It’s 2026 and generative artificial intelligence is sweeping across the globe with formidable speed. Entire fields are threatened with obsolescence and disruption, including art, teaching, therapy, and various others; fields which not long ago were immune to automation by virtue of their inherent subjectivity. Writing, as an extension of art, is not immune to the trend, and is closest to the epicentre by virtue of how modern large language models work. Entire essays are now just a prompt away, and soon entire textbooks will materialise in the blink of an eye. In some ways, it’s wonderful, and humanity will certainly benefit greatly, but given the unprecedented obsolescence we are witnessing, one could wonder whether we have seen the last generations of writers, and you would be forgiven for asking: Why bother writing? The answer is found by decoupling the act of writing from the end product, and asking: Why does writing matter to the writer?
The act of writing, drafting, editing, revising, and finally publishing, is an act of self transformation. It begins with unstructured thought, the raw material of the soul, and ends when that which has meaning to the author has been made meaningful to others. Along the way, disorder is challenged, balance emerges between opposites, and the author’s own mind is enriched. Perspective broadens and skills sharpen, until the author’s own voice has been revealed as no more than a character in a story. After all is said and done, a new person emerges, and their work stands as a testament not to who they are now, but to who they shed to be here. It’s this metamorphosis which gives meaning to writing, and the personal growth it takes is what differentiates human writers from artificial intelligence.
When we generate text without deep engagement with the subject matter, we deny ourselves the opportunity to grow beyond our limitations, we restrict our output to the technology we have available, and we risk missing an opportunity that may not come again. When we write without changing ourselves, our work diverges from art and becomes far closer to simply purchasing an item in a store. To continue the analogy: Buying furniture may permit us a beautiful home, and others may praise our decor, but did we truly produce anything beyond the arrangement? Did we learn to craft a chair, gain an appreciation of metallurgy, or discover the joy of putting paint to a canvas? Did we grow new skills and discover ourselves, or did we simply arrange other people’s work? We may become interior decorators (a respectable profession), but there is a distinction between composition and creation, and just as arranging furniture does not transform us into carpenters, prompting an intelligence does not grow our writing skills. Consuming the work of others does not nurture the soul; instead, it simply defers our growth to others and positions us as consumers of a service. I offer this position not to judge or gatekeep who is and is not a writer (or any other craft for that matter), but from a desire to remain critically aware of how our actions affect our future.
When we invest in ourselves, we transcend our limitations and nurture who we will be for years to come, but when we pay others to do the heavy lifting, we remain exactly as we are. Growing ourselves across decades is a truly rewarding experience, for it pays dividends in the form of joy that cannot be purchased or outsourced to others, human or not. That joy comes from within, because it can only be achieved by challenging ourselves, finding our limitations, and becoming more than we once were, so offloading the struggle to an external source is simply unviable. To experience the joy of metamorphosis, we must continue to hone ourselves, find our missing pieces, and invest in our own capacities.
Of course, none of this is to say we must all master every craft, and it should certainly not be interpreted as an indictment of collaboration. I myself did not produce any of the furniture in my house (save for a few paintings), and I would not know where to begin. I am not a carpenter and have accepted that my time is better spent on other tasks (writing, painting, and software engineering). Society’s greatest gift is the time it permits to focus on the areas that are important to us while outsourcing the rest to others, and even the lucky few of us who receive the life of a renaissance man (or more modernly, renaissance person) cannot master truly everything. Working together allows a level of comfort and grace we could not achieve on our own, and collaboration is amongst the most beautiful tenets of humanity. We must acknowledge the distinction between work and requisition, though, for the process is what matters. Prompting an artificial intelligence yields a result, but it is fundamentally different to producing novel material with ourselves. The latter is what nurtures us, so in the end we don’t write for other people, no, we write to find ourselves, and when others find value in our words, that simply means we helped them along the way.
All this to say: Writing is a deeply human act which nurtures the soul by requiring growth, and when we use artificial intelligence to bypass the difficult parts, we risk missing the metamorphosis entirely. Its usefulness as an assistant is undeniable, and it can benefit writers greatly, but there is a clear distinction between using artificial intelligence to edit work grown within, and generating material that has no human origin save for the underlying training data. Awareness of this distinction is critical, for it ultimately determines whether we will grow or stagnate not just as writers but as people. I invite you to consider: What are you gaining when you write purely from your own heart, and what are you losing when you outsource your creativity to a machine? The tradeoff may not be as worthwhile as it seems.