This is a summary of the book “Who wrote this? – How AI and the lure of efficiency threaten Human Writing” written by Naomi S. Baron and published by Stanford University Press in 2023. She is a linguist who is savvy to recognize the ways in which Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing people’s habits to read and write and explores the implications for what it means to be human. Her research covers both the emerging trends in AI and the literacy and creativity that humans are capable of.

AI’s deep learning and large language models have disrupted potential with every-growing possibilities. They are already helping in summarization, paraphrasing, translation, semantic search, and generative responses. The human brain inspired the technology behind AI, so it competes with human approach via mimicry, but humans are capable of creativity. Even as AI gets adopted in web searches and education like the usage in Khan Academy, it is bringing up debate on social impact and ethics. Human-centered AI is the right approach as it strives to enhance human potential. Adopting the rules of road for the use of AI could help balance out the improvements in both human and AI developments

AI is transforming the way people write, altering perceptions of what it means to be human. Advances in AI have enabled technology to produce various written materials that used to require human intelligence, such as marketing copy, real estate listings, and legal pleadings. However, the widespread use of AI raises questions about its effects on humans themselves. Neuroscientists have found that writing changes brain function, with the caudate nucleus responsible for higher-level learning, planning and memory being more active in professional writers' brains than in novice writers. AI tools are already disrupting writing professions, with the US Department of Labor estimating that American writers earn over $675 billion annually. As AI permeates writing tasks, it places these wordsmiths at risk. AI is also affecting the legal profession, as law clerks and associates can now offload many tasks to AI. The jury is out on AI's impact on writing professions, with some professionals seeing the value in AI taking over menial tasks and others fearing their obsolescence.

AI will not completely replace human writing or translation, as people write for various reasons, including money, love, self-expression, and everyday life. While digital translators have made progress, they still struggle with grammatical gender and interpreting culturally distinct words. Learning a foreign language offers insight into culture and history, but the interest in learning languages has declined as digital translation becomes more popular.

The technology behind AI was inspired by the human brain, with deep learning and natural language processing (NLP) key components. NLP enables AI systems to perform various linguistic tasks, such as rendering text as spoken words, transcribe spoken words, and mimic individual human vocal patterns. Transformers can also anticipate user input, generate new text, and predict user needs, such as with Google Search.

AI can mimic human creativity but cannot replace it. Creativity is defined as a product that is new and valuable. AI has demonstrated its historical creative capabilities, such as AlphaGo beating a human champion at Go and AlphaFold triggering a scientific breakthrough in protein folding. However, AI has yet to create art that reshaped culture in a Big C creative way. Defenders of human creativity want artworks that capture the emotion and intensity associated with the human creative process.

The use of AI in education is illuminating questions about authorship and AI's social impacts. As AI tools serve as both author and editor of written work, the meaning of authorship is beginning to shift. Critics argue that AI is incapable of pausing, thinking, and rewriting, except perhaps in the sense of tinkering with sentences humans have written.

Human-centered AI is emerging as a tool that expands human capabilities, extending cognitive capacity and opening up opportunities for "human-AI co-creation." AI research initiatives like Stanford's Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence and UC Berkeley's Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence focus on the role AI could play in improving people's lives. AI tools like Sudowrite and Marlowe help writers collaborate and co-create, allowing humans to choose the roles both humans and machines play in this new age of human-AI interaction. Balancing the benefits and risks of AI technologies is complex, and there is no clear road map to navigate this new terrain. Frank Pasquale suggests adopting laws for AI and robotics, such as the "BOT bill" in California, to protect the written word from AI counterfeits. Writing is more than just communication; it is about processing thoughts and being in the world.