I absolutely agree. It’s one thing to use basic tools like spellcheck or word count, another altogether to ask for and take tone or phrasing suggestions from AI. I have pretty low tolerance for AI when it comes to any art form! The point is to hear from and connect with a person, like you said in this piece.
My hope is that the true art will end up feeling so much more human and real in comparison that we’ll all recognize it instantly and be able to weed out the rest.
interesting–when I first saw ads for Grammarly all the time about 5-6 years ago, it was always in the context of writing an email to your boss. Now more recently, I have managed AI-generated marketing content at my "real" job. I have no experience in the context of more personal or academic uses of AI, so I'll leave it at "I agree with you" there.
In the content marketing sphere, there is a constant competition to rank higher than the "bad" ai-generated content and the "bad" human-written content with "good" AI-generated-content-that-is-then-edited-by-a-human-to-sound-more-human. This is, of course, because the google algorithm has an incredibly technical set of standards for what content it ranks higher which changes periodically and is almost impossible for a human to absorb and apply to every piece of copy they write. Marketers already use tools galore to check for "readability" and proper distribution of keyword phrases; having an AI write the entire text was the obvious next step. One of the big problems with this is that AI often creates fake statistics to back up its statements and links unrelated data to back it up, which will suffice for Google's algorithm criteria but is...false. It's a very depressing spiral, and most of the "helpful articles" that pop up on google when you ask google a question are probably a weird cyborg of human and AI.
I am curious what you think of tools like the Hemingway editor (basic version, not the paid AI stuff) which points out which sentences are too wordy, overuse of the passive voice, etc. https://hemingwayapp.com/
I think you really hit the nail on the head with this one. Algorithms can never replace human thought.
The other thing that drives me nuts about this kind of use of AI is that it's a perfect example of just how lazy we have become as a society. Instead of putting in hard work and effort to become more persuasive and to develop a skill set (and growing as people in the process), our society wants to find the quickest fix possible to achieve the best product. No respect is given to the importance of the writing process itself. If AI is writing your essays, how will you ever know what you actually think and how to articulate it to other people?
We have become so results-driven that we have completely skewed what the purpose of education even is. Students are not assigned essays so that they can boost their GPAs, for crying out loud.
Thank you. Trying to curate an AI-free archive of formational content over at renovare.org but the commitment you speak of and its costs are real. I was recently pressured to use ChatGPT to modernize an antique classical text, and so many web based tools are integrating AI to the point that you have to painstakingly opt out rather than opt in. 😭
I oppose AI but use Grammarly. I only use it as a proofreader, however—I don’t take its suggestions for rewrites and frequently ignore even the grammar suggestions, if I’m trying to do something a little odd. (It had a field day with my short story about a Southern hick ghost exterminator.)
I don’t think Grammarly and ChatGPT are necessarily on the same field—at least, as far as I’m aware, you have to actually write something with Grammarly before you can do anything with it. CharGPT doesn’t even need that.
Students and new writers should definitely avoid the rewrite capabilities, though, that’s for sure. Everyone needs to develop their own voice. That’s honestly another reason I only use it for proofreading—when I tried the “suggest a rewrite”, I found it completely changed my voice. No thanks!
As a high school teacher, I truly struggle with this daily. My school actually pays for Grammarly for all students in an attempt to give them access to timely feedback, yet they still cannot write. Most of my students will not bother to use it. The new standards do not deduct points from student writing as long as errors do not interfere with meaning. Over the last few years I have seen an overwhelming trend of degenerating writing skills. At this point, students do not use any capitalization, consistently misuse pronouns, abandon punctuation, and write in fragments. I teach 185 students daily. One essay assignment takes me literally weeks to grade because it takes so much time to try and give meaningful feedback, and by the time they get it back it has become pointless. Now, they gleefully submit AI generated work, and they do not even understand what it says. In their mind, they “did the work” and should get credit. I have given many lectures warning them that they are becoming intellectual slaves and they don’t even know it. My five year old granddaughter (who is being home schooled) has a better vocabulary than most of them and asks more astute questions. I do not know what the answer is. I’m exhausted.
AI makes me so grumpy. But, even aside from all the issues, I think the primary issue with Grammarly is that bypassing the work needed to edit and become more clear is actually bypassing the THINKING that is needed to gain clarity. Writing is one of the best ways to actually understand something, and there’s something really important that happens in being able to articulate an idea in words. So the idea that we can just outsource that means that we’re also ultimately outsourcing our own thinking. As a mom and a homeschool teacher I really want my kids to have to struggle through that process as students, even if they might eventually use AI in limited capacities.
I would also feel similarly to you re. AI in Substack. A blog I’ve been reading casually for years recently had a few bizarre posts that I’m 99% sure had some of the copy written by AI. It was for a product review which then rubbed me even more the wrong way! I really wanted to ask what was going on, but didn’t. It just makes the ground feel a bit more shaky. Am I talking with a real person, or not? You want to believe that the “voice” you read really is that person, and when that assumption is shaken it’s very unnerving. In my mind it’s really a breach of trust. If you’re going to use AI it needs to be cited you know? But the way things are going I see it much more likely that the assumption be that AI was used, and we’ll have to be explicit in stating that we don’t use it.
". . . if I were in a Medieval-style guild for writers, I can’t imagine letting an apprentice pose as a master or even a journeyman simply because he had found a way to impersonate one, to produce something that poses as masterful work.>
In fact, this is EXACTLY how masters operated in medieval guilds -- they had a large workshop, with many assistants who did the bulk of the work. The master, for all his technical skill, was ultimately the CEO, and in order to be financially viable could not afford to be personally doing all the work. Also, in many cases studios would hire out specialists to handle particular tasks -- Rubens supposedly had a "cloud guy" who just painted clouds.
By the way, this sentence is at best clunky, and might even qualify as ungrammatical. The first clause uses a subjunctive verb form: ". . . if I WERE in a Medieval guild . . .", but the second clause uses an imperative form: ". . . I CAN'T imagine . . .". Ouch! It should be, "If I WERE in a Medieval guild, I COULDN'T imagine . . ."
I used Grammarly when I was in college (class of '20) and when I used it, it would simply correct spelling errors, suggest using less commas or maybe to break a sentence into two. Most of the time I would ignore anything but the spelling suggestions. I stopped using it after graduation and have pulled it up a few times over the last couple of years and find it completely unnecessary and unusable. They went all in on the AI stuff back in 2022 and now it should probably be banned on college campuses.
“And insofar as writing is a craft, if I were in a Medieval-style guild for writers, I can’t imagine letting an apprentice pose as a master or even a journeyman simply because he had found a way to impersonate one, to produce something that poses as masterful work.
Guildmasters don’t produce—they create.”
Amen, amen!
(Also, it really annoyed me in the early years of Grammarly when someone who was reading my draft would run it through the program and inform me of its corrections. And it was WRONG. It wasn’t even a good bot!)
I do use Grammarly and this conversation is timely as my annual "premium" subscription renews in ten days. I ignore most of it's suggestions to rewrite sentences and ALL of its suggestions for word choice. "An average reader might not understand the word capricious." (Well, I guess I don't write for the average reader, pal.) I do like Grammarly though overall and use it as a sort of guide to proofreading more closely. Am I wrong to use Grammarly to proof? Am I a horrible, inauthentic writer? I don't think so, but I'm probably paying for more capability than I would ever use. Before I renew, I will give MS Word's free tools another try (and by the way, aren't those AI-powered as well? what's the diff?) On another note, I used Hemingway once while briefly working in the sweat shops of blog writing for a tech company -- it gave me a serious ick feeling, the way it wanted to simplify language-- it targets and eighth grade reader. That, and the low pay, is why I no longer contract for blogs.
I’ve never used Grammarly — actually hadn’t heard of it until a writers retreat last August. I was wildly uncomfortable with how okay some of my fellow writers were with the use of generative AI, Grammarly and ChatGPT both.
I think about this often as a homeschooling mother. One of my biggest motivations is to teach my kids to write without these types of AI "aides". My kids aren't even online that much but we have to have the discussion of how algorithms, AI tech, and other apps actually take away our brains ability to think. We want our kids to learn the rules to games, even if the app they play them on automatically applies them. We want them to know how to write properly even if in ten years no one will write their own emails but will just blink them into existence. If we're "educating" people with the use of this kind of technology that's a bigger problem than the technology itself.
I use it to catch spelling errors. I don't take advice from it, but I am secretly pleased when occasionally I see a message like this, "We couldn't have done it better." :-)
I absolutely agree. Back before Grammarly went full AI, I noticed that my freshman comp students who used it tended to unthinkingly follow its suggestions for "better words," which were not, in fact, better choices. I've never used it, and when my school-supplied version of MS Word had it embedded I had my techy husband turn it off. No, thanks.
Some commenters have asked about spellcheck. I do think it's different in degree (and very useful!). But it has the same tendency to make us more unthinking writers. I've tried to be deliberate about noticing words I tend to misspell and to commit the proper spellings to memory, so that I'm learning and not just leaning on the technology. I imagine that's the best way to use any supplementary writing tech.
(I note here that "SupplEmentary does not have an "i" as I initially typed lol).
I absolutely agree. It’s one thing to use basic tools like spellcheck or word count, another altogether to ask for and take tone or phrasing suggestions from AI. I have pretty low tolerance for AI when it comes to any art form! The point is to hear from and connect with a person, like you said in this piece.
My hope is that the true art will end up feeling so much more human and real in comparison that we’ll all recognize it instantly and be able to weed out the rest.
interesting–when I first saw ads for Grammarly all the time about 5-6 years ago, it was always in the context of writing an email to your boss. Now more recently, I have managed AI-generated marketing content at my "real" job. I have no experience in the context of more personal or academic uses of AI, so I'll leave it at "I agree with you" there.
In the content marketing sphere, there is a constant competition to rank higher than the "bad" ai-generated content and the "bad" human-written content with "good" AI-generated-content-that-is-then-edited-by-a-human-to-sound-more-human. This is, of course, because the google algorithm has an incredibly technical set of standards for what content it ranks higher which changes periodically and is almost impossible for a human to absorb and apply to every piece of copy they write. Marketers already use tools galore to check for "readability" and proper distribution of keyword phrases; having an AI write the entire text was the obvious next step. One of the big problems with this is that AI often creates fake statistics to back up its statements and links unrelated data to back it up, which will suffice for Google's algorithm criteria but is...false. It's a very depressing spiral, and most of the "helpful articles" that pop up on google when you ask google a question are probably a weird cyborg of human and AI.
I am curious what you think of tools like the Hemingway editor (basic version, not the paid AI stuff) which points out which sentences are too wordy, overuse of the passive voice, etc. https://hemingwayapp.com/
I think you really hit the nail on the head with this one. Algorithms can never replace human thought.
The other thing that drives me nuts about this kind of use of AI is that it's a perfect example of just how lazy we have become as a society. Instead of putting in hard work and effort to become more persuasive and to develop a skill set (and growing as people in the process), our society wants to find the quickest fix possible to achieve the best product. No respect is given to the importance of the writing process itself. If AI is writing your essays, how will you ever know what you actually think and how to articulate it to other people?
We have become so results-driven that we have completely skewed what the purpose of education even is. Students are not assigned essays so that they can boost their GPAs, for crying out loud.
Thank you. Trying to curate an AI-free archive of formational content over at renovare.org but the commitment you speak of and its costs are real. I was recently pressured to use ChatGPT to modernize an antique classical text, and so many web based tools are integrating AI to the point that you have to painstakingly opt out rather than opt in. 😭
Full agreement here. Grammar is a wonderful thing to learn and use.
I oppose AI but use Grammarly. I only use it as a proofreader, however—I don’t take its suggestions for rewrites and frequently ignore even the grammar suggestions, if I’m trying to do something a little odd. (It had a field day with my short story about a Southern hick ghost exterminator.)
I don’t think Grammarly and ChatGPT are necessarily on the same field—at least, as far as I’m aware, you have to actually write something with Grammarly before you can do anything with it. CharGPT doesn’t even need that.
Students and new writers should definitely avoid the rewrite capabilities, though, that’s for sure. Everyone needs to develop their own voice. That’s honestly another reason I only use it for proofreading—when I tried the “suggest a rewrite”, I found it completely changed my voice. No thanks!
As a high school teacher, I truly struggle with this daily. My school actually pays for Grammarly for all students in an attempt to give them access to timely feedback, yet they still cannot write. Most of my students will not bother to use it. The new standards do not deduct points from student writing as long as errors do not interfere with meaning. Over the last few years I have seen an overwhelming trend of degenerating writing skills. At this point, students do not use any capitalization, consistently misuse pronouns, abandon punctuation, and write in fragments. I teach 185 students daily. One essay assignment takes me literally weeks to grade because it takes so much time to try and give meaningful feedback, and by the time they get it back it has become pointless. Now, they gleefully submit AI generated work, and they do not even understand what it says. In their mind, they “did the work” and should get credit. I have given many lectures warning them that they are becoming intellectual slaves and they don’t even know it. My five year old granddaughter (who is being home schooled) has a better vocabulary than most of them and asks more astute questions. I do not know what the answer is. I’m exhausted.
AI makes me so grumpy. But, even aside from all the issues, I think the primary issue with Grammarly is that bypassing the work needed to edit and become more clear is actually bypassing the THINKING that is needed to gain clarity. Writing is one of the best ways to actually understand something, and there’s something really important that happens in being able to articulate an idea in words. So the idea that we can just outsource that means that we’re also ultimately outsourcing our own thinking. As a mom and a homeschool teacher I really want my kids to have to struggle through that process as students, even if they might eventually use AI in limited capacities.
I would also feel similarly to you re. AI in Substack. A blog I’ve been reading casually for years recently had a few bizarre posts that I’m 99% sure had some of the copy written by AI. It was for a product review which then rubbed me even more the wrong way! I really wanted to ask what was going on, but didn’t. It just makes the ground feel a bit more shaky. Am I talking with a real person, or not? You want to believe that the “voice” you read really is that person, and when that assumption is shaken it’s very unnerving. In my mind it’s really a breach of trust. If you’re going to use AI it needs to be cited you know? But the way things are going I see it much more likely that the assumption be that AI was used, and we’ll have to be explicit in stating that we don’t use it.
In your Current article, you write:
". . . if I were in a Medieval-style guild for writers, I can’t imagine letting an apprentice pose as a master or even a journeyman simply because he had found a way to impersonate one, to produce something that poses as masterful work.>
In fact, this is EXACTLY how masters operated in medieval guilds -- they had a large workshop, with many assistants who did the bulk of the work. The master, for all his technical skill, was ultimately the CEO, and in order to be financially viable could not afford to be personally doing all the work. Also, in many cases studios would hire out specialists to handle particular tasks -- Rubens supposedly had a "cloud guy" who just painted clouds.
By the way, this sentence is at best clunky, and might even qualify as ungrammatical. The first clause uses a subjunctive verb form: ". . . if I WERE in a Medieval guild . . .", but the second clause uses an imperative form: ". . . I CAN'T imagine . . .". Ouch! It should be, "If I WERE in a Medieval guild, I COULDN'T imagine . . ."
I used Grammarly when I was in college (class of '20) and when I used it, it would simply correct spelling errors, suggest using less commas or maybe to break a sentence into two. Most of the time I would ignore anything but the spelling suggestions. I stopped using it after graduation and have pulled it up a few times over the last couple of years and find it completely unnecessary and unusable. They went all in on the AI stuff back in 2022 and now it should probably be banned on college campuses.
“And insofar as writing is a craft, if I were in a Medieval-style guild for writers, I can’t imagine letting an apprentice pose as a master or even a journeyman simply because he had found a way to impersonate one, to produce something that poses as masterful work.
Guildmasters don’t produce—they create.”
Amen, amen!
(Also, it really annoyed me in the early years of Grammarly when someone who was reading my draft would run it through the program and inform me of its corrections. And it was WRONG. It wasn’t even a good bot!)
I do use Grammarly and this conversation is timely as my annual "premium" subscription renews in ten days. I ignore most of it's suggestions to rewrite sentences and ALL of its suggestions for word choice. "An average reader might not understand the word capricious." (Well, I guess I don't write for the average reader, pal.) I do like Grammarly though overall and use it as a sort of guide to proofreading more closely. Am I wrong to use Grammarly to proof? Am I a horrible, inauthentic writer? I don't think so, but I'm probably paying for more capability than I would ever use. Before I renew, I will give MS Word's free tools another try (and by the way, aren't those AI-powered as well? what's the diff?) On another note, I used Hemingway once while briefly working in the sweat shops of blog writing for a tech company -- it gave me a serious ick feeling, the way it wanted to simplify language-- it targets and eighth grade reader. That, and the low pay, is why I no longer contract for blogs.
I’ve never used Grammarly — actually hadn’t heard of it until a writers retreat last August. I was wildly uncomfortable with how okay some of my fellow writers were with the use of generative AI, Grammarly and ChatGPT both.
Yet another upstream swim 🫠
Just catching up on these great comments.
I think about this often as a homeschooling mother. One of my biggest motivations is to teach my kids to write without these types of AI "aides". My kids aren't even online that much but we have to have the discussion of how algorithms, AI tech, and other apps actually take away our brains ability to think. We want our kids to learn the rules to games, even if the app they play them on automatically applies them. We want them to know how to write properly even if in ten years no one will write their own emails but will just blink them into existence. If we're "educating" people with the use of this kind of technology that's a bigger problem than the technology itself.
I use it to catch spelling errors. I don't take advice from it, but I am secretly pleased when occasionally I see a message like this, "We couldn't have done it better." :-)
I absolutely agree. Back before Grammarly went full AI, I noticed that my freshman comp students who used it tended to unthinkingly follow its suggestions for "better words," which were not, in fact, better choices. I've never used it, and when my school-supplied version of MS Word had it embedded I had my techy husband turn it off. No, thanks.
Some commenters have asked about spellcheck. I do think it's different in degree (and very useful!). But it has the same tendency to make us more unthinking writers. I've tried to be deliberate about noticing words I tend to misspell and to commit the proper spellings to memory, so that I'm learning and not just leaning on the technology. I imagine that's the best way to use any supplementary writing tech.
(I note here that "SupplEmentary does not have an "i" as I initially typed lol).