People are busy mortgaging their intellectual future for present convenience. They don't realize that the struggle to express ideas IS what develops the capacity for original thought.
Nearly everyone sounds the same at conferences these days. The familiar phrasing and mannerisms of generative AI are echoed by almost every speaker. This gives the impression that they wrote their speeches in the same room and edited each other’s drafts. These speakers are not necessarily recycling AI-generated texts; some may simply have internalised the biases and preferences of large language models, often subconsciously, rather than the other way around.
For those who once struggled to shape language into a style that appealed to readers or suggested originality, this may be a step forward. For true language maestros, however, the tragedy lies in seeing generic, poorly prompted texts elevated above their unique expression. This is how we risk losing the next James Salter, the next Wole Soyinka, the next J. D. Salinger, or the next Amos Tutuola.
This why we must mainstream generative AI, for that’s the practical way to learn to reduce the kind of dependency that stifles originality and creativity. AI should help us polish our ideas, not impose its bland idiosyncrasies to the point where we all sound alike, like a troupe of performance actors. The task is not to reject generative AI but to adopt it wisely, destigmatise the use of its outputs, and master it well enough to remain the masters of this evolving technology.