𝘞𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘈𝘐 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘢𝘶𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘴 𝘰𝘣𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘦𝘵𝘦? 𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘊𝘭𝘢𝘶𝘥𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘮𝘺 𝘱𝘶𝘣𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘩𝘦𝘳?

These questions opened a lively, surprisingly fun & sometimes slightly dystopian discussion during my 𝗔𝗜 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗽 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘄𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘄𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗲𝗿𝘀 in Rotterdam, at the beautiful Writers’ House Het Veerhuis. What an inspiring place: always a warm welcome, chairs on the riverbank, and a light-flooded room full of writing humans. Thank you so much for hosting this workshop. I’ve since reconsidered my early-morning writing routine and regularly cycle down to the river first.

But back to the questions. Writing is thinking through feeling, intuition, discovery and growth. This is the fun part; why would you let an AI take over this beautiful and exciting journey? AIs can be part of this process, but they cannot substitute for a human author, as every narrative is told from a unique perspective based on human life and experience.

And yet I’m also drawn to all the new possibilities. I like stress-testing plots with AI. Exploring whether I can trust this strange new editor that is not a person, but rather some other kind of reading entities. What I find genuinely fascinating is how tools like Claude or ChatGPT can expand a writer’s practice: as sounding boards, 24/7 test readers, editors, even experimental publishing agents. I still feel a small cognitive shock when Claude processes my 500-page manuscript in under a minute and politely checks whether I’m doing okay after one of my characters nearly fell off a roof chasing her escaped cockatoo.

Still, I keep coming back to something essential: stories use systems, but they are not made by or for systems. They are born in the struggling minds of humans, written amid messy lives, for other humans also trying to make sense of existence. A writer’s small, subjective insights into surviving can help others understand the world, themselves, and the futures we need to imagine together. That’s why we need human authors more than ever.