The Milpitas Beat hereby prohibits the use of AI writing

For a while, we thought the following would go without saying, but alas the day has come when we have to say it:

The Milpitas Beat prohibits the use of AI-generated writing on its platform. We do not want your AI-written articles or op-eds. We do not want your AI-written letters to the editor. We will not publish any AI-written content on our website or in our occasional print editions. This policy is permanent, and it sets us in solidarity with the many publishers, educators, unions, literary agents and gatekeepers, and other bodies and individuals across the world that are developing similar AI-resistant policies.

We understand that this topic is controversial. We understand that many human beings think that AI-generated text has altered the very nature of writing such that it is open-minded and future-thinking to embrace it.

We disagree with this position because we think of writing as an act of human sharing and an expression and embodiment of human consciousness. Inhuman systems cannot participate in human sharing. Inhuman systems do not possess human consciousness. AI text generators pool their data and their impersonation of expression from vast libraries of writing that have been generated by human beings across centuries. Accordingly, the text they generate is derivative and mediocre in the worst of senses: derivative because it stems not from consciousness but from copying, and mediocre because by design these systems collect and streamline words rather than deploy language from an origin of specificity or novelty. 

We are not naive about the fact that, now and in the future, human beings will employ these powerful tools to impersonate the process of writing. In the process of doing so, they will rob themselves of the act of exertion, which is the primary driver of human growth. By not testing themselves, not searching for words, not crafting lines of thought and argument, not mining their own original feelings and perspectives, these humans will achieve nothing beyond underwriting their own stagnation. Moreover, they will act not from consciousness but from convenience, outsourcing their psyches to the whims of hollow machines which specialize in pattern recognition.

We can neither support anyone who does so nor subject our readers to the outcomes of such automation.

Should we detect the presence among submissions of that universally crisp, gliding, empty-calorie, empty-headed, AI-derived substitute for style, we will take the appropriate actions to uphold our policy. 

AI can be an effective and useful tool. We are not concerned about those who use it for research. Nor are we concerned about those who use AI for editorial feedback or help with crafting a comprehensive headline. The Milpitas Beat, whatever your neighbors have told you, is not an authoritarian regime. But if you outsource the task of providing news to our city to a robot, then your “work” will go where robots belong: i.e., in the cabinet.

In this young century, human beings have already witnessed how widespread new technologies can cheapen and flatten the life experience, from addictive mobile devices to time-wasting apps to endless social media scrolls. Our species is running at a dopamine deficit. Our friends are being radicalized inside online echo chambers. People in this century date less, mate less, marry less, make less friends, and have more trouble cultivating meaning. All of the above has been tracked, measured, and quantified. We have outsourced the act of socializing, one of the main sources of our humanity, to apps and devices that provide an impoverished impersonation of the same.

We do the same with consciousness at our own peril.

Writing isn’t mere craft. Writing isn’t sheer industry. Writing is, again, a form of consciousness. It can capture the depth, nuance, shading, contours, oddness, unpredictability, and staggering ineffability of what it means to be alive on Planet Earth. To write is joyful. To write is painful. The pain comes from the challenge we face in doing it. The joy comes from the progress we make in doing it. Human writing, even if carved and sculpted and pored over, is dependably imperfect. It bears breath and heat, fire and friction. It takes strange, subtle curves. Whether it’s a local news story about a cat stuck in a tree or an epic poem about Odysseus trying to find his way home, human writing is an imprint of the time we spend here. It whispers across space and time, “I am like you. Alive like you. I move through the world. I breathe and I see and I feel. I have spent time here, just like you, and I have been a witness.”

AI might look, act, and write like a witness, but do not let it fool you.

Its appropriate role in this world is as a bystander.