The Mental and Creative Cost of ChatGPT

Embracing these marvellous tools may inadvertently rob us of our own creative sparks.

I've edited this first paragraph about a hundred times before arriving at a place where I like it. I kept revisiting it as I wrote further down the page. I keep thinking: Are all these changes really going to make it better? Could an AI get that out of the way so I can write?

An AI could have started this post off great. It certainly would have been way faster than me. I could regenerate the first paragraph as I wrote the rest of the post. A couple visits to ChatGPT, and I'd be done! No need to tweak or tune things.

You can feel the tension in that statement. I've just spent a lot of time doing something, and I'm realizing an AI could have done it better. Worse, I'm telling you about it! You can empathize with me on this though. It feels like I wasted my time.

Everyone is marketing these incredible AI tools every day. It feels like we have to use them or get left behind. And a trap is waiting for us as we adopt these tools. Where do we fit in? Where can we put our creativity? That question hints at the mental tax AIs can have for creatives.

It's unbelievably demoralizing to feed ChatGPT three paragraphs that I've spent hours on just for it to return one great paragraph in a matter of seconds that gets my point across more clearly. It's like being an author who sees their magnum opus distilled into a handful of PowerPoint slides. It doesn't exactly inspire you to keep writing.

What's worse, when generating some writing based on some outline that you've written, you've just given yourself the most tedious part of the job: Editing! While I like a lot of AI tools and prompt techniques, it's easy to find yourself doing work so that AIs can have all the fun.

Midjourney - Prompt - “close shot, a frustrated writer stares out a window over a placid lake with storm clouds rolling in in the distance, scraps of papers all over a desk, we only see their silhouette, in a wooden lodge, the scene feels tense and gloomy, cell shaded, vector art, like grand theft auto --ar 16:9 --niji 5 --style expressive”

Let's get back to why we are writing. We write to say something or have some impact on the reader. If you add another barrier to writing something, you might never get those ideas written down. Worse, leave all the ideas to some AI. (I gotta say, left to their own devices, AIs can make a god awful video plot)

With some intent behind your writing, there are a lot of compositional elements that are aligned with your message. You had an idea in mind, and there are things you don't usually have to check. Looking at your writing, you don't have to say, "Where did this come from?" or "What does this have to do with the points I was trying to get across?" or "Is this what I had in mind?" (At least, hopefully not too often)

But if you've sloughed off the responsibility for writing to your AI Assistant, these are things you have to review and edit out. While you can resolve these problems slightly with prompting techniques, now you're engineering and not writing, which is a process that may take longer than just writing in the first place.

What's the trick?

There's a book that I really like called Non-violent Communication by Marshall B. Rosenberg. The book covers our lives conflicts and presents some opportunities to solve them. One radical idea presented was, "Don't do anything that isn't play!".

The book tells the story of a doctor who hates submitting a form for clinical studies. It's one of the things they don't like doing. When pressed on why they don't stop, they say it's because it brings in some money, not a lot but a little. But by thinking about it further, the doctor decides that life is generally better not doing that thing and continuing other parts of the practice that are more enjoyable.

I love this idea and the personal empowerment it drives. Many parts of daily life are taxing and may not even be necessary to live happy lives. These are precisely the kind of tasks AIs should and can help us with. Hopefully, they can also help doctors have less paperwork.

Problems of morale and creative challenges occur when AI take away the fun parts of our craft. Just because AIs can write emails, create artwork, or even direct movies doesn't mean we have to use them for that. We found those interesting because we thought computers couldn't produce anything artistic. I expect we'll have higher standards for art as a result but likely will still be attracted to media that "has a soul."

Midjourney - Prompt: “mid shot over the shoulder, a writer having fun writing about the beautiful day on the lake, writing in a journal while reclining, we only see their silhouette, the scene feels cozy fun and playful, cell shaded, vector art, like grand theft auto --ar 16:9 --niji 5 --style expressive”

I really like writing. I like the feeling of ideas flowing out of me and onto the page clearly and directly to the reader. Imagining someone reading what I'm writing makes me feel a sense of responsibility and excitement that pushes me to do as much as possible for that person. Help them understand what I'm seeing and tell it in a way they can understand.

When I use AIs, I use them for editing and, at times, brainstorming. I've dabbled with using it to create a panel of experts that I can use to poke holes in ideas, but I have yet to find the way I want to use it for that. I might write a prompt like this:

You are an expert marketing editor for an AI blog aimed at a general audience. Provide helpful feedback that is consistent with the voice of any writing provided.

---

<insert writing here>

---

Provide ideas around the pacing, order of parts, and give me a summary of the main points a general reader would get from this text.

While I might not use much of what is provided in its feedback, it is nice to hear actionable feedback quickly. This process takes much longer with people, and I can easily catch dumb mistakes or missteps in my approach using an AI. Also, I just don't like editing very much!

Now that you know my secrets, I hope you'll give yourself another attempt with ChatGPT or your AI tool of choice. Find the play in your work that makes your days more enjoyable and the process easier. Then mercilessly hand off as many of those dreaded tasks to the AI as you can. Who knows, maybe it'll give you back a bit of time for something else you've been meaning to pick up.