The crafting of writing in the era of AI

The crafting of writing is not just typing or arranging words side by side. So, a piece of writing is not just a syntactic structure. It is indeed a semantic sculpture as well as a pragmatic pyramid of our written landscape. However, in the age of artificial intelligence, writing seems as simple as typing a prompt and pressing enter although I have a different take on this matter. In this regard, I would like to add a disclaimer that I am not against AI tools. I am a bit critical on the way of using AI for writing. 

I believe writing begins as a spark of thought. Those thoughts pass through vision, imagination, and intuition. Each one further shifts, sharpens, and reshapes those thoughts. But the AI generated sentences developed from 175 billion random parameters of lexical chunks and units of thoughts available in digital world detached from our idiosyncratic version of thoughts and imaginations. Instead of coalescing our own thoughts into chunks of words, AI bots write human-like responses using natural language understanding (NLU) by distancing us from contextual reality and intuitive need. 

Aligning to this viewpoint, John Warner in his book- How to think about writing in the Age of AI- ChatGPT is, in his view, the opposite, a literal averaging of intelligence, a featureless landscape of pattern-derived text. Therefore, AI‑produced sentences can fail to capture the underlying meaning because they don’t fully grasp the contextual relationships we create when we arrange words. Human meaning-making isn’t linear; it’s a web of cues, expectations, and shared experiences. For example, word order can completely change intent: “Only she said he lied” versus “She only said he lied” versus “She said only he lied.” Same words, ordered differently, produce different realities.

Similarly, cultural context shapes interpretation. If someone in New Zealand says, “It’s a bit chilly,” they might mean it’s freezing. AI may take these sentences literally without semantic and pragmatic considerations. 

Writing is feeling, and if nothing is felt while we are writing, we are just missing an opportunity to our own humanity and authenticity of our expressions into the arrangement of words. AI models like ChatGPT or Jenni AI which composes texts on the basis of Large Language Model (LLM), an optimal algorithmic procedure to produce lexical chunks, cannot have their own idea of rhetoric, let alone contextual feelings and genuine intention. That is why Linguist Steven pinker avers in The Sense of Style that there is no algorithm to write a genuine sentence. A sentence needs to possess contextuality and authenticity to its intention. Its Latin root sententia denotes the sense of sentimental thinking. So, the making of a sentence presupposes an engagement with the contextual reality of the intended meanings. 

However, we cannot ignore the potential of smart prompts to the AI bots, which can certainly produce quality literary or critical write ups for journalism, academic needs and day to day life of our writing needs out of the LLM algorithm of AI tools. 

So, the first question that comes to my mind is, what happens when people have texts (of whatever sort) merely ‘spoon-fed’ to them instead of experiencing the writing processes themselves?

Firstly, ‘spoon-fed’ writing from AI tools is likely to coarse and corrode our thinking for writing by ourselves. This type of thought process underlying most writing processes can lead not only to changes in the text we intend, but also in the attitude of the writing person himself/herself towards the topic.

Secondly, the father of modern linguistics Noam Chomsky warned us in 2022 that ChatGPT is a 'High-Tech Plagiarism' and 'way to avoid learning' in the context of our future academia which is now the harsh reality. Many of the world class universities are moving back to the pen-n-paper based exam system and Viva/Oral Examinations for learning assessment as assignment-based assessment seems like cliché due to the AL bots. 

With AI capable of generating essays, reports, and code in seconds, traditional take-home assignments no longer measure true understanding, educators are being pushed to rethink assessment from the ground up, shifting toward formats that emphasize reasoning, originality, and in‑the‑moment problem‑solving. Oral defences, practical demonstrations, collaborative projects, and supervised writing are becoming essential tools for distinguishing genuine comprehension from AI‑assisted output.

We should never forget that writing is the product of rigorous thinking. It is fully embodied experience involving both expression and exploration of an idea. So, when people stop writing texts by themselves, they stop thinking and expression their idiosyncratic nature of expression. As a result, the absence of rigorous thinking can shrink pre-frontal cortex of human race in future− cautioned by cognitive psychologists. I am not completely against the efficient and ethical use of AI for our all sorts of writing needs ranging from replying to emails to brainstorming for academic articles.

Therefore, we can use AI tools for brainstorming for our writing needs with caveats but the final responsibility for contextual clarity and originality still rests on us as writers.

(Dr. S.M. Akramul Kabir is a research fellow at the University of Otago, New Zealand)