Intro: I still write in the Age of AI and you should too

Someone asked me the other day why I even bother sitting down to write anymore when AI can spin up an article in seconds. It is a fair question, and there is no denying the technology is better at writing than I am. But it still misses the entire point of what writing is supposed to do for both you and me.

For me, writing is the one thing keeping me tethered to my own brain right now. My entire professional world has shifted to the point where coding without AI assistance just doesn't happen anymore, and we have totally normalized it. We rely so heavily on these tools in our daily lives that leaning into writing is more important than ever, especially at work. Realistically, skipping out on AI is not an option if you want to get ahead in any career today, because the productivity gain is just too big to ignore. But even with the models handling the heavy lifting, writing out plans in clear prose is still the best way to execute a business or engineering task.

Social media has already shortened our attention spans to the point where we have to rely on screen-time limiters just to stay focused (I do not know what I would do without Opal). But while we can choose to restrict our app usage, limiting our use of AI is out of the question if we want to keep up professionally. The only real alternative to letting these LLMs take over our minds is to write. Putting our ideas, implementations, opinions, and research into words is what solidifies our thinking, because writing is how we actually retain information and communicate clearly.

I see the effects of this mental passivity in my everyday life. I cannot remember a single detail from an Instagram Reel I scrolled past two minutes ago, yet I can recall almost everything I have ever written. I believe most of us are wired the same way. We need to actively take the time to put our thoughts into writing, because completely outsourcing our minds to passive feeds and automated generators will only dull our ability to think for ourselves.

I am already bad at directions because I rely too much on Google Maps. At least let me try to save what is left.

If you are reading this, consider it a brief introduction to how I think before we connect in person.

To close, here is a short video highlighting why even the pioneers building frontier AI models still choose to write their thoughts out rather than completely outsourcing them to a model.