Good. For those fed up with the politicization of search and the feeling of being fed propaganda rather than information, this is wonderful news. When LLM first appeared with ChatGPT and Google’s own version, the same problems became obvious early on. The platform X, which Elon acquired from Twitter, allowed people to protest.
Finally, all companies were shamed into shaping up.
For now the new world of AI, led by Grok, is open and generally unbiased, with an infinity of information that you need all day every day. I love it for its historical detail, but cooks have found it invaluable for recipes, software administrators use it for tips and tricks, and even doctors are using it for treatments.
It’s not perfect, but I adore having so much knowledge at my fingertips and I’m still shaking to consider the implications. They are both glorious and terrifying.
Imagine being a college instructor and asking for student papers. If plagiarism used to be a massive problem, contained only by careful attentiveness, what happens now? I don’t see how any student or professor will be able to navigate this world. I suppose they should just give up, honestly.
Multiple choice still works so long as the tests don’t leak. In the end, however, there is only one sure way to test students’ knowledge. Oral examinations, here we come. Just like the old days. I welcome that very much. Testing this way requires small classes, engaged teachers, and weeds out anyone who is not serious.
Only a few months ago, I was able to detect articles written by AI versus those actually composed by humans. AI seemed wooden, bloodless, affected, and pointlessly wordy as if to show off language skills over knowledge. But AI has improved dramatically. Now I’m not so sure. I like to think I can tell but I would not swear on it.
Boom: there it was. It was compelling and wonderful and taught me lots of things. I wish that everyone could read it. But I was not to be outdone, so I tried my hand at it. I refused to believe that the machine could compose something as warm, elegant, and enlightening, thank you very much.
I think I won this battle. I was able to add personal reflections, feelings, judgments, stories that AI doesn’t know, and connect ideas in quirky ways that signal very clearly to the reader that I wrote this; that is, that a human wrote this. In other words, I was able to put genuine soul into the article that a machine does not have.
Please understand: AI is not creative, not emotive, not intuitive, and not capable of replicating the power of the human mind and imagination. I don’t care how sophisticated it gets, it will never be able to replace competent human writing. It can only imitate but never really invent, so it will always be disadvantaged in creative composition.
Chess is another matter of course. When the machines beat the humans, that was a shock. But did people stop playing chess? Of course not. It made the game even more popular. Now we have people playing chess every day online, and everyone loves it to a greater extent than ever.
In the same way, AI could cause us to fall more and not less in love with serious and creative writing. It should. I had initially worried that this engine would take away my comparative advantage and render me worthless. Now I feel more pride in what I can do than ever before. It has given me more confidence in my own mind, and inspired me with even more passion to reach the audience in a personal and powerful way.
LLM is now my competitor. We all work better with competition. In fact, I hope that Grok keeps getting better because I can get better too, so there.
That said, I’ve had a lot of practice with writing, having done it for decades and professionally for three decades now. So yes, I have some confidence and some skill at it. What about people just starting out? I can easily imagine that they will be rattled and intimidated by what AI can do.
Let’s just try the Grok prompt from the title of this essay. We get among other points the following:
“As AI gets better at mimicking human styles (e.g., training on a specific author’s corpus), the line between human and machine authorship will blur. We might see ‘co-authored’ works with AI credited, or debates about whether AI-generated novels deserve literary awards. Imagine a future Pulitzer committee arguing over a book ‘written’ by an algorithm.”
Good point, even if you can tell that this is not my prose. Then I asked for some observations in the style of Jeffrey A. Tucker, and the results are hilarious.
“We’re standing at the precipice of a revolution, and it’s not the first time. Cast your mind back to Gutenberg’s clanking press—ink-stained hands churning out books that upended the medieval gatekeepers. Writing didn’t die; it exploded. Now here comes AI, this whirring, algorithm-driven beast, promising to flood our world with words faster than you can say ‘prompt.’ And oh, it’s already begun.”
Further, and I thought this was clever:
“Still, the market—bless its chaotic heart—will sort this out. Writers who lean on AI for speed might flood the low end, but the high ground? That’s where the raw, unfiltered human voice will shine. Readers crave authenticity—always have. AI might swamp us with noise, but the signal, the real stuff, will cut through. Think of it like vinyl in the age of streaming: the crackle of humanity trumps sterile perfection every time.”
So there we go: AI was able to generate a critique of AI—in a caricature of my own voice! Yes, and you can tell that the enthusiasm is programmed, the insight just a bit phony-baloney, and the general feel just slightly too canned.
Never fear: this is just a machine, and it cannot replace flesh and blood.
What is a writer to do? Read as much as you can—real books, real writers, not Internet ramblings. Contemplate. Integrate. And remember a rule that a wise man taught me: absolutely everything is interesting if you know enough about it. There is also an infinity of things about which to know. Ideas themselves are a limitless universe for you to explore with your unlimited mind.
My additional suggestions for writers: learn the old grammar rules. They work, and I don’t care how much AI puts them down. I will just add this and you can argue with me later: Avoid split infinitives and don’t end sentences in prepositions (with extremely rare exceptions). Expand your vocabulary. The best wordsmiths I know have facilities in several languages. Do it while you can, and do not wait.
Beyond that, the simple points apply: Have something to say, say it without unnecessary words that add nothing, and don’t be afraid of your audience. Be prepared to bleed on the page because that is the only way to beat this bloodless machine.
I look forward to a long trial and nonstop competition with this new friend we call AI. You should too.
