Once upon a time, a very long time ago, if you had an idea you’d splash it on a wall in your cave.
Fast forward a few thousand years, and we’ve gone from cave paintings to tapping away on smartphones. We started with simple stuff – rocks, bones, and whatever else we could get our hands on to scratch out messages. Then came the clever Egyptians with their reed pens and papyrus scrolls.
For centuries, the humble quill was king. Imagine having to sharpen a feather every time you wanted to jot something down. But hey, it got the job done. Then came the industrial revolution, and suddenly we had metal nibs and fountain pens. Writing got a whole lot easier and less messy.
The real revolution kicked off with the ballpoint pen. No more ink-stained fingers! And let’s not forget about pencils – they’ve been quietly doing their thing since the 1500s. Who doesn’t love a good pencil?
But here’s the thing – no matter how fancy our tools get, they’re all doing the same job our ancestors did with those cave paintings. We’re still trying to get our ideas out of our heads and into the world. The tools might change, but the urge to communicate? That’s as old as humanity itself.
Our writing tools have come a long way, that’s for sure. Remember those cave paintings? We’d just slap our ideas on the wall and call it a day. But then we got smart and started talking to each other. Suddenly, if you had a wild idea to paint a woman with a bison head above the marital bed, your buddy could tell you it was bonkers.
Then came the big game-changer: storing knowledge. The Library of Alexandria was like the Google of its day. You could actually test your ideas against ancient wisdom.
But we still had problems. Make a mistake? Tough luck. You’d have to cross it out or start over. Not exactly efficient.
The printing press was a huge leap forward, but even then, mistakes happened. You’d have to put out new editions just to fix typos.
Remember Tipp-Ex? That white goop was a lifesaver for typewriter users. Messy, but it did the job.
Word processors were a revelation. Finally, we could fix our mistakes before printing. No more white-out nightmares.
Then came computers, and hell, did things change. Spell check, grammar check, and the sometimes-maddening autocorrect became our constant companions. And research? It exploded. Suddenly, we could fact-check anything with a quick Google search. It felt like we had the world’s knowledge at our fingertips.
But now? We’re in a whole new ballgame with AI. It’s like we’ve opened Pandora’s box. You’ve got idiots claiming you can write a book in a day or whip up a movie script without breaking a sweat. The internet’s infested with influencers promising that AI can create entire courses in minutes.
It’s gotten to the point where some are saying we don’t even need ideas anymore – just let the AI do it all. And they’re even selling this shit! It’s a bit unsettling, isn’t it? We’ve gone from carefully crafting our thoughts to potentially outsourcing our creativity.
You know, this AI craze isn’t just theoretical for me. It hit close to home recently when my neighbor, none other than UK TV presenter Noel Edmonds, came to dinner. He was buzzing with excitement, thinking he was about to change the world with AI radio. I had to burst his bubble! I told him straight up,
“If you think the world’s interested in AI-generated Led Zeppelin, you’re delusional.”
It’s not just Noel, though. This AI creativity thing is everywhere. I was reading about Stephen Fry’s reaction when a friend proudly announced they’d “written” a song using AI. Fry was dismayed, and rightly so. Where’s the soul in that? Where’s the humanity?
It reminds me of something Nick Cave said about AI-generated songs. He called it “a kind of burlesque”. He’s got a point. When we use AI to create art, we’re not really creating. We’re just imitating, and poorly at that.
Here’s the thing: real art, whether it’s music, writing, or anything else, comes from human experience. It’s born from our struggles, our joys, our heartbreaks. An AI can string words together or compose a melody, sure. But it can’t infuse that creation with the raw emotion that makes art resonate with people.
Think about your favorite song. Chances are, you love it not just because it sounds good, but because it speaks to you on an emotional level. It makes you feel something. That’s the human touch, and it’s something AI just can’t replicate.
So while AI might be able to churn out content faster than we ever could, we need to ask ourselves: at what cost? Are we willing to trade the soul of creativity for convenience? As for me, I’d rather listen to a flawed but heartfelt human creation any day over a perfect but soulless AI generation.
Don’t get me wrong, AI has its place. It’s a fantastic tool for many things. But when it comes to creativity, to art, to the expressions of the human spirit? I think we need to be careful. We might just be on the verge of losing something precious in our rush to embrace this new technology.
The Rise and Fall of Ai Generated Content
Look, I get it. The first time I saw AI churn out an article in mere seconds, my jaw hit the floor. And yes, I was guilty of publishing pure AI articles. But the honeymoon period soon wore off.
I began to see the AI patterns of text and speech – it became more and more obvious until now I can spot an AI-generated article in an instant.
What is it that makes AI-generated text so recognizable? Well, AI is stale and mechanical for a start. It uses regular sentence lengths and adds jargon and overly complex words. There’s no flow – it feels unnatural, with flowery embellishment that serves no reason to be there and overly formal or clichéd language. There’s a lot of correlative conjunction or circumlocution, and it always ends with a vague, generalized conclusion that lacks depth and specificity.
Then there’s the use of words we simply don’t use as humans, like “in the realm of,” “a testament to,” “in the world of,” etc.
When you prompt AI to write an article on a topic, it simply spits out AI-generated garbage. Yes, it may add a few links or a little research, but the general attitude now is to let AI do its thing and as long as it’s fact-checked, “it’ll do!”
Well, it won’t do at all!
Lose, Lose
The rise of AI-generated content comes with significant drawbacks that alienate audiences and harm your website’s performance. As people become more attuned to the characteristics of AI output, they find themselves less inclined to engage with it. This can lead to a higher bounce rate, where readers quickly leave a site upon realizing the content lacks authenticity or depth.
If you run a website, this is particularly troubling for SEO. Despite embracing ai for it’s own self-serving agenda Google has openly stated that it will penalize sites that rely heavily on AI-generated content, effectively prioritizing quality and human touch over robotic output. This creates a dangerous cycle: as engagement diminishes, so do your chances of ranking well in search results.
How to Make Ai Your Friend
So how do we embrace the incredible advancement of AI without losing the human gift we’ve been given? It’s not hard! Just like Tipp-Ex, AI is a tool. It’s the Tipp-Ex, the second edition, and the word and grammar check all rolled into one incredible resource.
But let’s be clear: it’s not a replacement or an excuse to be lazy. You still need to write the damn article!
Before the dawn of AI, we would set out our ideas, research them, and test them. We’d craft sentences and paragraphs, write a full article, and then spend hours refining it—adding, deleting, and polishing until it shone.
Now, AI has given us the amazing ability to turbocharge that process. It speeds things up without taking away the essence of what we create.
Take this article, for instance. Does it sound AI-generated? No! Because I wrote the damn thing. I came up with the idea, I set out the format, and I wrote almost every word. What I didn’t need to do was spend hours refining it. Instead, I ran it through my favorite AI tool, Perplexity. It cross-references facts, checks my spelling and grammar, and helps ensure everything flows nicely.
If you embrace AI and put in the effort, you can create a human-AI collaboration that works beautifully together. The key is to remember that while AI can enhance our writing process, it can’t replace the human touch that makes our work unique. So use it wisely—let it assist you in refining your ideas rather than doing the heavy lifting for you.
In short, harnessing AI means being smarter about how we write. It’s about enhancing our creativity while still putting in the hard work that makes our writing resonate with readers. When we strike that balance, we can produce content that’s not just efficient but also rich in humanity and insight.
Just like this….
