Brant Hansen “6 Reasons I Don’t Write with A.I..”
6 Reasons I Don’t Write with A.I., and Why You Shouldn’t, Either
Sorry if I sound a bit bossy with that headline, but I gotta get clicks. It’s all about the clicks. Ted from this website pays me for the clicks.
Plus, I do mean what I’m saying here.
I could use A.I. to do my writing for me. But I won’t. Here’s why—and I’m hoping this serves as a bit of a pep talk for you to do your own writing, too:
1. It’s fundamentally dishonest to pass off something as your own when A.I. wrote it.
If I have Chat or Claude or whatever write under my name, but don’t include “Written by A.I.,” I’m allowing you to believe a fiction. There’s no way around this.
Want to use it as a research tool? No problem. People expect us to research things. But the words? They have to be mine, or I need to attribute. Basic honesty.
- It’s not like we can’t tell when A.I. did your writing for you.
We can totally tell.
- There’s never been a better time to be a fully human writer.
You make mistakes when you write? Me, too.
Never before have mistakes, made by actual humans, been more endearing. My email signature now includes, “BTW, I wrote this email. I didn’t use A.I. All mistakes are 100% mine!”
- Kjsafioasasf;oajsd;oiasdjf;oi
I just randomly typed that. I feel so alive.
- Don’t miss the process.
I just spent the last couple months writing. Every day, I’d sit at home or the coffee shop, forcing myself to write some words and then rearrange those words and then put them back and rearrange them again.
It’s hard to write, at least for me. But you know what? The process, itself, prompts thoughts and ideas I would never have, otherwise. The process, itself, forces to me to think deeply and creatively. Quoting the novelist Brandon Sanderson (from Billy Oppenheimer’s newsletter, emphasis mine):
Books aren’t the product. They aren’t the art—not completely. And this is the point: the most important thing to understand is that the process of creating art makes art of you…
It’s important, but in a way, it’s just a receipt. It’s a diploma…In the end of it all, you are the art. The most important change made by an artistic endeavor is the change it makes in you.
- And this is the most important, I think: We are made to create things.
The very Creator of the Universe created us in his image… so we make things. Humans always have.
It’s amazing how quickly and naturally it happens! I’m reminded of this all over again now that we have tiny granddaughters. So much art! It’s a River of Art™ and it flows with glue and sparkles and crayoned smiley faces and yarn and pipe cleaners and it splashes onto our refrigerator and walls and the river started rolling about ten minutes after they were born, I think.
So make things! Write things!
Use your own highly particular brain to do it. You draw from a lexicon that’s uniquely you in many ways. Me? I’m from the Midwest, and watched a lot of Bugs Bunny and read every Peanuts strip ever made growing up, so I say, “Good grief” a lot and “critter” and “varmint” like Yosemite Sam. It just rolls out.
Polished? No. But hey, it’s me. I’m not an ethereal cyber-entity. I’m a creature (Wait, is that where Sam got, “critter”?) from a certain time and place. You are, too.
So create, critter.
Here’s Laura Guenther, from Substack:
Since Al is making everyone sound more generic… I recommend becoming the most unhinged version of you, to counterbalance. Write like a crazy person who hasn’t interacted with humanity in years. Break any and all of the rules… Now is your time to channel the weirdest version of you.
Right on. So I’m doubling down on being odd. And I’m tripling down on the great news about the Kingdom of God, which is now open for business. The Lord became flesh and dwelt among us. He must love real people.
Brant Hansen is a radio host and author of several books. He’s writing this bio in third person, but you probably knew that.
His email is brant@branthansen.com and if you want to have AI compose your complaint reply to him, he would admittedly find it pretty funny.
