Writing, Plato and AI

There is a great paradox, a frustrating paradox about the use of AI for writing. Why do we write?

To express ourselves, to cultivate our thoughts to give them structure, clarity and perhaps elegance. Even though this might be seen as an ideal scenario, ideals are there to guide us. I would say these goals are good goals.

We also write to share. It often makes us vulnerable. Writing is personal, it is intimate. It is also hard.

A while ago, I noticed how often I used AI to write. The reasons were simple. I wanted to be more efficient, to make the writing easier. When reflecting about this, I was not happy about it. I felt lazy, but more importantly, the writing did not feel like mine.

The fact that we reach out so much towards artificial agents means that there is a deeper problem: we write for other reasons than the mentioned above. We write to get published, to receive grants, to sell.

We do not write, we produce text to meet external requirements. To be efficient. I wish we would write more to express ourselves. I want the intimate, personal writing. I want to see others in writings.

Plato critizes the invention of  written speech in his dialogue Phaedros. It is one of my favorite dialogues.  The main reason was that he wanted lived speech – speech that is shared with others. The reasons, the logos, had to be shaped in a space where others could participate. Only such lived speech embedded in human space could have been loved, could move, could teach. Even though I disagree that the written speech is bad, I see how this criticism can be applied when written speech is co-written by AI.