Writing Without AI 

Why do we write?  How do we teach writing?  And how must that change with the advent of "artificial intelligence" platforms?

These questions are at the heart of any writing course, and they cause both headache and heartache.  We have so many thoughts and theories, and it's easy for both students and teachers to feel lost — especially when so many people now use AI platforms to avoid the challenge of writing and thinking for themselves.

This guide is designed to provide concrete suggestions for students and teachers of English 101 and similar courses.  This guide is not a screed against AI — it's a meditation on why our own writing still matters in this world where your computer can spit out words in bulk at a rate no human writer can possibly match.

The Motivation Behind the Site

I started this work mostly to provide my students with a English 101 textbook — most of this site describes the same basic concepts that writers have used for centuries.  It is not a comprehensive breakdown of every element of wordsmithing, and it is certainly not the only approach to writing and teaching.  My goal is to offer concepts and strategies to help you succeed in writing, learning, and teaching.

My initial plan was simply to cover the course essentials in a way that my students would appreciate.  But as I worked on this, I realized that it's not enough to simply teach the process of writing — we have to address why our own words still matter.  When AI can produce words so much faster, we have to help our students see why their paragraphs still matter.  And of course we try to do this as teachers — we've all struggled to convince students that our courses actually matter.  And for students reading this, I'm sure you've sat through courses that had no possible application to your future — no application that you could see.  And with AI taking over so many jobs, many have decided that it's better to "learn AI" than to learn the "old ways."

But here's the thing: many who use AI are not learning to use AI.  Giving an AI some ideas and then copying the machine's response is not learning.  It's asking a machine to do your work for you.

The Challenge of Teaching in the AI-Augmented World

As a writer and a teacher, I'd love to simply say that all knowledge is important, so you should enjoy learning.  Unfortunately, the reality is that some types knowledge are perceived as more valuable than others.  And because AI is so good at throwing words together and translating foreign languages and imitating so many visual and musical forms of art, some assume that they don't need to learn the skills of language and art.  These forms of knowledge are being devalued because people think the "AI can do the job better."

Many of you realize that AI can't do the job better — all it does is produce the product more quickly.  With those digital tendrils stretched across the internet, large language models can gather and sort information at rates that no single human being could ever match.  But it can't create knowledge.  It can't weigh correct and incorrect information the way we do.  It can't judge right and wrong — all it can do is follow the average of what people have written is right and wrong.  As readers and writers, we human beings still have the challenge and obligation to decide these questions for ourselves.  But if we rely on AI to solve today's simple tasks for us, then how will we grapple with the future questions that truly matter?  How can we learn to communicate what's important if we never learned to let go of AI?

Seriously — you think writing a persuasive essay is hard?  Try convincing a teenager that going to bed on time is actually a good thing.  Tired of those research papers?  Try deciding which political candidate is lying about the economy.  Struggling to pay rent?  Try convincing a future employer that you can do something that AI can't do.  And the only chance you get is an in-person interview — during which you have no AI to craft those answers for you.

Despite AI, Your Writing Still Matters

This is why writing still matters.  This is why it's important to teach students how to successfully struggle through the process of evaluating information and independently forming their thoughts into words.  As teachers, we have to show that these skills are more important now that ever.  Yes, AI can imitate our best work — a thirty-second AI-generated paragraph may well sound better than that difficult email you needed an hour to write.  But the time spent writing is also the time spent thinking.  And we need to help our students see this.  Writing isn't just some painful torture you must endure — writing is part of how we make ourselves smarter and more thoughtful and more capable.  And if we mere humans are to compete with AI — if we are to use AI rather than be replaced by it — then we must build the skills that AI cannot imitate.

Parting Thoughts

In closing, please consider the following:

• Anyone can use AI, but not everyone can write for themselves.  Not everyone is able to communicate their thoughts and feelings in a way that others will understand.  The AI can't read your mind — it can't reproduce what's in your head.  If you want to share your actual thoughts with others, then you need to use your own words.

• Effective writing is not easy — but it can be learned.  It takes time.  It takes effort.  As does anything worth doing.  If you want to be better at shaping words than that data center parked in the middle of nowhere, you need to work at it.

• Are we using AI?  Or is AI using us?  All those large language models need our words to train.  They need our drinking water to cool the servers.  They draw electricity from our power grids.  They drive up the price of microchips that we could be using in our computers.  Yes, AI is very capable, and it can do some incredible things — but not without cost.  We pay that cost.  Every one of us pays that cost.  Having our words sucked into a machine without any recognition for the author, seeing our drinking water literally evaporate, paying higher utility bills, bidding against data centers for the materials that go into our smartphones and tablets — AI is not free.  It is not cheap.  We shouldn't be wasting those AI resources on writing a stupid email.  We shouldn't be burning all that electrical power to replace the brain work that we ourselves should be doing.  Yes, AI is here to stay — and yes, it will accomplish tasks that humans alone cannot do.  But if you want to remain relevant in the age of AI — if you want to be someone who uses AI rather than someone who gets used by the technology — then you need to master the art of thinking and writing for yourself.