James King

AI did not write this article. I did not ask it to edit what I wrote or to suggest content.

But I am starting to ask Glean and Gemini to summarise things. They capture meeting outcomes and simplify my waffle when I write content. They also take over a lot of the creative work I do.

I guess if I wrote speculative fiction or poetry then that would raise ethical questions about whether I am creating new stories or just retrieving what others have written.

If I identified as a “creative” or an “authentic writer” that would be an issue for me.

And I do identify as a creative person who is an authentic writer. It is part of who I am.

I keep a journal, which is a stream of consciousness so I write down my thoughts daily. I don’t need AI for that. The audience is me. I am a fickle audience because I hardly ever refer back to what I wrote. So the material is essentially lost to the world as soon as it is created.

I also write sms and other messages that probably look “creative” but scream out for an editor to check the words I am using actually form a sentence.

But at work, I am often communicating a message, to a person or group, for a purpose. I see no issue with using AI to speed up this process.

But it created a new challenge. To write well, I need to know who I am writing for. I also need to understand what I hope they will take away from it.

This is where I have found I need to perform a bit of a mindshift. Or to reflect on what role I am playing in the writing process.

I have found that is is extremely easy to get AI to produce something readable – but that does not actually reflect the goal of what I am doing.

I have also found that AI can quickly shorten and summarise my streams of consciousness – but may take away some of the personality that my own writing reveals.

So using AI has created a change in identity for me. I have to think of myself as the editor or the work, rather than the author.

As an author I could in theory see myself as a tortured soul wrestling with the meaning of life, or an individualistic rebel that see life differently to others. But when I use AI to write, this illusion is stripped away completely.

If anything, AI sees itself as the school kid who copies everyone else’s homework. There is no spiritual angst. There is no desire to change the world. This kid’s goal is just to hit the word limit and score a passing mark.

But as an editor I must ensure that the message is aligned to the goal of the communication and that it is aligned to what the audience needs to take from the message.

These things mattered before, but now they form 90% of the effort in writing with AI. Realising that has, I hope, improved my productivity and also quality at work, but also my joy in writing with AI.