Does Writing Have a Future in the Age of AI?
Rachel A. Blumenthal, Eric M Hengstebeck · Arizona quarterly/The Arizona quarterly · 2025
Abstract: This essay takes the rise of Large Language Model chat-bots as an invitation to reflect on what writing means in the era of artificial intelligence. Focusing on the implications of the use of probability to generate text, the argument advanced here highlights improbability as an essential literary category and traces iterations of the improbable across three centuries of American literature, from Walt Whitman and T.S. Eliot to Haryette Mullen and Camille Rankine. What emerges in the process is a theorization of writing as an act of creative intelligence that is rooted in sensory experience, collective accountability, and the incalculable potential of reimagining the world that is at the core of being human. This revolutionary form of writing may be supported by the use of AI, but it cannot be supplanted by it.