Every few years, a new machine appears, and someone declares an ancient human skill officially dead. Calculators were supposed to murder math. Google was supposed to euthanize memory. Now, with Artificial Intelligence (AI) that can produce a five-paragraph essay in the time it takes you to open your laptop, we’re told writing is headed for extinction. Yet AI’s effect on writing is not extinction; it will instead make original, creative writing more valuable while putting formulaic writing to bed.
AI can generate text. But writing isn’t the same as producing text, in the same way that a handmade stuffed animal isn’t the same as one produced by a factory machine. Both result in a stuffed animal, yet the care, detail, intentionality, and individuality are immediately apparent. When people say, “learning to write well will become obsolete,” that applies mainly to the particular type of writing that is safe, engineered only to satisfy specific rubrics. In some cases, teachers rely on these formulas as students may lack the foundation to experiment creatively with organization. Still, these “foundational” structures will soon become superannuated as AI perfects this type of writing. Hence, AI is the natural predator of formulaic writing. If the average high schooler aims to write a satisfactory paragraph that meets the “three pieces of evidence” requirement, AI will almost always produce a better one. AI will make this satisfactory writing more common. It will flood classrooms, inboxes, and the internet with clean, soulless prose. Yet abundance doesn’t equal obsolescence. It just means standard shift. Ergo, AI does not make all forms of writing worthless; instead, it marks the death of writing as a compliance exercise.
Andover has already exhibited this shift. Humanities classes began moving towards unpolished yet original in-class writing. Teachers are now placing greater emphasis on “the idea” in line with the changing landscape of writing, where anyone can produce polished texts, but good ideas remain rare. AI can imitate the act of creating ideas with its collection of data; however, that’s all it can do, as it can only generate an amalgamation of data. At times, it can surprise with something interesting. Yet ultimately, AI cannot write from life; it can only write from language that exists, and thus these ideas are being siphoned from the valuable ideas of others. Therefore, the market for good ideas becomes even scarcer. Some students have been upset because in-class writing is naturally messier. Yet, impromptu writing can capture thinking in motion with less focus on fitting a perfect five-paragraph shape and thus sacrificing intellectual risk-taking. While AI thrives in generating predictable but vague essays, the work becomes harder to outsource with your specific voice and evidence. In-class essays are not the only method to show original and creative thinking. Some other ways include oral presentations and defenses, projects that blend real-time visual creation with narration. In each of these formats, students are required to actively process information, take intellectual risks, and communicate in ways that are far more difficult to automate. For example, in Cryptography (CSC471), a computer science course at Andover, we students were tasked with creating a slide deck explaining what we learned up to that point and presenting it in that same class. For tasks that demand spontaneity, vulnerability, and genuine engagement, AI is less useful as a “shortcut.”
Thus, AI actually raises the bar for writing in terms of the articulation of creative content. For example, we don’t read a Commentary or Eighth Page article in The Phillipian for precise grammar or flowery phrasings. You’re impressed by the fact that someone noticed and communicated something relatable. The very human act of writing stems from bridging the author and the audience with authenticity.
Besides, AI cannot recreate one of the most valuable parts of writing: the process. Before the creation of the final product, writing consists of questioning what you believe, revising your beliefs for enhanced clarity, and organizing the understanding of your thoughts and values through the process. More than just words, writing is a style and a set of choices that originate from the author. It’s the way a mind arranges language to communicate something uniquely its own, which AI cannot fully imitate by summarizing the general beliefs of people online.
AI will shift the emphasis of writing to originality. In the same way that a world with unlimited fast food makes a home-cooked meal more meaningful, a world with unlimited generated text makes human writing, one with risk, intention, and lived specificity, more valuable.
The five-paragraph essay may finally be on life support. But writing is not dying. It’s being forced to become what it always should have been: original thinking made visible.
