I heard a shocking AI take this week—on a theology and current events podcast, of all places.
And I say shocking because I had to pause the podcast while driving so I could process what one of the hosts had just said.
The hosts were talking about how they used AI (read: Chat-GPT) for fixing spelling and grammatical issues in their writing.
I was minding my business like a good listener when one of them said:
“I mean, that seems like the perfect way to use AI. I think it would be wrong to just not use it at all, but—”
Pause.
I’m not calling for pitchforks—this was part of a larger, more nuanced conversation—but I am questioning that last bit.
(And I listened to it five times to make sure I’d heard correctly.)
We can talk about privacy concerns or water usage or billionaire bias or art theft some other time (and on some other newsletter)…
But it’s not wrong to write, to revise, to edit, to conjure worlds, to capture the human experience in its miraculous entirety without using AI.
My books are LLM-free—not because I want to make a grand statement, but because I believe creativity thrives in the wilderness of the human mind.
The internal struggles and external mistakes are part of the process of art. Of being human.
Some people will farm out their prose to servers and silos, as is their right.
This author writes cage-free.
My upcoming heist fantasy Kickstarter uses human artists, human editors, and human writers.
Addison
Would you be interested in reading excerpts from STORIES THAT BLEED as we count down to the Kickstarter? Respond to this email to let me know—or send me your thoughts on AI, because I love reading people’s opinions and I need an alternative to doomscrolling Threads.
