[johngossman]

Sorry but I think this essay is largely wrong. First, there is tons of evidence that working your thoughts on paper, word by word, helps develop the idea and exercises the brain. Secondly, in other endeavors we have defined clear lines between human and machine labor: chess computers are banned from human tournaments; race cars and bicycles are not allowed in footraces. And while I am very sympathetic to the advantages of AI writing for the impaired and non-native speakers, we make allowances all the time for this today: handicapped parking, special sporting events, and allowing dyslexics more time on written exams for example. The existence of these does not justify parking in a handicapped spot when you don't need it.

From the title, I expected a different argument, that it's going to be increasingly difficult to determine. Many people have demonstrated that careful prompting can already produce prose that passes as human, and this will only increase as models get better and inevitably are trained to bypass checkers. Maybe someday we'll have novel-writing rooms where, like grandmasters coming into a tournament, the writers must relinquish all their digital tools at the door. Because it's difficult to imagine any other system that will guarantee human authenticity.

[doug_durham]

How can there be tons of evidence for a 3 year old technology? Everyone seems to think that all writers using AI are one shotting their content. A writer can carefully edit and revise their content using AI tools just as well as manual writing. That's what I do when I use AI to write. I also never use AI to write interpersonal content. Just like I won't type a Valentines letter to my wife, I'll handwrite. I only use AI to write technical documents.

[johngossman]

Look, I understand. There is a ton of low-value writing in the world: legal boilerplate, press releases, most documentation. That writing can and will be replaced or supplemented by AI. But look up cognitive offloading. It doesn't take centuries of research to show evidence for that, and in fact the benefits of writing for thinking have been known long before AI writing became available (the alternative being just talking or thinking without writing).