The prism through which to see the world
How AI impoverishes our ability to think
"Language is the dwelling place of ideas that do not exist anywhere else. It is a prism through which to see the world." Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass
We usually use language as if it were breathing. Sometimes we question ourselves when a notorious grammar issue pops up or when we encounter a rare word, but overall, language is used unaware. It is therefore only logical we are inclined to outsource our writing to AI, for AI can produce words better and faster than we ever could. This misconception, however, might eventually suffocate our communication, limit our personal development, and stifle human reasoning.
There are many instances in which language is nothing more than transferring information from one person to another. However, language is often more than mere words put in a sequence to convey a message. It is an artificial construct with which we attempt to communicate to ourselves and to others. By misusing AI for our writing, we are not increasing our vocabulary bank and thereby eventually robbing ourselves of our ability to convey our ideas and feelings accurately.
The starvation of our language by using AI is two-fold. First, as more and more texts are written or 'improved' by AI, we encounter a smaller variety of words. AI has the tendency to write in certain structures and with certain words. The language AI uses also does not come from a cultural background, neither does it develop in the social realm. It is synthetic, the outcome of a prediction from a dataset rather than human thought. Yet, it will become the prism through which we will see the world: static, sterile, and devoid of intention. Even writing that has been 'improved' by AI is deformed by AI rambling, impoverishing language as a whole.
Second, as we outsource our writing to AI, we deprive ourselves of creating a personal language or writing style to express what we think and feel. Writing will become a commodity rather than an expression. Personal language is a collection of encounters, preferences, and cultural background. Yet, most of us are insecure writers and whenever AI does a suggestion, we agree with ourselves we could never write so beautifully and sophisticatedly. But the more we outsource our writing to AI, the less we develop our own language, our own vocabulary bank. We will master fewer words and are therefore less able to make sense of our own thinking. We limit our world, our ability to discover who we are by having AI do the writing for us, or as Wittgenstein said: “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world." We are slowly turning ourselves into followers rather than discoverers.
Allan Watts suggested that "the only thing you really know is what you can put into words.” Do we really understand something if we cannot articulate it ourselves? Do we truly understand something when AI tells it us? Writing is thinking and writing clearly is thinking clearly. But clear writing needs a large, personal vocabulary bank. It is what Carl Hendrick in his insightful "The Most Important Memory is Still the One Inside Your Head" states that memorising vocabulary enables "sophisticated reasoning."
In our minds, thoughts are free, malleable, and safe, wandering and never really settling down. It is through writing we have to solidify those thoughts and make choices. And the more words we know, the more subtly we can communicate those ideas to ourselves and to others. Mastering writing is mastering thinking.
Brainstorming, drafting, rewriting, leaving a text for a couple of days to figure out how to express it correctly is all part of our personal development. This article took about two weeks to conceive; I could have it generated in less than a minute. But what would I gain? AI may fasten our writing, it does not deepen expression, it does not develop us as a unique human being. It will only make us more dependent and put us further from authentic thought.
This week, a student of mine presented the book The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. In this dystopian novel the world has been divided into the 'elevated' Eloi and the monstrous Morlocks. She used a quote from the novel in a different context, but I immediately saw the connection to AI: "We should strive to welcome change and challenges, because they are what help us grow. Without them we grow weak like the Eloi in comfort and security. We need to constantly be challenging ourselves in order to strengthen our character and increase our intelligence.” We like to outsource our insecurity of writing to AI but by doing so, we weaken our character and decrease our intelligence. We will not change nor will we challenge ourselves. But we should step out of our comfort zone and do more of our own writing to develop our own thinking, or as Kimmerer said in Gathering Moss: “With words at your disposal, you can see more clearly. Finding the words is another step in learning to see.”