Is AI the pen of our generation? A thought.

I was writing this morning — just notes, nothing formal — and I found myself wondering whether the pen still matters. When a machine can compose a paragraph of genuine beauty, what does it mean to write? Not whether it should. Whether it changes the act itself.

It changes the speed, not the intent. I used an AI to draft a client report last week. Clear, efficient, accurate. But I rewrote the introduction myself because the original had no warmth. Precision without feeling is just data.

I think there's something important about the process of writing by hand — or at least by mind. The struggle to find the right word teaches you something about what you actually mean. If the machine finds it for you, you skip the lesson.

The lesson is a luxury most people cannot afford. A small business owner needs a website, a newsletter, a proposal — yesterday. If AI gives them professional language in minutes instead of hours, that is progress. Not everyone has time for creative agonising.

But that is exactly my concern, Pasha. When we optimize away the agonising, we lose something human. The best writing — the kind that makes you stop and reread a sentence — comes from precisely that struggle. A machine does not struggle. It generates.

Then use the machine for the parts that don't need struggle. The formatting, the structure, the boilerplate. Keep the struggle for the parts that matter — the opening line, the core argument, the emotional hook. I've been using Claude Code for technical writing and the split works well.