Don't let AI do your thinking: why writing without it matters
Don't Use AI to Write
Paul Bakker argues that using AI to generate documents skips the deep thinking that writing forces. He uses AI daily for coding and research, but never for writing. Once his own thinking is done, he asks AI questions to improve the document, not to make fixes. He warns that productivity in writing isn't about producing the most content fastest, but about the ideas and their impact.
The issue is not that AI tools are bad at writing (to the contrary), they're just bad at thinking and coming up with new ideas.
- trjordan
So let me get this straight:
- You can use AI to look through docs and do research.
- You can use AI to structure your argument.
- You can NOT use AI to actually write the prose.
- You can use AI to proofread, especially for how effectively you've communicated.
I don't know, man, that sounds a lot like using AI to write. Your writing probably says "load-bearing" less than Claude's outputs, but I'm not sure it's much less AI.
- Kim_Bruning
Once upon a time the word processor was invented, and it made it so much easier to arrange your words on paper. iIf bits were wrong, you could just delete them, or copy and paste them across pages. It was actually pretty amazing what you could do; especially if you didn't mind dot-matrix type on fan-fold paper. Of course if you wanted to make a better impression, you'd type it on a typewriter, or better yet, hand-calligraph your writing with a fountain pen.
So LLMs allow you to work at the speed of reading, if not faster. So you can try a paragraph here, completely rewrite the tone. Start a chapter in 1PP and just have it rewritten to 3PP. And sofort and so on. The number of new transformations you can do is endless.
What do a lot of people do? Write a one line prompt and show everyone the oneshot result.
Ok fine, sometimes you don't need to write amazing prose. But you can also be like the early writers who adopted the word processor. If you put the same amount of elbow-grease into using an LLM as you did writing before, you can get some pretty cool results.
- bluepeter
> Writing requires thinking, don't let an AI do the thinking for you.
Okay, but reading also requires substantial thinking. Moreover, we can say the same about, say, coding. And I am sure there are people who will say, yes, don't use AI to code. But I do, and the results are amazing, and I still think very deeply: in fact, I spend more time with AI coding (and thinking) than before as I do not get hamstrung on, how do I convert this Word doc to PDF in code again? I spend more time in higher order thinking. Same with when I read text written by an AI. I don't believe that writing is any more sacrosanct that coding. And reading and adjusting AI output requires substantial thinking.
- simonw
Just this morning I used Claude to build an "omit needless words" app, which lets me paste in text and then marks up that text with strikes through the words that I can leave out.
I used it to edit a document I'm working on, where I accepted about a third of its suggestions. I feel pretty good about it.
If you have a Claude account you should be able to access the artifact I built here: https://claude.ai/artifact/RK7XfnaoxVV1Uji84ETaLr - it uses "Claudeception" - the feature of Claude artifacts that lets them use Claude prompts - so it will be billed against your Claude account (at a cost of probably a fraction of a cent per run.)
- SoylentGreenGPT
Don’t use AI to write and don’t use it to edit either. LLMs can’t understand your writing, so the edits and questions about your work will be less helpful than asking another person with knowledge to review.