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Summary
Writing is a mode of inquiry. It’s a mindful exercise that turns human experience into understanding. Since AI can uplift millions who aren’t fluent in English, it will empower people. But beyond that, we should view writing as a starting point of knowledge.
Before we slouch into the arena to discuss AI writing versus human writing, we need to zoom out and ask a simpler question: What is writing?
At its most fundamental level, it is “a way to communicate meaning across space and time” (as speaketh Claude AI). But at a more philosophical level, writing is a mode of inquiry. It is how we observe and ponder. It is how we cohere human experience into understanding. It is conscious daydreaming.
Just as no two people have identical dreams, no two people’s written work can perfectly plot onto each other’s. And that is why writing is so glorious. It is specific to each one of us.
Those who argue that large language models (LLMs) are like the calculator—it helps us arrive quicker at an answer—see writing as a tool.
Sure, it is a tool, but unlike mathematics, with writing, there is no one correct answer. If we see writing only as a tool, then we overlook the importance of lived experience.
Writing and reading is an act of communion, and for it to be sanctified, we need the facts. Has this author spent hours, days, weeks or months kneading each sentence into meaning? Or has the person fed prompts into a system and relied entirely on an external syntax?
Today, the scandal over the Commonwealth Short Story prize winners is because they cheated. Or allegedly did.
Serious long-form fiction and non-fiction is an endurance sport; it is as much about intellect and rigour as it is about persistence. To pass off AI’s work as one’s own is to mock the entire enterprise. Those who use LLMs reach the finish line of the marathon first, but without the pounding chest, the drenched body and the buckling legs. What is the point of running the race at all, one could ask.
The hue and cry over the Commonwealth short story winners is less about quality and more about a breach of faith. The writers lied, took a shortcut and were then caught out.
I am not saying that I will never read a book written by an LLM. But what I want is the truth; tell me it has been written by a non-human. We are now starting to see that, for example, the book The AI Ten Commandments: A New Moral Code for Humanity is authored by “Jamie Metzl and GPT-5.” With time, we will see many more such non-human ‘co-authors.’
When it comes to functional writing, business memos and interminable emails, the usefulness of AI is undeniable. Why spend hours on a business brief that Claude can write better and more precisely within seconds? But we must hold journalism and all of literature—fiction and non-fiction—to higher standards.
We read an article, short story or book not to witness how adroitly an author can prompt engineer, but to parse the fruits of toil and attention. I will always prefer a book that an author has taken 10 years to write over a book that was completed in a week by a bot. Toil is vital because it emphasizes slowness, it rewards pain and pause over optimization.
No author writes because it is easy. Rather, it is the hardest thing that they love to do.
I have been teaching a short writing workshop to women MBA scholars for over a decade. Initially, the course was called Elements of Writing, as it led students through the technicalities of it. But I’ve recently changed the course to Write to Know. Because I now realize that students do not need to know the quirks of writing as they once did. Instead, they need writing to know themselves and to be known.
While we’ve returned to pen and paper in the classroom, AI has proven to be an equalizer.
In the past, one would often miss the argument for the language. But now, I only look at a student’s unique observations and imagination, because I know the syntax can be fixed by a machine. For once, these students—many from towns like Meerut and Ghaziabad and Kullu and Madhubani—have the confidence to read out their work to the entire class, because no one is judging them for spellings or subject-verb agreement or dangling modifiers.
In the classroom, and through the written page, these young professional women, many who’ve left their homes for the first time, find their voice in unexpected and revelatory ways. They write notes that arise from their darkest moments and their hope-filled futures. Thanks to AI, non-native English speakers can be judged for what they say rather than how they say it.
As a teacher, I tell them to use writing as a tool of excavation, before handing it over to AI for the gilding. They cannot outsource their thinking to a machine, but they can rely on it for polishing their prose.
LLMs will likely empower millions who lack felicity in the English language. But just as it is an equalizer, it is a leveller too. It flattens human tics.
At a time when being a snowflake is considered uncool, writing, in the best way, reminds us that we are all snowflakes. Our prose is unique to each one of us, it is our thumbprint in words. And for that, it needs to be celebrated, and more importantly, protected.
The author is associate director, New India Foundation, and a literary critic.
English (US) ·