Confessions of an Anti-AI Artist

I love to write. At least I love it when I hit that flow state where all my ideas connect, and my fingers dance across my keyboard on some new rhythm and sequence that’s never been discovered. I love baring my soul to potential readers, some I know intimately, and others to whom I’ll always remain a parasocial figure.

IBM typewriter most likely from an advertisement

I don’t love the paralysis of constantly reminding myself that I love to write, and if I only sat down for seven minutes, I would most likely hit that flow state. I hate how minor tasks become nagging phantoms looming over every desk and bedside table as frequent reminders that I don’t have the motivation to apply my attention to a simple activity.

I hate grasping onto my own attention span like a child holding the leash of an untrained dog. Don’t look away, don’t follow that distraction, you’re bound to be yanked away with little hope of regaining control.

I don’t like to write about negativities, but I would also like to keep this an honest platform, a sort of interactive journal. That being said, I do have a greater point I am leading to if you can believe me.

Artificial Intelligence has made this particular experience even more difficult for me.

I could ramble about more reasons why I’m anti-AI, but I will try to hold onto my leash a little longer. As someone who already struggles with motivation, attention, and task paralysis, the temptation to use AI to slog out a series of blogs that will increase Search Engine Optimization is very strong. With a short and clumsy few sentences, I could have a large language model spit out something comprehensive that could be better for my website in literal moments.

One of Henrique Alvim Corrêa’s illustrations for The War of the Worlds (1906)

However, I know that I love to write. I know that feeding my readers AI slop is both dishonest and disgusting.

This leads to my greater point. In the past, I had been using AI to help me write blogs, and I no longer want to do that. But now my paralysis is worse. After learning that I only need to pitch my idea to a machine to achieve optimal search engine results, mustering up motivation for a task that my brain knows will be more challenging is nearly impossible. Not only has this old habit streamlined a simple task, but it has removed all semblance of nuance, creative thinking, discipline, and, if I may, humanity. Would we really trade the gratification of tackling something challenging and remaining authentic for a process that is actively making us slothful and displacing communities in the name of convenience?

The cure?

More writing. The more I sit down and practice writing, the less power excuses will have, and my motivation will slowly increase. This is only a theory, but even if I’m wrong, it can’t get much worse than this. My plan is to write at least one blog post a week. This will inevitably ebb and flow as all things do, but I hope you stick with me. I encourage you to do the same, write more (even a few sentences), and use AI less. In the words of my mother, “Use your God-given common sense!” I may love to write, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m good at it, and this will be a good exercise to develop those skills I’ve all but abandoned since school. Please bear with me for a while as I stretch my writing muscles that no doubt will need some warming up. 

P.s. I recognize that this may come off as very emotional, but I am an emotion-driven human being. In being completely transparent, I want to let you know that I may still use AI as a tool while I continue to navigate this new territory of SEO and having a website until I am in a place where I can do without. But I WILL NOT be using it to write my blogs.