Reflections on writing in the age of AI
The best writing looks closely at people and nudges the reader toward a deeper kind of seeing
When I was in my twenties I put writers on a pedestal, believing that writing is an exertion of power. I still largely feel this way because in our present time, where attention is fleeting, to be read is to hold someone’s undivided attention. Unlike speech, which can be drowned out, the written word grants you quiet authority where, for a time, it’s just you inside another person’s head. This is why writers say that to be read is a privilege. It is.
But the real reason so many of us write is because we must. Because writing is more than communication. Writing demands stillness and introspection. It distils and crystallizes what might otherwise remain unuttered, unfiltered. It sharpens thought, and in doing it, you discover that ideas which felt clear inside your mind collapse under scrutiny on the page, while others – half-formed, even foolish – come wholly alive when written down. When someone says your words touched them, it feels like magic, and you see that this was possible only because the process gave you access to avenues others overlook. Not because they lack intelligence, but because they may lack the habit of quiet reflection that writing necessitates. Thus, I’ve come to see writing as a form of meditation, too. And as any meditator will tell you, it’s in the doing that the seeing begins.
Yet, more and more, I wonder: why write? Why spend hours crafting resonant sentences when AI can generate passable versions in seconds? Indeed, today, AI still sounds like AI — too tidy, yet somehow shallow and lacking those glorious quirks that make writing truly alive. But for how long? And do we care? In a world flooded with ‘content’ is resonance valued or is speed and information sufficiency enough? In More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI, John Warner argues — and I agree — that writing is not just expression, but a way of thinking and feeling.
I’m of a generation that wrote by hand in school but then learnt to type at work. Indeed, I wrote my book on Microsoft Word, just as I type these words on it. I instinctively cut and paste phrases, move things around, and look for synonyms for better flow and fit — routine acts I can’t employ with handwriting. I’m already a generation removed from my father, a lawyer who only ever wrote by hand, deliberately and slowly, and had cultivated the habit of reading small text with a scale pressed on the page, ensuring he missed nothing.
Worries about the influence of technology on thought are not new. In 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche, struggling with poor eyesight, purchased a Malling-Hansen Writing Ball, an early typewriter. He found that suddenly the words flowed, but a composer friend noticed that his style had changed. His prose, already concise, became even more telegraphic.
Maryanne Wolf, a cognitive scientist, says we’re currently experiencing a seismic culture shift. She argues in her book, The Reading Brain in a Digital World, that reading isn’t just about absorbing words, but about nurturing the kind of focus that allows us to see beyond ourselves. Books instil a sense of participation that unfolds slowly but yields lasting emotional rewards. Digital reading, however, has radically altered how we interact with the written word, such that skim-reading and jumping around pages has become the norm. Unlike speech, reading and writing aren’t innate skills, she reminds us. We learn these painstakingly, and the tools we use shape how we do it. A Chinese reader’s brain, attuned to a logographic writing system, for example, looks neurologically different from that of someone reading an alphabet-based script. So, it’s not a stretch to imagine that toggling between tabs on the internet might also be rewiring us in unforeseen ways.
Nicholas Carr effectively captured this point in his 2008 essay, Is Google Making Us Stupid? for The Atlantic. “I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading”, he wrote. “My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore.” Carr drew criticism from prominent psycholinguist Steven Pinker, who argued that we “shouldn’t bemoan technology but... develop strategies of self-control, as we do with every other temptation in life .”
But is it reasonable to expect such restraint when your phone is like a dripping tap in a silent room? ChatGPT gave me this tap analogy incidentally, along with nine others.
Writers don’t always see eye to eye, but most will agree that to write better, you must read more. Not only to appreciate the craft, but because deep reading boosts self-reflection and empathy. It prompts you to step into lives far from your own, and in doing so, it helps you think harder; to imagine different, to dream better. Is there space for such a pause in an increasingly automated world that values speed over critical thought?
As digital media continues to shape our perception of the written word, Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan’s ideas feel increasingly relevant. A key thinker in media studies, McLuhan saw technology not just as an extension of our senses but rather as a tool that reshapes how we relate to the world. He argued that every new medium gives rise to a different way of seeing. Print and writing made us reflective, prizing linear logic and solitude, while television pulled us into passivity, flooding us with images and sound. As electronic media (radio, TV, and then the internet) make everything instant, interconnected, and participatory, he foresaw a return to something resembling myth-based, oral cultures in that both mediums offer up a nonlinear and shared sensory experience.
Today’s social media proves his prescience. Despite democratizing information, the internet has siloed us into ever-narrower echo chambers and deepfake videos regularly blur the line between fact and fiction, even if the truth is easily verifiable. Or is it?
McLuhan’s insight was that media are never neutral. All media carry a world view, a bias, not just in what they deliver but in how they change us. A notable example of AI’s impact on our writing proficiency can be found in a 2023 Wired article, Use of AI Is Seeping Into Academic Journals — and It’s Proving Difficult to Detect . A professor found odd phrases, such as “counterfeit consciousness,” instead of “artificial intelligence,” in published research. He coined the term “tortured phrases”, a telltale sign that text generators were at work.
I’ve noticed similar peculiarities in my own process. While proof-reading my manuscript with Grammarly, the writing assistant software suggested changing the sentence, “He didn’t even touch eggs” to “He didn’t even feel eggs”. Had I accepted this change without thinking, I’d have outsourced not just my edits, but my intent as well.
All stories hold moral lessons and storytellers are good people, I assumed as a child. Of course, I soon saw how writers can omit facts, tell half-truths and push questionable values. Yet, as I read through the years, key distinctions between good and bad writing emerged. Stripped of florid prose, good writing carried moral weight. John Gardner captured this well in his 1983 book The Art of Fiction where he said that the writer must make the right moral choice. The best writing, he tells us, isn’t about pushing an idea or dressing it up in clever metaphors. Rather, it looks closely at people, their contradictions and conundrums, and nudges you toward a deeper kind of seeing. Such writing asks: What makes us human? How did I think as a boy? What if I were that boy, or girl? Or a bird, river or tree?
So, why should we write in these times when full-length essays can be generated from a handful of prompts? Because writing remains one of the few practices that forces us to slow down, to think carefully and feel deeply.
It was while writing this piece that I encountered several rabbit holes I could have gone down — declining reading for pleasure among young people; the rise of podcasts and Instagram Reels; the flatness of AI narration; and the self-examining nature of deep writing. And somewhere in navigating these choices, a thought rose up: if good writing depends on good reading, then shouldn’t the act of writing — as reading does — also develop our empathy? Perhaps this feeling had been lying dormant within me. But now that I’ve written it, I’ll stand by it. Not because there’s Google to prove it, but because I felt this understanding clarify through the process of putting pen to paper — or rather, fingers to keyboard.
Siddharth Kapila is a lawyer turned writer. He is the author of Tripping Down the Ganga.
When I was in my twenties I put writers on a pedestal, believing that writing is an exertion of power. I still largely feel this way because in our present time, where attention is fleeting, to be read is to hold someone’s undivided attention. Unlike speech, which can be drowned out, the written word grants you quiet authority where, for a time, it’s just you inside another person’s head. This is why writers say that to be read is a privilege. It is.
But the real reason so many of us write is because we must. Because writing is more than communication. Writing demands stillness and introspection. It distils and crystallizes what might otherwise remain unuttered, unfiltered. It sharpens thought, and in doing it, you discover that ideas which felt clear inside your mind collapse under scrutiny on the page, while others – half-formed, even foolish – come wholly alive when written down. When someone says your words touched them, it feels like magic, and you see that this was possible only because the process gave you access to avenues others overlook. Not because they lack intelligence, but because they may lack the habit of quiet reflection that writing necessitates. Thus, I’ve come to see writing as a form of meditation, too. And as any meditator will tell you, it’s in the doing that the seeing begins.
Yet, more and more, I wonder: why write? Why spend hours crafting resonant sentences when AI can generate passable versions in seconds? Indeed, today, AI still sounds like AI — too tidy, yet somehow shallow and lacking those glorious quirks that make writing truly alive. But for how long? And do we care? In a world flooded with ‘content’ is resonance valued or is speed and information sufficiency enough? In More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI, John Warner argues — and I agree — that writing is not just expression, but a way of thinking and feeling.
I’m of a generation that wrote by hand in school but then learnt to type at work. Indeed, I wrote my book on Microsoft Word, just as I type these words on it. I instinctively cut and paste phrases, move things around, and look for synonyms for better flow and fit — routine acts I can’t employ with handwriting. I’m already a generation removed from my father, a lawyer who only ever wrote by hand, deliberately and slowly, and had cultivated the habit of reading small text with a scale pressed on the page, ensuring he missed nothing.
Worries about the influence of technology on thought are not new. In 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche, struggling with poor eyesight, purchased a Malling-Hansen Writing Ball, an early typewriter. He found that suddenly the words flowed, but a composer friend noticed that his style had changed. His prose, already concise, became even more telegraphic.
Maryanne Wolf, a cognitive scientist, says we’re currently experiencing a seismic culture shift. She argues in her book, The Reading Brain in a Digital World, that reading isn’t just about absorbing words, but about nurturing the kind of focus that allows us to see beyond ourselves. Books instil a sense of participation that unfolds slowly but yields lasting emotional rewards. Digital reading, however, has radically altered how we interact with the written word, such that skim-reading and jumping around pages has become the norm. Unlike speech, reading and writing aren’t innate skills, she reminds us. We learn these painstakingly, and the tools we use shape how we do it. A Chinese reader’s brain, attuned to a logographic writing system, for example, looks neurologically different from that of someone reading an alphabet-based script. So, it’s not a stretch to imagine that toggling between tabs on the internet might also be rewiring us in unforeseen ways.
Nicholas Carr effectively captured this point in his 2008 essay, Is Google Making Us Stupid? for The Atlantic. “I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading”, he wrote. “My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore.” Carr drew criticism from prominent psycholinguist Steven Pinker, who argued that we “shouldn’t bemoan technology but... develop strategies of self-control, as we do with every other temptation in life .”
But is it reasonable to expect such restraint when your phone is like a dripping tap in a silent room? ChatGPT gave me this tap analogy incidentally, along with nine others.
Writers don’t always see eye to eye, but most will agree that to write better, you must read more. Not only to appreciate the craft, but because deep reading boosts self-reflection and empathy. It prompts you to step into lives far from your own, and in doing so, it helps you think harder; to imagine different, to dream better. Is there space for such a pause in an increasingly automated world that values speed over critical thought?
As digital media continues to shape our perception of the written word, Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan’s ideas feel increasingly relevant. A key thinker in media studies, McLuhan saw technology not just as an extension of our senses but rather as a tool that reshapes how we relate to the world. He argued that every new medium gives rise to a different way of seeing. Print and writing made us reflective, prizing linear logic and solitude, while television pulled us into passivity, flooding us with images and sound. As electronic media (radio, TV, and then the internet) make everything instant, interconnected, and participatory, he foresaw a return to something resembling myth-based, oral cultures in that both mediums offer up a nonlinear and shared sensory experience.
Today’s social media proves his prescience. Despite democratizing information, the internet has siloed us into ever-narrower echo chambers and deepfake videos regularly blur the line between fact and fiction, even if the truth is easily verifiable. Or is it?
McLuhan’s insight was that media are never neutral. All media carry a world view, a bias, not just in what they deliver but in how they change us. A notable example of AI’s impact on our writing proficiency can be found in a 2023 Wired article, Use of AI Is Seeping Into Academic Journals — and It’s Proving Difficult to Detect . A professor found odd phrases, such as “counterfeit consciousness,” instead of “artificial intelligence,” in published research. He coined the term “tortured phrases”, a telltale sign that text generators were at work.
I’ve noticed similar peculiarities in my own process. While proof-reading my manuscript with Grammarly, the writing assistant software suggested changing the sentence, “He didn’t even touch eggs” to “He didn’t even feel eggs”. Had I accepted this change without thinking, I’d have outsourced not just my edits, but my intent as well.
All stories hold moral lessons and storytellers are good people, I assumed as a child. Of course, I soon saw how writers can omit facts, tell half-truths and push questionable values. Yet, as I read through the years, key distinctions between good and bad writing emerged. Stripped of florid prose, good writing carried moral weight. John Gardner captured this well in his 1983 book The Art of Fiction where he said that the writer must make the right moral choice. The best writing, he tells us, isn’t about pushing an idea or dressing it up in clever metaphors. Rather, it looks closely at people, their contradictions and conundrums, and nudges you toward a deeper kind of seeing. Such writing asks: What makes us human? How did I think as a boy? What if I were that boy, or girl? Or a bird, river or tree?
So, why should we write in these times when full-length essays can be generated from a handful of prompts? Because writing remains one of the few practices that forces us to slow down, to think carefully and feel deeply.
It was while writing this piece that I encountered several rabbit holes I could have gone down — declining reading for pleasure among young people; the rise of podcasts and Instagram Reels; the flatness of AI narration; and the self-examining nature of deep writing. And somewhere in navigating these choices, a thought rose up: if good writing depends on good reading, then shouldn’t the act of writing — as reading does — also develop our empathy? Perhaps this feeling had been lying dormant within me. But now that I’ve written it, I’ll stand by it. Not because there’s Google to prove it, but because I felt this understanding clarify through the process of putting pen to paper — or rather, fingers to keyboard.
Siddharth Kapila is a lawyer turned writer. He is the author of Tripping Down the Ganga.
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