Here's a modern dilemma.
"My best friend is getting married. They've asked me to give a wedding speech. I love my friend, I want to write the best speech ever, but I'm a bad writer and I'm not very funny. Plus there are going to be hundreds of people there, all listening intently to my every word. That’s scary.
Should I use ChatGPT? It could effortlessly produce a well scripted, personal and funny speech for me. Alternatively I could use it as a writing companion, just for inspiration and structure while I add in some personal bits and refine. What should I do?"
This is a tricky question to answer. Since it launched, ChatGPT has been used for everything. Cover letters, wedding vows, eulogies, blog posts, and more. There are undoubted benefits; it democratises decent writing, saves time and stimulates creativity.
Nevertheless, with things like apologies, using AI can be seen as inauthentic. It’s early days, and we’re only just beginning to form social conventions around AI usage. For quick summaries, instructions, templates and stuff like that though, I think using ChatGPT is a no-brainer.
Meaningful writing is completely different. I’m talking wedding speeches, eulogies, personal stories, travel logs - all those sorts of things. I think we risk losing something deep in ourselves by outsourcing meaningful writing to ChatGPT. Frankly, I don’t think it’s worth relinquishing core parts of the human experience through the expression of meaningful writing, in favour of convenience.
All of this, for some strange reason, reminds me of travelling to a river. Yeah, writing through ChatGPT reminds me of travelling to a local river. Let me explain.
Consider The River
There's a river quite close to where I live. It passes through an open field that has infrequent footfall, which makes it conducive to solitude, thinking alone and finding inspiration.
There are a couple of different ways for me to get to the river. I can walk through a muddy field. That takes a little while, and it's strenuous because it involves finding my wellies, wiping them down, then setting out through the muddy field.
There's a second option. It involves running, essentially circling myself to reach the river by pavement. It's an indirect route. While much, much longer, it provides a sweet opportunity for exercise along a photogenic running path. And it means I land at a different part of the river, a place with a prettier backdrop.
There's a third option: driving. This is the fastest route and also the least inspiring. Admittedly, it's sometimes the most useful, for example when I'm in a hurry, but again, it's uninspiring.
Each route takes me to a different part of the river, but the route I take depends on why I'm going there, together with the overall experience I'm targeting as part of my journey to arrive at the riverbank.
Any time I want to see the river, I'll first think about why I'm going there. Then I'll consider my three options and choose the best route given the initial set of conditions I want to satisfy. Vibes, exercise or convenience.
When people talk about using ChatGPT for writing, it reminds me of travelling to the river. Right now, there's an overwhelming wave of compulsion insisting that people use ChatGPT to write everything possible for them, ranging from blog posts to entire books. To me, that's the same as driving to the river every single time.
There's rarely an analysis of whether it's worth taking a slower journey. And there's rarely an acknowledgement that it's sometimes better to take the slow route and take in the views.
When it comes to writing with ChatGPT, the prevalent message online is VROOM VROOM. Rev up the engines and leave those walking boots at home! Here are my 25 top prompts for serenading your car keys!
Well, today I’d like to encourage you take a step back, and consider your options before you grab your car keys.
Experience, Meaning and Generation Matter
Let me be clear: I'm not setting out a priggish condemnation of using ChatGPT for writing. In fact, I absolutely think you should consider using AI to write - sometimes. But you should be selective, and with meaningful writing, you should be even more selective. With meaningful writing you begin from a place of extreme scepticism.
Below, I’ll share a framework I've developed to think about whether you write something meaningful with AI, or not.
When you're thinking about using ChatGPT to write for you, think about what you're aiming to get, and you should consider what you want in relation to Experience, Meaning and Generation - EMG.
I call this EMG framework. It’s a set of simple questions I’ve come up with that can help you decide whether to incorporate AI into your writing, when you wish to write something meaningful.
Experience - Is there an intrinsically valuable experience of writing this thing? What is the experience of writing that I'll miss out on if I outsource this to ChatGPT?
Meaning- Is there a sense of meaning that will emerge through writing this thing? Am I losing meaning if I outsource this to ChatGPT?
Generation - What is the end product? How valuable is the piece of writing I’ll end up with? Who is it for?
That’s the EMG framework. It helps you steer towards a decision on whether to use ChatGPT or any AI, to write something.
Right, enough with the rivers. Let's return back to our wedding speech. This is my response to the wedding speech dilemma, using EMG.
Should (A)I Write The Wedding Speech?
Now let’s revisit the dilemma with the EMG framework in our toolkit.
Dilemma: My best friend is getting married! They've asked me to give a wedding speech. I love my friend, I'd want to write the best possible speech anyway, but I'm a bad writer and I'm not funny. Plus there are going to be hundreds of people there, all listening intently to my every word. Should I use ChatGPT?
Experience: What is the experience of writing that I'll miss out on if I outsource this to ChatGPT?
Here’s my advice: when you write a wedding speech, it occupies your mind until it's done. It becomes a part of your life until you've finished it. While writing it, you're randomly bombarded with happy memories, references, and other reminders of your friendship. That's what happens when you write a wedding speech for your friend.
If you outsource that to ChatGPT, you'll encounter fewer memories, because you'll spend less time going through old Facebook albums trying to remember funny moments. You'll spend less time in the internal nostalgic field of your friendship. And you won't have that inner assurance that every word in that speech is one you really deliberated over, and then placed there on purpose. I'm not sure it's worth missing out on all that for the sake of mere convenience, and for the assurance of a good, but more impersonal speech.
When writing a wedding speech, it’s about the experience of writing, as much as the result. And the subsequent feeling you’ll get when your friends are beaming at you, your words, your anecdotes, your stories, you, in writing, expressing how you feel about your newly married friends and their journeys to arrive there. Honestly I just don’t think you’ll get that same buzz from outsourcing the speech I’m afraid. Even if the ChatGPT version is more polished and has wittier references.
It won’t be the same. It simply won’t be the same for you, and your human experience, because the experience of writing in this context is intrinsically valuable. You should give yourself the opportunity to experience that.
Meaning - Is there a sense of meaning that will emerge through writing this thing? Am I losing meaning if I outsource this to ChatGPT?
Yeah, I think you’ll end up with a deeper appreciation for your friends and their union.
Time is valuable because we’re all on limited time. Writing is time-consuming. So spending time writing imbues your writing with meaning. All your sentences, jokes, paragraphs - the structure of the speech itself - when you agonise over all of that over time, you’re creating meaning. For your friends, but ultimately for you.
If you outsource this to an AI entirely, or use one as a companion, you’re consierably cutting short the length of time you spend on the speech, which will result in a less meaningful speech I think.
Of course, there’s a balance to be struck between time and meaning - otherwise you could hundreds of hours etching the wedding speech on a 12ft tablet to maximise its meaning. It’s a silly idea if taken to its logical extreme!
That said, there balance is to be found in taking enough time to build out the best words to describe how you’re feeling. That’s where the meaning comes from.
Generation - What is the end product? How valuable is the piece of writing I’ll end up with? Who is it for?
The end product is the wedding speech. It needs to be highly individual, because that’s where it’ll derive most of its value from.
Once more, I don't think the ease and convenience of instant generation is worth the trade off in this instance. This needs to be highly individual, and even if it isn't as funny or witty as ChatGPT wedding speech.
Even if it isn’t as well-structured, much of the value and emotional resonance - both to you and your friends, will come about from the knowledge that you spent time deliberating on every word, every phrase, every paragraph. Everything was something you chose - you and nobody else - with the intention of communication to your friends just how special their union is. That’s special in itself.
That's the EMG model in practice. You can apply it to different writing scenarios, such as eulogies, cover letters and more. I've found it helpful, hopefully you’ll find it helpful too.
Writing something meaningful is a journey. Whatever written work you end up with is the destination, but the journey matters too. Thanks to modern AI we aren’t limited to long walks to get around. We can set the coordinates, hop in the car and get to wherever we need to get to almost immediately. That’s great; it absolutely has its uses and applications.
Please don’t forget to enjoy the walk from time to time too though. Walking is worthwhile, because it leads to a journey which is both more meaningful and memorable.
After all, sometimes the destination is only worth advancing towards because it necessitates a meaningful journey to begin with. And that’s why you should consider meaningful writing, or, writing meaningfully, without ChatGPT.
For the record, this came to me one winter afternoon while walking across that mucky field to the river.
When I got there, I noticed the ripples on the surface forming into flowing lattices, before transforming into small circular ripples, resembling the ones you see on small ponds.
Crouching near the water for a closer look, I saw those small ripples drift towards the river bank, before fading into tiny waves and disappearing, right by my wellies. It was really cool. And definitely something I would’ve missed if I’d taken the car. So yeah it was well worth the slow, cold winter walk to get there that day.
Thanks for reading. Also, thanks for the continued feedback and engagement on my older posts. I hope to see you by the river soon.