AI Writing Generically Good: On Why Generic Is Bad

I’ve explained already that AI writing is much better than the average high schooler and probably a decent chunk of college students. And I didn’t say anything about how convenient it is to us AI. Writing is time-consuming, and you need a decently comfortable and quiet place to do it. AI can spit your essay out in seconds.

 

But AI is also generic. For me at this particular moment, its AI’s generic quality that is its biggest weakness. In what follows, I want to explore what it means for something to be generic, and why that’s bad for writing (and any form of self-expression). 

 

Generic comes from the word “general,” as in that which is most general has the quality of being generic. General is the opposite of specific. Think of general and specific as being on opposite sides of a continuum, sort of like this:

 

 

And we can map all sorts of concepts, phrases, and even essays and portraits on this continuum if we want. Here is a general – specific continuum for dogs:

 

 

Notice how the general side of the continuum barely distinguishes dogs from other animals. Then we’ve got the whole subspecies of Terriers, then the specific class of Terrier, and so on. Finally on the far right is my specific dog—the dude we’ve had for eight years and who jumped up so forcefully and lovingly that he gave Erica (pictured) a black eye (not pictured). When I think of my dog Ranger, I get all of these memories that are specific to me and him. You can listen to my memories, but that still doesn’t make them your memories. You hear my memories and learn about who I am as a person through those stories. AI can’t give any of that. 

 

When you ask AI to describe your dog, for example, it can only talk about dogs in general. Here’s what Microsoft’s AI had to tell me about dogs: Dogs are some of the most popular companion animals, and they tend to share a few core traits—though every dog has it’s own personality. Notice how the dogs described here are shown in their least specific traits. You don’t get the feeling that this AI worked with a dog for six weeks trying to get him to use the pet door. There is no history there. It’s like asking some aging anthropologist to describe what life is like as a first-year college student.

 

Of course, there is a skill to the sorts of prompts you ask AI—skills that can enhance how general or specific its answers are. For instance, AI can’t know the personality of your dog unless you input that information. Doing so gets you a bit further along the continuum towards specificity. But even if you did all this, even if you said that your dog was a Pit-Bull – Yellow Lab mutt and he gets real anxious whenever he walks into a bathroom, AI will still just talk about dogs getting anxious in general and how it can occur in certain settings such as bathrooms. It doesn’t tell you anything. It’s frustrating.

 

Your Specific Viewpoint is Unique—There’s Only One Like It, and It Belongs to You!

 

The American novelist Kurt Vonnegut liked to doodle and paint in his free time. None of his works are particularly realistic. What I mean is that you won’t look at one of his self-portraits and mistake it for a photograph. But they’re better than realistic renderings of himself. His doodles and sketches impart more than information—they impart a sort of whimsicalness that is consistent with his writing style and (I’m told) his personality.

 

For fun, I’ve done my own self-portrait. I did about a dozen of them one day, because I wanted to. Here is one of those images, which I made using my Kindle and stylus:

 

 

It’s definitely me, but it sort of looks like a six-year old did it while in a rush. But it definitely has a personality—a point of view and perspective. In it you can see what I chose to spend time including. Every scribble represents a choice that I made. You get a bit of who I am in it. That’s the good stuff. That’s what attracts others to my writing, my stories, my music, my art. I know this because AI is much easier to find and can produce artifacts and explanations that are generally accepted (which I’m saying is the problem).

 

Compare my scribbling to a sketch I asked MS's AI to create from a picture I took of myself:

 

 

This one is way more realistic. It gives a better impression of what I look like. But if that was the goal, doesn’t the picture work better? At least the picture requires someone with eyeballs to situate the camera and decide the best filter and all of that. AI makes those decisions for you. Everything that was contributed was done by something without perspective and without anything to risk.

 

Obviously, if you compare the two, the second looks like it was done by an accomplished portraitist, albeit one who lacks style. Notice how all the edges are soft like the whole thing has been airbrushed. It’s just a picture. Just information.

 

The first, albeit unrealistic, has personality. Plus I’m the one who created it. I didn’t do this second one. It doesn’t mean anything to me (except for the shirt I’m wearing in it, which I picked out and quite like—again, I prefer the choices that were mine). The first reveals something about me and what I care about. The second reveals nothing.