My 40th birthday is rapidly approaching and it’s time I make peace with a sad reality: I’m never going to become the world’s greatest jockey.
I know, never say never, but I just don’t think it’s in the cards. For one thing, I’ve never ridden a horse in my life. For another, I’m 6’2” and I weigh about as much as two and half jockeys put together. My chances of one day piloting a racehorse named “Rich Uncle Saddlebags” to a Triple Crown victory are — let’s face it — close to zero.
However, if I were to ask the folks at NaNoWriMo, they’d probably tell me to never give up on my deeply stupid dream.
NaNoWriMo is short for “National Novel Writing Month,” a non-profit that promotes creative writing. It hosts an international writing event every November where participants are challenged to write a 50,000 word novel in a month.
I don’t participate in NaNoWriMo, but I have generally supported it. I prefer the International 3 Day Novel Writing contest, which I’ve participated in every year since 2007. The resulting novels aren’t as long, but they’re forged in a rich crucible of exhaustion and delirium that I feel adds to the overall impact.
This month, NaNoWriMo has caused massive controversy and lost a number of supporters after they issued a seemingly unprompted statement regarding the use of AI in their novel writing challenge. According to the statement, NaNoWriMo does not explicitly condemn the use of AI on the grounds that doing so would be classist and ableist.
“Not all writers have the financial ability to hire humans to help at certain phases of their writing,” the statement says. “For some writers, the decision to use AI is a practical, not an ideological, one. … Not all brains have same abilities and not all writers function at the same level of education or proficiency in the language in which they are writing. Some brains and ability levels require outside help or accommodations to achieve certain goals.”
I’ll be the first to acknowledge that different brains work in different ways. I have friends who are brilliant with numbers and have incredible financial knowledge and understanding, but they struggle to write. On the other hand, I like to think I’m a decent writer, but I’d rather be beaten with a shovel than ever again take a math class. My brain doesn’t work that way.
Generally, I find everybody has a brain that is really good at something. Maybe it’s rebuilding engines. Maybe it’s putting together LEGOs. Maybe it’s cooking. Maybe it’s telling a story in an interesting way.
But nobody has a brain or a body that’s good at everything, and that’s OK. I will never be a great jockey, and I will also never be an accountant, or an MMA fighter, or an Olympic figure skater. That’s fine. The universe does not owe these things to me.
Furthermore, if I figured out a way to use a tool to accomplish these goals for me, that would be an enormous disservice to everyone who did it honestly. If I became an MMA fighter but I fought using a robot exoskeleton, that would likely be considered cheating. If I was the chief financial officer of a company but I outsourced all the math parts of the job to some numbers whiz in Estonia, I probably wouldn’t last long.
Using AI to write is no different. If someone can’t write without using AI to assist them, then they either aren’t cut out to be a writer, or — more likely — they need to practice more instead of relying on a cheap crutch.
The folks at NaNoWriMo might say I’m classist and ableist for suggesting such a thing. I would argue that classism and ableism are real social problems with real ramifications, not just empty buzzwords to be thrown around haphazardly. We’re not talking about denying a qualified candidate a job because they’re wearing an off-the-rack suit or telling someone they shouldn’t park in a handicapped spot because they don’t look disabled; we’re talking about using AI to cheat at a contest.
The entire purpose of NaNoWriMo is that it’s a challenge. It’s hard. Some people will finish, the majority won’t, and only a fraction of the ones that do finish will have something worth reading. I could probably make record time in the Boston Marathon if I was behind the wheel of my car, but I doubt I’d get much of a sense of accomplishment when I crossed the finish line.
It would be one thing if NaNoWriMo took this stance solely on ideological grounds, but I have my doubts. If you go to the “Offers” page on their website, you’ll find a link to a free trial of ProWritingAid, “the premier grammar checker, style editor, and writing coach for creative writers.” At least, that’s how NaNoWriMo describes the service. Click the link, and the website for ProWritingAid describes itself as “The AI-Powered Writing Assistant.” I suspect NaNoWriMo may have a financial stake in their principled stance.
The fallout from NaNoWriMo’s statement has been swift. Four of their board members have stepped down in protest, and multiple writers who once credited NaNoWriMo with giving them their start have denounced the organization.
Hopefully, this is one of the first canaries in the coal mine for a stark reassessment of AI’s use in art. Maybe the folks who want to use AI to write will resign themselves to doing things the old-fashioned way: putting down tens of thousands of words worth of garbage until one day, they look at something they’ve written and say, “Hey, I don’t hate this quite as much as usual.”
