Humans Write. Right?
Have you read something recently and wondered, did a human write this? Your friend sends you a beautiful birthday text message. It warms your heart. Then. You wonder… did they even write this?
These days everyone seems to have a ghost writer. Younger generations are navigating a global transition away from a human written world. Older generations are over utilizing LLMs like ChatGPT to help them think of what to say to their boss, or even their best friends.
We here at Humans Write understand these new tools are here to stay. We know that people are going to use them. So we are here to help establish an honest community of writers in an effort to preserve humans writing.
On all of our social media posts and blog posts you will see tags clarifying if something was human written, robot assisted, or robot written. We’re all curious to pull back the curtain and compare human written works with robot written works. Let’s do it together!
In our contests we ask every participant if the written piece is “human written”, “robot assisted” or “robot written”.
Lexicon for the AI revolution
“Robot Assisted”
No one would look at an Ikea made desk and claim “hand-made”. There are, however, people known as “Ikea Hackers” who do amazing things with Ikea’s pieces. This would be the equivalent of a human prompted AI written work. You type in your idea and brainstorm a piece together, like a team. Effectively in this category, the robot “machined” the piece, but a human put their touch on it to finish it and make it their own.
“Robot Written”
This is the equivalent of using a word calculator. You type in the assignment and it spits something out. You then take that robot written text and use it as-is. This includes making a few tiny edits. If you put in revisions and move sentences around and add a new sentence then you’re entering into the “robot assisted” zone.
“Human Written”
A real human wrote the piece. Maybe they had a real human read it and give feedback. And then they took that feedback and edited their work. They used spellcheck. They might use AI to review their work for grammar. They don’t use AI to re-write the piece. They submit the piece.
Does using ChatGPT mean I cannot submit a piece?
Writers are playing around with new AI tools. Using Notebook LLM to help them analyze research. Asking ChatGPT to edit their work. Debating with Claude on what direction to take their story like they might debate with a friend.
We are working to delineate between what someone would consider “human written” and “robot written”. And for this, it will take a human effort with lots of humans.
Beyond that, there are unknown legal issues being debated in court. The legal ground is very unclear right now surrounding these LLMS, most of which have illegally used copyrighted material from published authors. To keep things legit and legal, we require that you declare your submission appropriately. This is also taken into account in our rubric for scoring.
Is using an LLM to write a bad thing to do?
The first time I fully understood ChatGPT’s power was in the spring of 2023. I was talking to a friend who told me all about how she used it to help her finish a book. I was dumbfounded. And, honestly, a little freaked out. She likely wouldn’t have finished this book on time without it. She had conducted hundreds of interviews. It was a lot to manage. She also had a full life on top of writing this book. I will admit, when she explained all this to me, it felt odd in ways I could not define. Was this cheating?
But then I thought about digital photography. There are still people who use film in a digital world. But most people use some sort of photo editing software these days. The photo editing process has become entirely different post digitization. And now post-AI it is a whole new world again. Is that cheating?
Prior to the industrial revolution, everything was hand-made. The idea that something would be sold and marketed as “hand-made” didn’t exist like we know it today. Machines changed everything much like AI is changing everything for the written world. When it comes to written works, it’s high time we start identifying these works as “human-written” or “robot assisted” or “robot-written”.
Using a tool is not cheating. Trying to pass it off as if you didn’t use a tool, as if you wrote the whole thing yourself, is at best an insincere representation of your work. And this is happening at mass scale.
We are trying to understand what human writing looks like compared to bot-assisted writing, to answer the questions: Did a human write this? We don’t consider it “bad”, we just consider it something worth considering.
Humans invented writing. Will humans kill writing?
The Humans Write community is both a resistance to and an acknowledgement of the existence of AI in writing. We resist by encouraging more writing, by trying to get people writing again, to encourage people to continue writing, or simply to start writing for fun!
All too often we write only when we have to, either for school or for work. Writing is a mental exercise. Writing is thinking. Writing is a mechanism for processing big ideas and emotional experiences. Writing is healing. And writing is human.
We don’t believe humans will kill writing with the invention of AI tools. We remain optimistic amidst the AI revolution that writing is still human, and still necessary. And we’re just doing our part.
How we’re doing our part
To make it fun, make it worth your while, we are on a mission to get people financial rewards for their writing. In a world where writing has been taken for granted and devalued, we see the strength and power of the written word. Writing in itself is a reward, but it sure does feel good to be validated as a writer by winning some cash, no?
Beyond the cash, the humans involved in the Humans Write community are partaking in a communal effort to delineate and discuss what is #humanwritten anyway?
We also work to give thoughtful feedback to every piece submitted in a competition.
And let’s be real, in today’s world, writing and submitting a piece is in itself an accomplishment! Anyone who can take the time to complete a story or a micro-memoir should be truly proud of themselves. They took the time to think, to reflect, to use mental muscles and transfer thought out into the world.
So, do humans write?
I dunno. Can you do it? We double dog dare you.
View Writing Competitions Here
#HumanWritten
