I Wrote a Sentence Today

Something like don’t forget the pasta, and I found myself just looking at the words.

I was thinking about all these things that we write, all these words that we scribble with a pen or tap out on a keyboard or thumb onto a phone and then think nothing else of them. And yet those words were important enough to write at the time, and the fact of writing them lends them a certain permanence.

I type up so many words – emails confirming my attendance at a meeting or messages thanking a friend – and those words are backed up and the backups backed up to three generations and then those words reside on servers probably never to be seen again. All those words that were important enough to put down at the time and are then forgotten.

Words like this blog post. I like to think it’s interesting enough to read now, I’m under no illusions that people will be looking at in 100 years time.

I’ve been looking at ChatGPT – the AI writer. It’s very impressive, but there’s no intent behind the words, no history or provenance or web of interactions that led to its words being written in the first place.

For that reason alone what ChatGPT writes will always be less interesting than something written by a human.