We stop here
I made my friend write her own summary and elevator pitch.
She had written a book. Herself, with her own thoughts and skills and imperfect punctuation, and she was going to hand the synopsis and pitch tasks to GenAI.
This wasn’t a principle I was fully aware I had until I met it.
I’m not anti-GenAI. I am, as a designer working in technology and with AI tools, AI-cautious. I talk and think and write a lot about cognition, types of cognitive load, and cognitive health. You can read some of my views here and here.
When my friend mentioned her plan, an internal alarm went off. It became deafening when she told me why: she wasn’t feeling confident about it.
I phrased it as a challenge, though I started with a nervous, “Ehhhrrrr…” which I’m sure she recognized for what it was. Still, I said something like, “I would challenge you to not hand that over. It’s yours. Writing that synopsis is an important process you should not give away.”
I’m sure I was emphatic. Probably loud. We’re good friends. I care about her brain (and her).
The next day, she sent a text. “Thanks for the encouragement to take a stab at my elevator pitch. It’s a great exercise.” Then later, “I’m still working on it, but the process was really helpful.”
The process. That’s what I needed to hear. Process is the precious thing that I believe should be treated like a body part. I’m still using my liver, and until I’m not, nobody gets to have or borrow it.
Stepping away from what might be a troubling metaphor, I agree there are times something we’re not confident doing should be handed off—to an expert human, or for affordability and/or speed, to GenAI (while checking its sources!).
But the kind of writing I'm talking about here is Creating—authorship. And when someone asks about what you wrote, I would hope you don’t choose to channel a machine whose contributions are rooted only in what has already been thought.
The machine will faithfully and excellently synthesize what you’ve written. When you, the human creator, do it, you are doing something more. You’re rediscovering your own ideas from a shifted perspective. There’s room to realize that perhaps there’s more (or less) you want to say, and to assert the value of what you’ve written, for yourself as well as for others. I’m sure I’m not capturing everything about the power of this choice, because it’s personal to you. Which I suppose is my point.
Woman taking time for process by a window, Me selfied by me.