The way I write has evolved, primarily due to a shift in my relationship with AI and the writing process itself:
When referring to AI in this post, I specifically mean large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Perplexity.
How I worked with AI in the past is silly. Using AI to generate content makes the writing sound generic and peppered with buzzwords that people never use. I mean, check the title and content of my last blog posts: 'Unleashing the Writer Within: How ChatGPT Transformed My Writing', and 'Supercharge Your SSH with VS Code'. 🫣
AI generated content has telltale signs when you see words like: unleashed, supercharge, delve, crucial, more examples here. The silver lining is that AI taught me more words - the problem is these new words didn't feel authentic to me.
Using AI to generate content was also a coping mechanism to my creative blocks. An unfortunate consequence was that it removed my "want to think", I could feel myself leaning more and more on the information provided by AI. This felt similar to defaulting to a calculator instead of doing mental math.
It's been over a year since I published those blogs, and I've been using AI —perplexity— a lot differently since I started...
Firstly, a bit of background, I work in tech for Xero and I've met so many awesome people there. Luckily for me, I've got a mentor who is a fantastic Engineer and an amazing Writer, seriously, it's their superpower; and I've been heavily influenced by them. Their guidance has helped me to structure my thoughts more clearly and to approach writing with more confidence.
They shared with me this amazing blog that talks about the different roles in the writing process:
Applying these roles to my own writing revealed a crucial insight: that my writer's paralysis was me prematurely judging the madman before he could cook. I'd critisise the words, sentences, paragraph, headings, scope, purpose, before my madman even had a chance to shine. No wonder I got scared of writing, and wrote at a snail pace.
The madman within needs some air time; sometimes you just need a good ol' brain dump. Giving myself that permission totally freed me from the fear of writing. Nowadays, as soon as I feel myself being critical, I catch myself and think: "Is it time to judge yet?"
To wrap up, here are some key takeaways about using AI as a writing companion:
I have never ever used AI to generate text in place of my “voice”. No emails. No sentences in my articles or books or even comments. Nothing pretending to be me.