With regards to using AI to write and also becoming a better writer you may consider some recent evidence based on EEG brain scans of people completing an essay-writing task both with and without AI ( https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872 ). These results suggest it is best for our cognitive development if we make an effort at writing without AI first. Participants with the most robust neural activity, e.g. engaging deep semantic networks of the brain, first wrote with only their brains and then returned to that same essay topic with an AI assistant which they used mainly for information seeking and inquiry.
As to why you might invest in writing as a skill to develop for yourself you may consider what exactly is the purpose and metric of writing. If you are looking to strengthen your own inner resources and capabilities, to deepen your critical thinking and cognitive potency, then the evidence cite above suggests you practice focused and effortful writing using your own brain. That same study suggests you may not only fail to develop as a writer and thinking if you use AI for writing, but that you may become a worse writer and critical thinker as a result of offloading your cognitive load to the AI. If, however, you goal is to gain attention and approval then a tool such as AI may be a faster and more reliable path to that. It depends on what your goals are as a human being and as a writer.
It’s not an easy answer. I’m a self-interested person, and I realized a while ago that many of my most productive and interesting relationships, both personal and in business, are the direct result of my activity on the internet. I already waste a lot of time commenting my thoughts, sometimes in long form, so I figure if I’m going to be reacting to stuff publicly, I might as well do so in the form of a blog where others might pick up on it. If that results in something good for me, influence, relationships, demonstration of niche intellectual ability the right sort of people in this world people find interesting, then that’s not a small part of my motivation.
At the same time I have more naive views about the virtue of just doing things for their own sake. Writing is definitely an excellent tool for fixing your own thought, as it forces you to communicate in a way that makes sense to other people, thus causing your own ideas to make sense to you. The problem with this line of thinking is that I’ve never been an exemplary writer in any sense, although hopefully I am better and more self-motivated than I used to be. What I can currently write in long-form unassisted I’m not satisfied with, which causes a sort of writers block that I really hate.
I’m integrating the advice of other people into what I’m planning to do, and hopefully with enough effort I’ll be able to produce (with critique but not rewriting by AI) something that satisfied both my desire to write for its own sake, while also producing something that other people might actually want to read. Also, I have the annoying consideration of being time- efficient. I by no means spend my time maximally efficiently, but struggling through writing burns a lot of my willpower points that ends up consuming a lot of time elsewhere.
With regards to using AI to write and also becoming a better writer you may consider some recent evidence based on EEG brain scans of people completing an essay-writing task both with and without AI ( https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872 ). These results suggest it is best for our cognitive development if we make an effort at writing without AI first. Participants with the most robust neural activity, e.g. engaging deep semantic networks of the brain, first wrote with only their brains and then returned to that same essay topic with an AI assistant which they used mainly for information seeking and inquiry.
As to why you might invest in writing as a skill to develop for yourself you may consider what exactly is the purpose and metric of writing. If you are looking to strengthen your own inner resources and capabilities, to deepen your critical thinking and cognitive potency, then the evidence cite above suggests you practice focused and effortful writing using your own brain. That same study suggests you may not only fail to develop as a writer and thinking if you use AI for writing, but that you may become a worse writer and critical thinker as a result of offloading your cognitive load to the AI. If, however, you goal is to gain attention and approval then a tool such as AI may be a faster and more reliable path to that. It depends on what your goals are as a human being and as a writer.
Thank you for the article. I’ll give it a read.
It’s not an easy answer. I’m a self-interested person, and I realized a while ago that many of my most productive and interesting relationships, both personal and in business, are the direct result of my activity on the internet. I already waste a lot of time commenting my thoughts, sometimes in long form, so I figure if I’m going to be reacting to stuff publicly, I might as well do so in the form of a blog where others might pick up on it. If that results in something good for me, influence, relationships, demonstration of niche intellectual ability the right sort of people in this world people find interesting, then that’s not a small part of my motivation.
At the same time I have more naive views about the virtue of just doing things for their own sake. Writing is definitely an excellent tool for fixing your own thought, as it forces you to communicate in a way that makes sense to other people, thus causing your own ideas to make sense to you. The problem with this line of thinking is that I’ve never been an exemplary writer in any sense, although hopefully I am better and more self-motivated than I used to be. What I can currently write in long-form unassisted I’m not satisfied with, which causes a sort of writers block that I really hate.
I’m integrating the advice of other people into what I’m planning to do, and hopefully with enough effort I’ll be able to produce (with critique but not rewriting by AI) something that satisfied both my desire to write for its own sake, while also producing something that other people might actually want to read. Also, I have the annoying consideration of being time- efficient. I by no means spend my time maximally efficiently, but struggling through writing burns a lot of my willpower points that ends up consuming a lot of time elsewhere.