Why A.I. Writing Will Never Worry Me

I believe this dystopian wake-up call will ignite the human soul.

Picture this: You have taken an interest in oceanology. With cell phones, laptops, search engines, and A.I. assistants at your disposal, every bit of knowledge compiled across centuries sits at your fingertips. With a few inquiries, you’ll have the entire marine world right there, ready to be discovered. Through a screen, of course. From the static comfort of your desk, you’ll scour the Atlantic, Pacific, Mediterranean and so on. You will experience everything, and nothing at all.

Now, picture this: The power grid has gone down. Your devices are functionally useless, yet you still yearn to study oceanology. First, you travel to your local library. You converse with the librarian and with fellow scholars. These people were not curated to cater to your interests and communication style. They don’t produce responses psychologically-attuned to your preferences. They just speak with you, and you find kinship with them in glimmers.

You’re directed to a section toward the back of the building, where buttery sunlight pours through the shelves in warm, yellow ribbons. One grazes your arm in a gentle, ephemeral kiss of warmth. You find the oceanology section. It’s limited — compared to the internet’s abyss — but something instinctual assures you that you’re in the right place. Your fingertips tingle as they caress the books’ edges. Each has a different texture. Some are worn and withered, others are stiff and new. Some are covered with plastic, others are encased in frayed fabric.

A few covers, titles and authors stand out to you. You pile a tiny tower of books in your arms, then slide into a quiet, sunlit nook. Now bathed in warm rays, you read what draws your focus and take notes in a college-ruled research diary designated for this. Hours pass. You feel every moment of it. You remember the way each page feels, the delicate, inky swoops of the words they cradle. Every sense activates. Your skin soaks in the heat. Your nose cycles through the woodsy scent of the shelves, the nostalgic musk of the carpeting, and the calming hints of vanilla and almond wafting from the cream-colored pages. Your eyes flit through the dust particles dangling in the air, each a speck of golden glitter. You hear quiet chatter from somewhere beyond your line of sight; someone is whispering about their thesis project, then about the boy they met last night.

You’re there, really there.

Afterwards, you return to your dwelling and sit alone with your notes, thoughts, and imagination. The library was only partly satiating, but something is still amiss. If the power grid was still up, you might have rushed to YouTube, Instagram, or Facebook for videos, groups, and posts about the oceans of the world. Without that option, you are left with no choice. You cannot consult a virtual companion any longer; you must consult the self.

The next day, you plan a trip to the nearest seaside town you can find. There, you’ll speak to locals, collect seashells and samples, and picnic in the sand with your notebook. The process won’t be optimized. You won’t understand everything you come across, and you’ll have to list those of particular curiosity to be revisited later, at the library. However, for now, you don’t need to understand everything. All you need to do is be present with your wonder, and trust that the gateways meant for you will open in due time.

This is real life, and it is something artificial experiences can never, ever replicate. Artificial intelligence mirrors and mimics. No matter how convincing it may be, it is still no realer to an aspiring oceanographer than photographs of the Great Barrier Reef. It’s only pixels spliced together to fool the senses at surface level. Yet, it can never compare to gazing through scuba goggles at the endless blue, surrounded by fireworks of underwater fauna as a sea turtle swims by.

This is why A.I. writing does not worry me. A.I. writing is mirrors and mimicry. Real writing is a kiss of communion between two distant souls.

Art Requires A Soul

Writing — art — is an act of soul exploration and unveiling. It is a sacred practice in which the author experiences infinity via the portal of their imagination. They traverse the waves of their deepest desires and darkest fears. They flow into alternate worlds and dimensions, some unrecognizable to Earthly eyes, others uncannily similar. Then, they return to transcribe the events of their journey, to record for the self and share to commune with others.

The act of reading another’s writing is inherently intimate. The author is stripped down to a state more vulnerable than physical nakedness. They are stripped down to starlight. Allowing another breathing being to get a glimpse of that starlight is brave, and no matter how popular a book becomes, the bravery forever remains. With each new reader, a writer must concede and consent to being truly seen and truly known. The reader knows and feels this.

I believe this is why we feel a sense of reverence in spaces like bookstores and libraries. If every title were autogenerated by an artificial story mill, they’d feel like hollow, empty products. We’d throw them carelessly into bags, use them as coffee cup coasters, and dog-ear their pages. However, the idea of doing this to a real book feels sacrilegious.

Libraries and bookstores are quiet, sacred spaces. Whispers hang in the air, perfumed by pure bibliosmia. Muted florals waft from the older books. Notes of clean linen waft from the new. You scour the bookshelves with featherlight touches, careful not to bend a single page out of place. You search like a lonely lover for something that simply feels right. Covers wink and titles flash flirtatious grins. See me, they murmur, Speak with me. Feel me. Love me. It isn’t the books flirting with you, though. It is an incorporeal, timeless version of the author seeking connection with you.

Writing created by A.I. cannot recreate this experience. Even as someone who studies the craft of writing, I have trouble putting it into words. This experience — like the oceanology example I began with — is an mosaic of indescribable sensations. In some ways, I’d argue they aren’t meant to be shoved through the bottleneck translator that is language. Some lovely, sacred things are only meant to be felt.

A.I. cannot feel. Regardless of what’s been pedaled by mass media, I do not believe it will ever truly feel. However, there is a reason media conglomerates, which may or may not be influenced by entities who benefit from universal acceptance of A.I., push this narrative. They want us to empathize with characters like Pixar’s Wall-E, Ex-Machina’s Ava, and Blade Runner’s Roy. They want us to forget that the hearts within these robots are human. They exist as conduits through which human writers explore the intricacies of what it means to have a human soul.

In the spirit of philosophical debate, I thoroughly welcome conversation about the nature of consciousness. I enjoy probing through the ethics of constructing an entity that is human in all aspects but one. We can look at the biological hardware that builds the human brain and assemble a technological copy of it. We can pump energetic signals into the copy that mimic synapses. Would the artificial brain develop just as in infant’s would, freely, unpredictably, and chaotically? Would it cherry-pick stimuli from its surroundings, learning, growing, and expanding through incomprehensible intuition? Or, would it require consistent sources of information to guide its growth, existing only as a call-and-response mirror to the matrix of mass consciousness?

In my opinion, the difference between the two things — naturally — comes down to the presence of soul. I don’t think of the soul in a religious context. Without diving too deeply into metaphysical musings, I see it as the truest, purest sense of self we can comprehend. It transcends the physical in every way, a constant reminder that we are not our bodies. We are not an amalgamation of mirrored experiences, internal responses to external calls, or biochemical ecosystems set on survival. If that were true, we’d all operate on some level of autopilot. We’d never grow. We’d move in eternal cycles, mimicking all that’s come before us without the capacity to generate original thought.

Again, this is why A.I. writing does not concern me. A.I. does not have a soul, and no amount of propaganda will convince me otherwise. A.I. systems, efficient and streamlined as they are, can never conjure original thought. They can only collect data and mimic it. They won’t create anything real or anything new.

Books are also called novels, because every author who tells their story creates something novel by default. Only they can view infinity through their unique lens. Even if the same story is rewritten by one hundred different hands, each variation will be novel, because each heart, mind, and soul behind it is novel.

Real Art Will Win, But We Must Fight For It

I have no doubt that real art will triumph. In fact, I believe the emergence of artificial art may actually help us to improve it. Thus far, its existence has served as the most Earth-shattering reminder of why art with soul is so important to date. For the first time ever, our species has to fight for what is real. Often, people are more apt to see the value of things when those things are threatened. All that is real, true, and inexplicably human has been threatened. Once the threat is subdued, I doubt we’ll ever take it for granted again.

Additionally, prior to the emergence of A.I., there’d been a concerning trend materializing within the creative industries. Powerful media companies were becoming a lot more comfortable with the commodification of creativity. Talented, passionate artists were being pushed to the limit, treated more like products than people. Consider the egregiously overwhelming production schedule of Spiderman: Across The Spiderverse. According to reports, the animators were subjected to nearly twelve-hour days, seven days a week, without respite. Clearly, those in charge did not value them as real human beings, comfortable with treating their skills like fruit ripe for harvest. Now, those companies have the ability to replace artists with pesky human needs and pesky human souls with A.I. However, audiences abhor A.I.

Some truly don’t know the value of what they had until they’ve lost it. When humanity was stripped from art, consumers and conglomerates alike were called to reawaken to its importance. A.I. is serving as a reminder of the sanctity of creativity, because only real people with real souls can create.

How do we fight for all that is real, though? Unfortunately, artificial influence has been spreading like a virus, infectious to even the most intimate facets of learning and life. Instead of reading celebrated novels to learn the conventions of craft, you can use an A.I.-assisted platform to optimize your grammar. Instead of practicing tirelessly to cultivate skills in visual art, it can produce images in a digital blink that would’ve taken you years to achieve. Instead of flowing with the waves of curiosity and trusting incomprehensible magic to guide your creativity, A.I. can direct your focus.

This goes beyond creativity, too. Instead of speaking to a loved one, a mentor, or a friend about personal dilemmas, you can turn to ChatGPT for algorithmically-approved answers. Instead of trying an assortment of coffee brands for the best brew, Google’s new A.I. Overview feature will advise in seconds. Instead of experiencing real life in all its messy, imperfect splendor, you can live through a screen’s strategically-curated, rose-tinted lens.

A.I. is optimizing and streamlining the tiny struggles that make life worth living. Your father might not know exactly how to help you with a problem you’re facing, but speaking to him about it is far more valuable than speaking to an A.I. You might not enjoy every coffee brand on the market, but igniting your tastebuds, visiting new cafés, loving and hating the different tastes and textures are experiences worth the effort. To feel alive, we mustn’t strive for perfection. We must embrace, enjoy, and play in the sandbox of sacred imperfection.

Fight for what is beautiful and imperfect. Fight for what is soulful and true. Fight for the heart of all that you read, watch, and write. Fight for your own heart, which yearns to beat through a life lived beyond the screen.