What we lose when machines do the writing, continued

"Thank you for having taken the time to let the President know your views."

Happy New Year, all! It’s been a while since my last newsletter because I’ve been working on a few other projects (more on that below). But I wanted to share a few thoughts and updates as we head into 2025.

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Update: Since I sent this out, I published a full essay about this here:
First, the thoughts:

Back in 1980, I received this letter from President Jimmy Carter’s White House.

When I shared this letter on Facebook a few days ago, one of my friends wrote, “I bet AI auto respondents could respond to presidential mail much more quickly now.” I have no doubt that’s true —although I assume we’re talking about emails now. Even before ChatGPT was released, we were living in an era very different from my letter writing days.

Two years ago November, when I wrote my first piece about AI and writing, “What We Lose When Machines Do the Writing,” I focused on the work of writing as thinking—on how we come to understand what we think as we work through our ideas and what it might mean to lose that. There, I raised questions about what that thinking process would look like in the age of AI—questions I don’t think we’ve answered yet.

But my letter from President Carter’s White House left me thinking more this week about a different type of loss—the loss of the personal connection between writers and readers. Writing is a way of connecting across barriers.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

I hope in 2025 we’ll keep forging those connections, whatever that looks like these days.

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Now, the updates:

I’ve been quiet for longer than usual here while I’ve been working on a new project. In January, I plan to launch The Important Work, a newsletter focused on teaching writing in the age of AI. I chose the name as a nod to the fact that we’re often told AI tools will free us up to do “the important work”—but for those of us who teach writing, the writing itself has always been the important work, which raises questions about what writing instruction looks like in this new era. The Important Work will feature reflections from instructors in both high school and college classrooms about what they’re trying/experiencing/thinking about as they teach writing in this new era. I hope you’ll subscribe—and consider submitting your own reflection if you teach writing. I’ll keep writing my own posts here at Writing Hacks.

I also wanted to share this piece I wrote for Slate in October about a case here in Massachusetts: A family sued their school district after their son was accused of using AI to complete an assignment, alleging that his punishment harmed his college applications. My conclusion: “But the Hingham case tells us less about district cheating policies and more about what happens when an education system that so often emphasizes grades over learning ends up on a collision course with a technology that enables students to bypass learning in favor of grades.” I’ll be watching this case and others in the coming year.

I’m wishing you all the best in 2025. In the meantime, I’ll be here, a human on the other side of this newsletter, hoping to hear your thoughts.