The impact of AI on how I think about publishing my writing

I love writing.

It is a powerful expression of who we individually are, and a medium by which we can share our knowledge for another person’s benefit.

For decades now, the internet has been a place where if you knew how to publish your ideas, you were free to do so, build an audience, and if you chose to, make a living off of your perspective.

However, I fear this golden age is coming to a close as I have felt AI’s magnetism first hand, likely just like you have.

Our information gateway is changing

I love ChatGPT, and ever since OpenAI released the ability to speak to it and it talk back, I have found myself having incredibly deep, valuable conversations with it.

I’m not reading articles.

I am exploring my own mind with AI as if it was another human collaborator who possesses all of humanity’s collective published knowledge in their head.

I find myself craving the intellectual conversation about my niche curious pursuits, the type of subjects my wife’s eyes glaze over listening to.

AI listens and willingly engages with no effort or judgement.

This unlimited access to the most intelligent teacher the world has ever known has driven me to yearn for the day I can finally converse with it using only my thoughts.

Trust me, I recognize how dystopian this all sounds, but I feel powerless to stop it.

Using a search engine to access a curated library of content feels as antiquated as physically visiting a library, and Google and Apple’s voice assistants are just another way of accessing their, now suboptimal, search engines.

Why deal with any of this searching nonsense when I have my AI super intelligent BFF in my pocket ready to, not only answer my questions, but to have engaging Q&A about whatever it may be?

That’s the thing.

I won’t.

Which means, others are likely to not either, so there’s an increasing probability no human is going to read my content directly at any point in the near future either...

...but AIs will, and my humanity will be stripped from my words with no credit or consequences as they carry on conversations with other people who chat with them just like I do.

I don’t want to become nothing more than an uncited source, and I’m positive you don’t either.

So what do we do?

Options

I believe thoughts like this article are fine on the open web just like social media posts, but content we invest a significant amount of time in should only be put behind a paywall or into a physical book.

This is because AI can only be trained on what it can access freely, so in order to give ourselves the best shot at preserving our mental independence from the artificial hive mind, we will need to carefully add intentional barriers to access our most sculpted thoughts.