Chess players have ratings. Did you already know?
Their ratings are determined by a metric called an Elo. It’s a calculation of the probable outcome of one chess player’s game against another’s. If a player rates higher, it’s more probable that they’ll win. The very best recorded chess player in the world, Magnus Carlsen, has an Elo of 2,882. It’s a sky high number that represents the pinnacle of human achievement in the chess world.
The chess engine CPU, Stockfish, has an estimated Elo rating of over 3,500.
Chess is a human invention. But our collective chess output, a massive tome of openings and moves can be catalogued, replicated, and perfected by a computational engine.
Humans will never win chess against a computer. Yet humans still play chess.
As writers, we’re in a different boat on the same ocean. Generative AI can draft prose faster than any human on Earth. Human writers will never beat a text generation tool at output. If this feels scary or annoying, that’s OK. Change is rarely easy. But I hope it doesn’t feel like an invitation to stop writing.
Keep writing. The world needs writers. And the value of writing is more than the production of words, writing is valuable as an act of creation.
As a writer, your job is to communicate meaning. As an expert in meaning, you hone concepts until they shine brightly. By practicing deep empathy you map out how to guide people on a path. To create the guidance, you crank out winning combinations of words, tones, and brain crumbs for people to follow. This is the labor of writing: meaning, mapping, and mechanics.
Neurologically speaking, when you write you’re creating neural pathways. Your brain is building bridges between concepts, ideas, and memories. The world needs more people who can think through a situation with intention, and more people who can respond instead of react.
Philosophically speaking, when you write you’re getting better at living. How to read a room, explain concepts, see an idea from opposing angles, diffuse tension, describe the indescribable. Humans deal in meaning, and you, a human, will only ever benefit from a deeper mastery of how to communicate with your fellow sapiens. (Sapes for short.)
You come from a long line of workers responsible for clarity, beauty, and powerful language. Your writerly ancestors are responsible for a language cornucopia that includes the “Stop” on red octagons, extremely persuasive 1980s timeshare pamphlets, and the words in every speech that has stopped a war. You are part of that lineage.
Does being a writer mean you’ll never use AI to help? Nah. In our automate-your-hustle culture that is increasingly labor avoidant, a tool that minimizes work and maximizes speed is appealing. This is especially true if voluminous output is your primary concern.
I’m not here to tell you that writing 50 error messages will save your soul. But making words isn’t the same as writing.
Writing is a purification system.
You wade through the rivers of meaning to de-gunk the world, and by honing concepts and making new connections, you clear the gunk in your mind. The more you do it, the swifter meaning flows.
Let’s go back to Magnus Carlson, the best chess player in the world. Magnus is not interested in playing the human game of chess against a CPU. There’s a difference between a player who’s only here to win, and one who’s here to love the game.
You are a writer and you are that difference.