of all passion of the author. This passion and the delicate picking of words and phrases are not there. It is “averaged”.
I think we’re saying a similar thing, but I understand your point better.
Exactly! That’s what I mean. There’s so many subjects I expected to be incredibly dry, but the writing reminded me it was written by a person who obviously cares about other people reading the text. One can communicate any subject without giving up their soul.
(I am always surprised, but I find this in programming books often, haha.)
But that’s what I meant by cardboard as well, I think we might be in agreement:
We expect to see a lot more writing that comes across like “This is what writing should look like, right?”
Writing that understands words, and “averages” the most likely way to convey information or fill a requirement, but doesn’t know how to wield language as an art to share ideas with another person.
This is what’s missing being discussed in nearly every online argument about AI art that I read online, there are rarely people who make the actual argument that the whole purpose of art and writing is to share an experience, to give someone else the experience that the author or artist is feeling.
Even if I look at a really bad poem or a terrible drawing, if the artist was really doing their best to share the image in their head or the feeling they were having when they wrote it, it will be 1000X more significant and poignant than a machine that crushes the efforts of thousands of people together and averages them out.
Sure there are billions of people who are content with looking at a cool image and think no deeper of it and are even annoyed at criticism of AI work, but on some level I think everyone prefers content made by another human trying to share something.