Beyond the AI Panic: A Writer Finds His Way
Corey McLaughlin is a writer and editor based in Baltimore, Maryland. You can find him on LinkedIn.
AI shows up in my life as a question in my brain about what part of the technology is important, what’s not, and how it might work for me or replace me. Yet despite the desire for answers, keeping up with the various language models feels like a time drain. What I learn about AI today might be obsolete tomorrow or by next season. We’re still in such early days of AI that keeping up with the rapid developments may feel like more trouble than it’s worth, akin to the early days of the Internet or other technological breakthroughs. One day, a Chinese start-up, DeepSeek, might be said to be ending American AI development as we know it. A month later, a company like Perplexity develops its own anti-Chinese Communist Party model: “R1 1776 - a version of DeepSeek R1 that’s been post-trained to remove the China censorship and provide unbiased, accurate responses.” (I’m American, so that sounds great, but no source is totally unbiased.)
But here we are, writing an essay about AI for a company devoted to publishing insights and creating products about the technology while my kids play upstairs and, not to be totally stereotypical, as my wife does laundry and our dog barks at something outside. I’m putting time into this. I’ve become convinced AI is so important to my future livelihood that it’s pulled me away from the present.
I’m a 16-year journalism survivor. Early in my career, I stayed in this industry because I loved crafting a story and found satisfaction in creating a piece of writing from scratch to the best of my ability. I never thought I was the best writer and still don’t. But I also believed I would outwork everybody else and make a living writing. The truth is I’ve done that.
But as I’ve heard more about AI, I’ve felt a sense of existential dread. I can see a future where powerful AI tools could threaten my writing career. I co-host a podcast, the Stansberry Investor Hour, and we recently interviewed a former Harvard professor, John Sviokla of GAI Insights. He told us that workers whose jobs involve words, images, numbers, and sounds will be most impacted by AI. He calls this framework “WINS.” I’m part of the first letter of the acronym. As a writer, I’d be a fool to ignore the fundamental changes in publishing the written word.
I’m trying to understand how “AI” can help me, or replace me, so I can avoid the latter fate. (Keep your enemies closer.) As I explore AI, I’m considering how AI-related tools can replace tedious parts of my writing process. I’d love for AI, or anything else, to do two things only a writer would understand:
1. Transcribe interviews and organize the subject matter into categories for reference while writing a long-form journalism piece or email newsletter.
2. Write in my style based on an outline I provide. Then I can edit as needed.
If tools existed to do these things accurately, easily, and faster than without AI, I could be a better writer, more productive, efficient, and have more time for other things and/or feel less deadline pressure or anxiety.
I have found part of what I’m seeking.
A few days ago, I decided to be among the first to buy Apple’s new iPhone 16e, a more affordable version of its new Apple Intelligence-enabled phones. It came pre-loaded with a tool that could transcribe interview audio to text almost instantly on one device. In the world of newspaper and website reporting, in which I began my career, it would have been a major benefit. In the world of magazine and newsletter writing in which I live today, it will be invaluable. This is a welcome surprise in my AI adventures. Tedious transcribing can take dozens of hours for a feature story. And, in my sports writing life on a tight deadline in a press box, speed is critical to turnaround interviews from a locker room or post-game press conference. Not having to transcribe quotes while writing a deadline story is magic. The ability for my phone to transcribe saves time and stress, though the transcription isn’t perfect. Some words are missing or sentences incomplete. A re-read and re-listen may be needed, but the transcripts have been good enough and I suspect will improve. I haven’t found something to analyze the transcript yet.
The Holy Grail — an AI that “writes like me” — remains in question. I’ve learned to create prompts to approximate my taste and style, but it seems as much work to ask a machine to do that than to write a first draft myself and use AI tools to help. (More on this momentarily.) Plus, I don’t think anything can replace the satisfaction of creating a truly original work. That’s not to say AI-powered technology can’t do it mostly by itself.
The other day, I tried Anthropic’s AI for the first time, unknowingly on the day of the Claude 3.7 Sonnet platform’s debut. I was amazed by its output with a few prompts, compared to ChatGPT a year ago. I asked it to write a non-fiction book proposal based on an idea I’ve had (keeping that idea to myself) and to write a novel I’ve always wanted to write, based on simple instructions about plot and characters.
In a few minutes, Claude wrote four chapters of its self-titled novel, “Summer Tides,” before my free version of the platform ran out.
Source: Author’s screenshot
The first paragraph is good:
The first ferry of the morning sliced through the calm waters of the Great South Bay, leaving a trail of white foam in its wake. Nico Reeves stood at the helm, the salt-tinged breeze ruffling his dark hair as he guided the vessel toward Fire Island. At nineteen, he'd been working for Fire Island Ferries for nearly three years, starting as a deckhand the summer after his sophomore year of high school and working his way up to captain last fall.
The AI knew the town across the water from Fire Island, where I grew up: Bay Shore, and wrote scenes about working on the ferries (which I did as a teenager) that I could have imagined (but didn’t put to paper, as it were, yet).
The ferry approached the dock at Bay Shore, where a small crowd of early travelers waited. Weekday mornings in early June were never busy, just a handful of contractors heading out for construction jobs, year-round residents returning from errands on the mainland, and the occasional tourist who'd decided to beat the weekend rush.
Nico guided the ferry alongside the dock with practiced ease, and his deckhand, Tyler, secured the lines.
"All aboard for Kismet, Saltaire, and Fair Harbor," Tyler called out, his voice carrying across the terminal.
Passengers filed onto the boat, most of them familiar faces that Nico greeted with a nod or a quick "Morning." The last to board was a girl he didn't recognize. She looked about his age, dressed in expensive-looking jeans and a light sweater despite the warm forecast, struggling with a large suitcase and a tote bag stuffed with what looked like art supplies.
"Need a hand?" Tyler asked, reaching for the suitcase.
"I've got it," she said, though she was clearly struggling. She maneuvered the unwieldy luggage onto the boat and found a seat near the front, staring out at the water with an expression Nico couldn't quite read—something between apprehension and resignation.
It felt like Claude had found early drafts of this concept I’d saved on my computer or Google Drive. (Were you, Claude?!)
A month ago, I would have said a machine can’t write a beautiful, original novel. But it seems it can, with some prompting — and editing.
This brings me to the things I was completely unaware of regarding AI and writing.
Through Every’s “How to Write With AI” course, I’ve learned about Lex, an AI-enabled word processor and editor that helps me achieve the brevity that has eluded me in my career. Before the course, I never considered using AI models like ChatGPT as an editing partner in brainstorming or editing a draft. I see the usefulness now, though it may take time for AI tools to become a regular part of my writing process, like Microsoft Word’s grammar check.
Today, I write these words on my own. But I’ve already warmed up to have them edited by AI. I like AI as an editor. There are no emotions. No talk back. No sassy human with strong opinions, or a person mistakenly changing the meaning of what I was trying to say. AI offers me suggestions. And good ones, that could cut hundreds of needless words, or write the headline to this essay. I can accept or reject them without indignation. And I don’t have to worry about another human seeing what was really my first “shitty rough draft,” as Anne Lamott says in “Bird By Bird” that everybody writes. Indeed, we should still write shitty first drafts, but technology can help us polish our work, write better sentences, and be more efficient. That’s what AI can do for me. Now it’s just a matter of figuring out how, because it could also replace me.