Photo by Adi Goldstein on Unsplash
On AI, writing, and my son’s Casio keyboard.
By Craig Irons
Like many content creators, I’ve been thinking about artificial intelligence (AI). After all, generative AI, according to the hype, has the potential to make human content creation a thing of the past.
This point was driven home for me last summer at a party where I spoke to a fellow writer who declared that we are now in “the post-writing era.”
The post-writing era? Really?
The authority with which he made this pronouncement—the guy’s a good writer and has built a great career—caused his words to rattle around in my brain for weeks.
Then I began to see examples of AI-generated content. Based on the writing I saw—writing that, frankly, wasn’t very good and that could easily be recognized as the product of AI—I began to think differently.
While it’s hard to push aside the inevitability that generative AI will improve over time, I started to view it less as a threat than a tool to harness to do my job better.
I also began to think of it like my son’s Casio keyboard.
The perfection—and peril—of the “Sample” button
We adopted our sons when they were four and five years old. Because they were our first children, they received many wonderful welcome gifts from family members, friends, and coworkers. These two little boys, who came to us with all their worldly belongings piled into two half-full garbage bags, overnight inherited a basement playroom overflowing with toys.
I liked to go down there and hang out with them when I could. One day while there I came across one of their new treasures, a small Casio electronic keyboard, the kind with the tiny keys that was more a toy than a real instrument.*
Hoping to connect with my 5-year-old son and drawing on my years of piano lessons, I offered to teach him how to play it.
I began pecking through “Mary Had a Little Lamb” when he pulled the keyboard out of my hands.
“No, no. You don’t need to do that,” he said.
He then hit a button on the keyboard labeled “Sample” and an elaborate piece of music emanated from the keyboard’s tiny speaker. It lasted maybe 30 seconds, was intricate, and showed off all the keyboard’s built-in sounds and features. The notes came fast and there wasn’t a single mistake, of course.
And then something predictable happened. My son set the keyboard aside, and I never saw him pick it up again.
Ever.
A valuable lesson about AI
In time, my son developed a love of music and became a talented singer who participated in choirs, vocal groups, and school musicals. He memorably performed a song at his grandparent’s 50th wedding anniversary celebration.
But he never learned to play that keyboard, let alone come up with an original tune of his own.
Looking back, I think that Casio keyboard offered a valuable lesson about AI.
Like those using AI tools, my son was able to generate a piece of content with ease.
But because he had invested nothing in composing or playing it, he felt no ownership of it. He hadn’t exercised his mind or his creativity, or applied any of his thoughts and feelings, even on the most rudimentary level.
In the end, as a result, he had little attachment to the keyboard itself.
And what about me, his audience?
I didn’t care much for the piece of music he generated (he sure hadn’t created it) and I wasn’t impressed that my son could bring it to life so effortlessly. I didn’t engage with the music because it was obvious my son had invested nothing in making it. In the end, it didn’t address my desire to connect with my son.
If he had instead tapped out a mistake-riddled rendition of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” my reaction would have been far different. I would have been impressed with his budding talent and showered him with praise and encouragement.
I would have found the music memorable. Unlike the perfect but ultimately forgettable Casio keyboard “Sample” music.
Are you generating or creating?
So, here are my questions for you.
If you are using generative AI—and not, as is best practice, taking the necessary time and effort to review and revise it, or seeking the help of a content professional to do these revisions for you—are you really producing content that reflects your thoughts, feelings, creativity, insights, and decisions?
If your deliverable is content for your business site, does it align with your strategy and goals, reinforce your messaging, adhere to your brand voice, and deliver value to readers?
What about your audience? How likely are they to engage with content you had only cursory involvement in making?
Can your audience tell the difference between the synthetic content you had AI generate for you and the real, authentic content created through human thought and ability?
Are you fooling them into thinking you didn’t just “push the Sample button?”
I doubt seriously that you are. Your audience, after all, is smarter than you may realize.
They don’t want to hear synthetic music you didn’t create or read generic content you didn’t write. No matter how elaborate or (too) perfect it may sound or look on the page.
I suggest you think about that the next time you consider letting generative AI do the work for you.
As for me, I’ve begun using AI to help organize my thoughts, come up with first drafts of outlines, and generate summaries. Over time, I’m sure I’ll find additional ways to incorporate the technology into my workflow.
But actually creating content for my blogs and my website? No thanks. I’ll keep doing that myself.
I hope you will, too.
*In a recent interview, Stewart Copeland, legendary drummer for The Police, told music producer and YouTube channel host Rick Beato that the band’s 1981 song “Spirits in the Material World” was “written by AI.” Copeland said Sting was inspired to compose the song based on a riff generated by a small Casio keyboard, like my son’s. Of course, what makes the song great and memorable more than 40 years later isn’t the Casio keyboard riff, but the talent and effort of the live humans in the band. The full interview lasts more than an hour, but you can check out the conversation about “Spirits in the Material World” beginning at the 9:35 mark.
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Craig Irons is President and Lead Content Creator for Irons Strategic Content