I remarked to a friend a while ago that just as people today have far fewer friends on average then they did several decades ago, due in part to social media, that AI could could result in a world where people have far fewer original thoughts on average in the future. Do you agree with this as a related thesis to what you are arguing? If so, do you see this as a somewhat hopeless battle? Just deciding not to use AI writing at all is all well and good to say but as it gets better and more common you may find yourself at a severe disadvantage at least in terms of quantity. This would then result in obvious incentives to use it making a society level pressure to use a tool that makes you unable to think.
Yes, I do think there will be fewer people with original thoughts. Mostly because original thoughts come from immersing yourself deeply in a topic, and writing about topics is one of our main ways to do that.
Though I don’t think it’s a hopeless battle. If you’re bought into the concept that writing is thinking, then Paul Graham makes the following case for continuing to write by yourself in his essay Writes and Write-Nots:
So a world divided into writes and write-nots is more dangerous than it sounds. It will be a world of thinks and think-nots. I know which half I want to be in, and I bet you do too.
This situation is not unprecedented. In preindustrial times most people’s jobs made them strong. Now if you want to be strong, you work out. So there are still strong people, but only those who choose to be.
It will be the same with writing. There will still be smart people, but only those who choose to be.
I think there aren’t many fields where quantity of output will give you some killer advantage compared to quality of output. As decent AI writing becomes more common, I think it will just raise the quality benchmark, and good thinking beyond that point will be highly valued. My friend Logan makes this point in his essay about thoughtfulness, This was meant for you (LW), as it pertains to business sales.
Sales is, by its very nature, a rivalrous domain. It is a game of limited attention, finite budgets, and constant competition. Multiple vendors want the same customer.
In these environments, the signal that breaks through is rarely the loudest. It is the most precise. It is the one that says: this was meant for you, and no one else. It is a gesture that cannot be mistaken for automation or routine. That is what makes sales so interesting in the context of thoughtfulness. It is a space where commoditized effort is common, and where genuine, specific sacrifice becomes all the more powerful.
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AI SDRs (or any other technology) will get arbitrarily good at solving whatever they can; always, tech will get competitors up to a frontier, and what will push a customer over the edge is differentiation beyond that established frontier.
In the short run, AI SDRs will work as dishonest signals of units of work, but people will wizen up eventually. They are a leverage multiplier.
So even if some AI writing will be required to automate labor, you will always need your own brain to know how to use it better than others.
I remarked to a friend a while ago that just as people today have far fewer friends on average then they did several decades ago, due in part to social media, that AI could could result in a world where people have far fewer original thoughts on average in the future. Do you agree with this as a related thesis to what you are arguing? If so, do you see this as a somewhat hopeless battle? Just deciding not to use AI writing at all is all well and good to say but as it gets better and more common you may find yourself at a severe disadvantage at least in terms of quantity. This would then result in obvious incentives to use it making a society level pressure to use a tool that makes you unable to think.
Yes, I do think there will be fewer people with original thoughts. Mostly because original thoughts come from immersing yourself deeply in a topic, and writing about topics is one of our main ways to do that.
Though I don’t think it’s a hopeless battle. If you’re bought into the concept that writing is thinking, then Paul Graham makes the following case for continuing to write by yourself in his essay Writes and Write-Nots:
I think there aren’t many fields where quantity of output will give you some killer advantage compared to quality of output. As decent AI writing becomes more common, I think it will just raise the quality benchmark, and good thinking beyond that point will be highly valued. My friend Logan makes this point in his essay about thoughtfulness, This was meant for you (LW), as it pertains to business sales.
So even if some AI writing will be required to automate labor, you will always need your own brain to know how to use it better than others.