Thoughts on writing with AI

Using AI to write your own words is like the Ship of Theseus. You write an initial, unpolished draft. Then you ask AI to expand upon it. Maybe you do some manual edits over the expanded text. Maybe you ask the AI to make it “conversational, but more punchy”.

At the end of this long and arduous process, is it your own writing anymore? Some might be tempted to say it isn’t.

The Ship of Theseus is a fictional ship whose components are replaced as they wear out. The paradox goes like this: if all the components of the original ship have been replaced by new ones, can we still call it the same ship?

One might argue that we can. Editors have existed ever since books have been published. A lot of manuscripts are published with more than 50% of their content being restructured and/or rewritten. No one seems to care. No one calls the author of such a book any less of an author.

I don’t claim to have the answer to this dilemma. But it’s a question worth thinking about.