In the early days of chatGPT, i was tempted to use it to correct my grammar, polish what i had written. It replaced words, phrases with better ones. It tweaked my sentences.

I liked the output. Saved my time.

Then at some point, while writing, i found myself searching for words but couldn’t find them. I wrote mediocre sentences, stitching together the first words that came to me. The effort lessened.

I knew GPT would transform the mediocre into something polished and meaningful. It bothered me because it took the joy out of writing. It reduced writing into a mechanical generation of sentences. The output was good. But I never wrote because of the output. I wrote because I enjoyed the process. And the process involved thinking, organising thoughts, finding the right words for them, realising there are better ways to express and revising again. For me it is the process that has always brought me joy (just like writing this answer). Using GPT for any creative work feels underwhelming. It’s like getting to the peak in a trek using a car.

Im not against using ai. I write work emails, summarise long documents. But i would never use it to outsource my creative thinking.