Blogging under AI

Jim Nielsen riffs on iA’s writing about AI in Impressionist Blogging.

It will no longer be enough to blog in order to merely “put out content”. The key will be what has always been key to great blogging: expressing your unique, inimitable impression.

Blogging is expressing your impression. It’s deriving action from thought. Regardless of how much the AI sphere may not be giving thought to its actions, continued blogging in the face of that reality is deliberate action with thought — something only us humans can do. Blog. Blog against the dying of the light.

I find some comfort in this perspective. Though, through the years, I've made a conscious effort to make my writing kind of impersonal: for a long time, avoiding the first-person, avoiding any obviously attempts at having a writing style. But the humanity comes through whether I wanted it to or not.

I find it hard to avoid looking at the AI wave as kind of a battle: those using AI to pump out text are only able to do so because of the reams of handcrafted writing that is now reduced to 'training data.' The more AI-generated content that's published, the worse the training data, because of that disintegrating-tape-loop self-annihilation sort of cycle. Despite my earnest efforts to ban the robots from this website, they're definitely still using it as training data. As I wrote back in 2021): When you share something for free, the first thing that happens is that someone else will sell it.

But Jim - and iA - are finding some peace with the scenario, and I'm trying to as well. After all, my little corner on the internet isn't going to wrestle these giant corporations to the ground. I'm going to keep writing and making things because it brings me joy, and I might as well find some way to do so without grumpiness.

Am I writing too much about AI? Tell me in the comments on Mastodon, I guess. I've found it pretty hard to figure out what kind of 'vibes' I'm putting out in the world or what I give the impression of focusing on the most.