Writing with AI as Play with the Unlived

It seems to me that writing with the help of artificial intelligence is a wonderful thing. And people underestimate it today, because they often think about it too flatly: as if you are simply asking a machine to write a text for you.

But they do not see the whole game. They do not see all the work that happens behind the scenes.

For example, I go out for a walk, open a chat, and begin a conversation. This conversation can last for several hours. And at some point, it turns into a note, and sometimes into a whole essay. Not because I simply said: “write me a good text.” That is not how it works. And not because I gave the machine a set of constraints and received a finished result. I would most likely write that kind of text better myself.

The real work with artificial intelligence begins somewhere else. In the mode of playful guidance. When you do not hand the text over to the machine, but create an environment in which thought begins to move differently.

But I have realized that this method has its own downside. For me personally.

I experience cognitive overload when, in the moment, something is being created that is not yet in me.

When I write a note myself, everything happens differently. I have read a chapter of a book, talked to someone, turned something over inside myself, lived with that thought for a while. Sometimes it seems almost banal to me. I think: why repeat this, if so many people have already written about it?

But then I still write. And my editing here is not about inventing something completely new. It is more about placing the accents correctly. Explaining something to myself. Reminding others of it. Or saying: “look, I think this way too, but…”

And that “but” is sometimes more important than the thought itself. Because it remains a question for my future self.

In ordinary writing, I use what is already in me. What has become almost self-evident. Or a question that has already been sitting somewhere inside for a long time. That kind of writing can seem a little boring: as if you are simply laying your cards on the table and showing what you have right now.

But writing with artificial intelligence opens up a wider horizon. You are surprised yourself by where the text can go. It is as if you are peeking around a corner. Or beyond the horizon.

But this is exactly where the difficulty arises.

This environment often gives me too much that is new. Too much of what I have not yet lived through. That is why sometimes a note can seem beautiful to me, but foreign.

Not because I get the feeling: “someone wrote this instead of me.” No. I have already accepted that in the future computers will write more and more instead of us. That is not the point.

The point is that I myself have not yet lived this thought. It has not yet become mine. Not in the sense that I cannot remember it or retell it. I can say: “wait, I think I wrote about this with artificial intelligence, let me find the link.” But that is not the same thing.

In ordinary writing, I show what is already turning over in my head. Or what I have only just begun to feel my way toward. With artificial intelligence, this barrier can somehow be leapt over. You can see new angles, new connections, new possibilities more quickly.

And here another question arises: does artificial intelligence know anything truly new?

Maybe, if we look at this philosophically, we are still playing with what is already in us. It is just that, when we build the environment correctly, when we do not allow artificial intelligence to invent for us, but at the same time ask it to show us a new angle, a new turn, a new horizon, this game becomes so wide that it begins to surprise us.

Perhaps this was in me too. But it was not gathered. Not lived through. Not acknowledged.

And something inside may disagree with it.

I do not yet know what the conclusion is here. This is an unfinished thought. But that is exactly why it interests me now.

And it seems to be telling me this: ordinary writing cannot be cancelled. We cannot forget about it. We cannot put the pen on the shelf. We cannot put the typewriter away in the closet.

All of this may still come in handy.