Why an essay is the one thing AI can't write
An essay entangles lived experience and reflection that moves the writer. AI can write almost anything, except lived experience out in the world.
The aim is not to convince but to clarify; not to simplify but to render break the complex down into intelligible parts.
This brings me to my own work. I try to write essays, not posts.
An essay is not an update or an argument to win. It is a movement of thought. I am not trying to be right, or to persuade you, or to sell a simple trick. I am trying to think clearly about something in plain view, and to make it clearer.
By that definition, an essay is the one thing AI cannot write. It can write almost anything. It cannot write lived experience out in the world.
An essay weaves four things together: lived experience, personal notes, ideas, and reflection that actually moves the writer. The last part is the catch. The machine has no life for the thinking to happen inside.
Lived experience out in the world, which for judgment, creativity, and design work is.
The aim is not to convince but to clarify; not to simplify but to render break the complex down into intelligible parts.
An essay is not an update or an argument to win.
I am not trying to be right, or to persuade you, or to sell a simple trick.
Each piece I write starts from something ordinary. A swipe. A button. A word that changes meaning once a machine handles it. Then I follow the thread through design, philosophy, and lived life.
I try to look at my own world from a slight distance, as if I were an outsider in it. That distance is uncomfortable, but it gives a strange clarity. You start to see how the tools we make begin to make us back.
And that is the point for your work too. If you work in judgment, creativity, or design, your lived experience and your stakes are not extra. They are the one material the machine does not have.
An essay is not an update or an argument to win.
Lived experience out in the world, which for judgment, creativity, and design work is your edge.
An essay entangles lived experience and reflection that moves the writer. AI can write almost anything, except lived experience out in the world.
This is the short version. Read the full-length essay, “Essays: the only thing AI cannot write”.
This issue is part of Everybody's Smart, a newsletter on taste, judgment, AI, culture, cognition, and the future of professional work. New issues every 2 to 3 weeks, free on LinkedIn.
Subscribe →