And I certainly do not want AI to write my books for me, or paint my pictures. Not only would the work be terrible: it wouldn’t even be work. As all creatives know, there is limited joy in having written a book – as soon as it is done, most of us are on to the next thing. The thrill, the joy, the beauty, is in the writing of a book. If you outsource your creative work to a computer, you are not a creative. Someone who merely churns out product is not an artist – they are a salesperson. The artist is the person who makes, not who has made.
October 2025
Generative AI makes it harder to teach humanistic skills
AI makes the humanities more important, but also a lot weirder
But in the longer run, the damage is being done to students. By making effort an optional factor in higher education rather than the whole point of it, LLMs risk producing a generation of students who have simply never experienced the feeling of focused intellectual work. Students who have never faced writer’s block are also students who have never experienced the blissful flow state that comes when you break through writer’s block. Students who have never searched fruitlessly in a library for hours are also students who, in a fundamental and distressing way, simply don’t know what a library is even for.
Blogging
The blogosphere, in its many incarnations since the beginning of the web, didn’t happen on its own. In fact, it often happened in stark contrast to expectations for the web (consider the many times that the web has been declared “dead”). It happened through the concerted efforts of its greatest advocates. And if you’re reading this blog you’re probably one of them, and we can all make that effort together.
The Publishing Industry Has a Gambling Problem
Companies keep betting on the next bestseller. Literature is poorer for it
“These books that have huge price tags are given impossible expectations to meet.”
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