The AI writing debate is eerily similar to the one that rocked ancient Greece 2,700 years ago
Theater scholar Drew Lichtenberg explained the backlash to Euripides, a playwright that people found "creepy and scary, the way people do with AI."
The ancient Greeks referred to a remedy that is also a poison, depending on how it is administered, as "pharmakon." This concept was explored by Plato in his dialogue Phaedrus, more than two millennia before the emergence of modern AI writing tools like Claude and Perplexity. In a myth recounted by Plato, the god Theuth introduces writing to King Thamus as a pharmakon, an elixir that could remedy memory and wisdom but instead produces forgetfulness by relying on external marks.
French philosopher Jacques Derrida revisited this idea in his 1968 essay, Plato's Pharmacy, arguing that writing, much like AI, can both preserve and extend thought or displace the faculties it is meant to support. The debate over AI writing, therefore, is not a 2026 issue, but the oldest argument about writing, dressed in a new guise.
The challenge every newsroom, law firm, and research desk faces today mirrors the ancient Greek dilemma: how to manage a threat that can only be mitigated, not avoided, through careful consideration of the costs and benefits of using generative AI.
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