Every new digital tool comes with a prophecy attached. The printing press will destroy memory, the typewriter will destroy handwriting, and now AI is supposedly set to destroy writers. In this short poem, I reflect on the strange mixture of fascination, ego, and fear that surrounds AI-assisted writing—and why creativity will continue to survive the upgrades.

Electric Paperc/ts

Writers moan—“the pen is dead,”
replaced by prompts and screen-glowing dread.
We’ve crowned these bots new novelist kings,
because they craft such tidy things.

Are stories mere assembled parts?
Alas, friction burns our human hearts.
The Algorithm stacks what has been,
a polished mirror, bright but thin.

Useful? Sure. A nifty tool,
electrons all enrobed in school.
So, writers, write—with circuits’ help—
not prophecy, oracle, your creative whelp.

Our future authors aren’t replaced
just faster drafts, with wit embraced.

AI is merely a tool, one among many in the writer’s toolbox. Large language models can’t feel. Machines trained on trillions of pieces of human-created writing become very good at pretending to, though. I don’t think that AI will end writing, but it will encourage good writers to keep creating better content.