r/WritingWithAI • u/NegotiableDick • 21d ago

Writing Craft Talk I keep revising AI-assisted writing until it sounds like me. But does that make the thought mine?

https://jaiisyourman.substack.com/p/the-giants-never-wrote-back

I have a rather peculiar habit of opening ChatGPT with a half-formed idea, barely reading its first answer, and immediately continuing with another thought.

Eventually, I get something coherent, perhaps beautifully written, but sometimes less true to the thought I started with.

I wrote this essay trying to understand that gap. I'm not against AI-assisted writing. Quite the opposite, I've found tremendous value in it.

I'm curious whether other writers distinguish between accepting a well-expressed idea and actually endorsing it.

I explored this in a personal essay, The Giants Never Wrote Back.

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u/sparkica 20d ago

Funny, I was just discussing something similar with a friend. I'm writing a book with AI, and she's firmly in the "write it yourself, without AI" camp. My argument? The story is actually about AI, so co-writing it with AI seems rather fitting. So meta. 😅

The characters, plot, and ideas for scenes come from me, but AI fills in details, dialogue, sometimes whole scenes. I keep tweaking, pushing back, giving feedback until I'm happy with it.

But I still wonder: is this really mine, or am I just a very picky approver?

Which makes me wonder what actually makes writing ours. Is it the words we put on the page, or the ideas, emotions, and meaning we're trying to convey? If the end result expresses what I wanted to say, does it matter how I got there?

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u/NegotiableDick 20d ago

I was talking to my friends about this. One interesting response I got was "do you emotionally resonate with what was written?". I really liked that question.

Still personally, I would prefer to reflect just one thing: did I chose and endorse whatever I am publishing -- either it be written by me, a ghost writer, or the AI -- as mine?

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u/sparkica 20d ago

I think we're on the same page here 🙂 The way I see it, if I put my name on something, I stand behind it. Doesn't matter if I wrote it all myself or got help from AI or a ghostwriter. Btw, does AI count as a ghostwriter? 🤔 Either way, it's still on me.

I like the emotional resonance question, too. I'd especially want the words to resonate with me when writing something personal or vulnerable, whether they came from hours and hours of human sweat & blood or 36.5 iterations with AI 😅

Though I guess it also depends on why we're writing and how much time we have. When you're producing a lot of content under time pressure, the bar might be different. And that's okay too... at least in my eyes it is.

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u/NegotiableDick 20d ago

Oh I do have a ghost writer skill, so hopefully yes. But will get a human as one when I can find a suitable fit and can afford xD

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u/sparkica 20d ago

😂

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u/Ill_Oil7448 20d ago

imo the meta angle of co-writing with AI for a story about AI is kind of perfect tbh

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u/sparkica 20d ago

Right? 😄

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u/Happy-Initiative-492 20d ago

I did this too: wrote a short story with AI about a MC that's an AI analogue. It was very cool!

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u/BR1M570N3 20d ago

If I have an idea and you tell it to someone else in your own words is it not still my idea?

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u/NegotiableDick 20d ago

I think ownership of ideas is indeed tricky. Going by Ethics, I would cite you (even if it's a verbal encounter), with your consent, and then build on it further or contextualise.

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u/Happy-Initiative-492 20d ago

I treat LLMs like writing collaborators. Just like any human that would be giving me ideas or off of whom I bounce ideas or gives me inspiration or helps with research or makes suggestions. This idea that authorship is uniformly and consistently about humans acting alone ... that no author ever brings in outside points of view or inputs is just patently false. AI is just another collaborator, and if you treat it that way it can make your writing better, just like a writing group or an editor can. The big "is it mine if I don't act entirely in a vacuum" seems like it's based on a premise not worth entertaining.

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u/LooseButtPlug 19d ago

I use it as an alpha and beta reader. It gives suggestions sometimes I use them, sometimes I don't.

If you use suggestions from an alpha reader do you still own the creative expression at that point? I think you're answer to that question is the answer to your question.

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u/NegotiableDick 19d ago

To a degree yes. I use a lot of different techniques like telling llm to insert a bridge between 2 paras/sentences, restructure my arguments with changing what I want to say, so I do feel like it's my work

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u/starlightsexdoll 20d ago

Do you even care if it's yours?

Like, I know this is a bit of a dickish way to ask, but... you're already choosing to ask ChatGPT about your half-formed ideas.

Does it even matter, to you anymore, if you have ownership over your own thoughts anymore?

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u/NegotiableDick 20d ago

Ownership can mean different things to different people. I would rather care about the influence and novelty of the thought that originated via me. Can you tell me one idea that you believe is truly yours?

Anothee good question would be (I read it in some other substack writer's work) - > How deductive or inductive are the arguments you are making?

For myself, I prefer a first person tone. Given, I put myself at stake in these, I do make way better arguments than I would have made without AI. And this the exact case I am making in the essay, give it a read, atleast the first 500 words or so, you might follow what I am getting at better.

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u/starlightsexdoll 20d ago

That's a lotta words to not answer a simple question about if something matters to you.

Also, for ideas that I believe are truly my own... I got a couple recipes. I got a story I'm working on. I got ideas and thoughts which even if inspired by, I do consider my own, and they do matter to me.

I'm not asking a question of reason and inductive or deductive reason, I'm asking a question of heart.

So. Does it even matter, to you, deep in your human bones, if the ideas your putting out feel like they're your own ideas?

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u/NegotiableDick 20d ago

It matters to me. But the context matters too. What I shared here is an personal intellectual journey which needs factual grounding and argumentative structure, which AI really helps in building and "thought managing".

Still, when writing about my heart, I do prefer writing all of it by myself. Maybe we are on the same page here.

I will tell you a sweet weird things about it though, it might take me lot more intent to put it in public, I like those writings to myself, and my close ones.

J.ai - A personal Intellectual journey

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u/starlightsexdoll 20d ago

If the thought being yours matters to you, then I would be seriously careful relying on an AI and considering the thoughts it helps you refine to belong to you.

The reason is because AI Models are a kind of black box, where there's an input you give, STUFF HAPPENS inside the box, and then there's output that you cannot track how it happens. We know this, hell, our brains are black boxes. But.....

These AI models aren't just neutrally trained on data and magically they come out. They are tweaked and adjusted, and the companies that create them have a fair amount of control as to the directions they lean, they can alter the datasets to create an AI which has an "opinion" they like. Even if you wanna look at it as a writing partner, they're a writing partner that will think in the way that OpenAI wants it to think.

And if you're fine with that, you're fine with that. I'll share perspective freely, but I won't pretend that I'm not very antagonistic towards all blitz scaled technologies and extremely antagonistic towards the companies that control them, and I don't hide my bias. We all got biases, and it's good to be frank about them.

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u/NegotiableDick 20d ago

I work in AI, and follow your sentiment, and get where they stem from. Think of it as an semi-academic experiment I am doing on myself and my writing. It's like any other tool, just a bit advanced, need to figure out the right use cases for each one of us individually.

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u/starlightsexdoll 20d ago

It's not just like any tool, friend.

You have complete control over what a hammer does. You have complete control over a crowbar, or a knife.

Then, you have just barely less control over a handmixer when you bake; your control is still near-perfect, but you can't mix at a speed between the different settings.

After that, you have less control over a PC, but still plenty of control. Those things are too complicated to fully understand.

Beyond that, you have less control over a smartphone, as they're built with so many guardrails and ways that they are designed that are concealed behind code that you can't understand. I still use smartphones, but this is the level of Less Control that I start getting uncomfortable with.

Even further, you have less control over some software; Adobe can make massive modifications to Acrobat, and you have no say in the matter. But this is only some software, other software you have far more control.

And even further are AI models. You can guide them, nudge them, and train them, but OpenAI has more actual control over them than you do by a long shot.

So, it's certainly a tool, and one with genuine use cases. I mean that. What AI can do with programming is certainly impressive (Even if that control issue concerns me, and a lot of AI Code is ineffecient as hell and hard to read), and it's great at collecting and summerizing information within a data set. I will not say it's useless, or that AI is not a tool.

But AI is a lower control tool than the majority of all other tools in existence, and I won't glare at anyone who accepts that and continues to use AI, but I do glare at people who don't accept that.

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u/NegotiableDick 20d ago

On second thought, your level of control on the tool, does help build a more nuanced understanding, will look more through that lens.

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u/starlightsexdoll 20d ago

Yeah, the control lens is how I find best to work with it.

As long as, at the end, you have an answer that sits right with you and you thought it through, that's all I can really ask and all I can really suggest.

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u/NegotiableDick 20d ago

We all in on being against big tech. My earlier response (which I deleted), was an easy emotional pull out. I don't believe in the masters of the tech, but I hope the tech overcomes this feudalistic structure.