The Second Mind: Can AI Make You a Better Writer?
I think there is a fundamental glitch in the conversation that seems to always occur whenever AI comes up. When people talk about AI, there is always this undercurrent or subtext about how people are using it that feels very strange to me. Very rarely do I ask CoPilot or ChatGPT to write something FOR me or produce some sort of text FOR me. I never seek writing product from an AI. Even when the tools first made their way to the mainstream public back in 2022, I was never really compelled to use them to do writing FOR me. This is very different when I use Midjourney, for example, to make AI images. When I use Midjourney, I very much am seeking the AI to make images FOR me; I have an idea in my head of what I want the image to be (a rogue galaxy filled with bursting super novas, a sleek post-modern refrigerator, a photo realistic tenement hallway from the 1970s with a nimbus cloud floating in it) and my goal is to have the AI create that image for me. Sometimes, I will use Midjourney as part of my process; I will create an image and mold it further in Procreate; adding my own flair; colors, new pieces, erasing some things, adding some things, building on that initial idea that was sparked from the AI. But with writing; I never want the AI to do the writing FOR me.
Instead, CoPilot or ChatGPT is a collaborator. It must be viewed this way because it cannot create effective writing product for a myriad of reasons and these reasons cause harm. Damien P. Williams recently shared some brilliant insights in his piece “Scholars are Failing the GPT Review Process” in which he offers:
“Put plainly, we really want the shiny, mathy, “objective” answer, and we are very inclined to believe that technology will give it to us. People think GPTs tell the truth, and so people think GPT-based checkers tell the truth, and so people think they can trust and learn from GPT checkers how to tell when something is written by GPT rather than a human being. And not one of these thoughts that people think is correct. But the academy and general public’s willingness to trust computers and “AI” over other humans, even and especially when computers and “AI” are making decisions about humans, is currently hurting, and will continue to hurt, a lot of already marginalized people — unless we work hard to fix it. In case you find yourself willing to downplay this, filing it under the header of, “Well, it’s a small portion of scholars or potential experts; what’s the real harm?,” let me assure you that these harms will be borne by all of us eventually; the marginalized and minoritized are just the ones who experience it first.” (Williams, Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences (2024) 54 (5): 625–629.) https://doi.org/10.1525/hsns.2024.54.5.625
The idea that Dr. Williams points to here about the assumption and misconception and willingness to believe that GPTs are telling the truth is tied up in this narrative I encounter all the time about how writers use this tool to create writing; to ‘produce’ text. In my discipline, Writing, Rhetoric and Digital Studies (and more broadly Writing Studies), we are concerned with big ideas about what writing actually is, how we learn through recursive writing processes and writing itself is a socially situated, complex act, mediated across analogue and digital spaces, rhetorically framed by audiences, authors and texts that communicates complex messages through modes, mediums and genres. We also study metacognition, reflection, writing strategies and methodologies, and transferable writing habits that can be applied to any writing situation so writers can be successful discipline to discipline, genre to genre, situation to situation. In other words, we ask students in Writing Studies to get out of their own head all the time and think about their process, their choices, meta-cognitively reflect on the rhetorical strategies and moves they make as writers and how those decisions about design, mode, structure, genre, and more impact how audiences engage with their writing. Perhaps these disciplinary, meta-cognitive, thinking about writing skills are precisely the sorts of habits and skills that are needed to make someone a skilled AI user; to avoid the pitfall of having the AI do the writing FOR them and get past this notion that the AI is producing their writing and instead acting as a collaborative, meta-cognitive partner in their writing WITH them.
How do get there, though? As Dr. Williams points out so clearly in his piece above, there are so many important, clear and present dangers with AI right now. These tools are causing harm and will continue to cause harm. I would argue this is all the more reason that educators must become AI experts in order to equip students with the critical thinking and literacy skills they need to understand these difficult and complex technology challenges facing us today.
Even if you do not believe AI can make you a better writer or a better scholar or a better researcher, the impact of these tools is very real. AI should never be a product tool; it should always be a process tool; one that undergirds the core humanities belief in power of what people are capable of and what the human creative mind and the human spirit can do when given the time and space to think, create and grow.
I believe AI can make you a better writer because the tool is, at its core, shaped by the human using it. The learning and the growth and the beauty of the human spirit is found in the often hidden and invisible processes that lead up to that writing product, to that published article, to that final draft, to that shiny thing. We should not regret AI outright. We should regret the myth that AI is an efficiency tool that cuts away the process, that destroys the inefficient parts before the end result. Because the golden chaff of the process is where the humanity of it all exists, is where the learning and the beauty and the spirit of it all lives. If we can teach writers to connect the tools to that space and use them to enliven the work there then yes, AI can make you a better writer.
