A Plea to You: Don’t Write with the Help of AI
The New York Times
Columnist and foreign policy, domestic politics and cultural expert Brett Stephens has expressed extreme concern about the use of artificial intelligence, or AI, in everyday life. Here’s what he wrote about AI in The New York Times:
Next time you feel like using an automated reply to a text message or email, don’t do it. Write your own reply. Think of it as an expression of your free will, or a vote against Trump. The extra few moments it takes to write your own reply can also be an act of resistance against this increasingly intellectually degenerating world. This column is not an argument, but a plea: Don’t use artificial intelligence to write for you. Don’t use it for your school essays, work reports, letters to in-laws, speeches at events, or even simple emails to colleagues and friends. Never use AI to write your programs, job summaries, letters, or emails.
Don’t let AI compose your writing. Don’t ask it for an opening sentence, a connecting sentence, or a concluding paragraph. Don’t let it write a first draft and then edit it later, pretending that it’s your own. These shortcuts weaken independent thinking. The problem with AI writing is that it weakens people mentally. Where humans need to develop the habit of climbing stairs every day, it creates the habit of an escalator. As AI becomes ubiquitous, it is not only weakening the individual’s ability to write, but also society’s ability to reason, cultural creativity, and human caring.
What is unique about writing? It makes us think. It engages our minds in ways that silent meditation or spoken language rarely can. It forces our thoughts to be subjected to the rigor of expression, the rigor of grammar, the test of comprehensibility and coherence, and the scrutiny of others. In the process, writing teaches us to be clear, logical, and precise, while also holding us accountable. The constant effort that ordinary writing requires is what makes us better writers. When we pay attention to words to express ourselves, we become better thinkers and more creative when we want to make a personal mark on our everyday work. These skills are now rapidly eroding.
A recent test of 100 doctoral dissertations using AI-detection technology found that 56 percent of the papers had more than a negligible amount of AI-generated writing, and 19 percent had more than 50 percent of AI-generated writing. The problem is not limited to cheating. It also threatens democratic self-governance. The link between widespread literacy and democracy is well-known: those who can read and write have historically been able to make choices for themselves and speak for themselves. Will they lose the patience to accept arguments longer than a few sentences?
The link between widespread literacy and the rise of democracy is well-known. Those who can read and write have historically been able to make decisions for themselves and assert their rights. What happens when that process is reversed and people lose the patience to digest arguments longer than a few sentences or a few pages? What happens when they can’t refute those arguments because they never develop clear thinking? We can see an example of this in US President Donald Trump’s social media posts and their clear impact on millions of Americans.
How far have we come now, when our ability to read, write, and think independently is eroding? In the destructive dominance of American political culture, overreliance on artificial intelligence could deepen the erosion of independent judgment. So the next time you feel the urge to use an automated response, write your own. Those extra few seconds could be a small but meaningful deterrent.
