There are two views of writing: one, as the production of a literary artifact that has value in its own right and stands alone as the embodiment of a complex id

There are two views of writing: one, as the production of a literary artifact that has value in its own right and stands alone as the embodiment of a complex idea itself; on the other hand, as a process and tool for thought, where the literary artifact is merely meant to represent the cognitive work that went into its production. From the latter perspective, the bulk of the value is not derived from the output of the process of writing, but rather from the understanding and insight that was gained during its production - "it's the journey, not the destination". With generative AI we are now shortcutting directly to the destination while eliding all the knowledge and understanding we are supposed to be gaining on the way. It's deemed sufficient to merely produce and exchange the symbols of understanding without needing to possess any real underlying wisdom (the first view above), because it's through the exchange of these abstract symbols, irrespective of whether or not there is anything behind them, that we can play and win certain social games. This is merely the natural continuation of trends that began during the dawn of the Internet era, when we started to consider pixels on a screen an accurate map of reality.