In 1971, which was 54 years ago, a requirement for my junior year American History class was that each student must research and write a thesis of 5,000 words on a topic of their choice from local history. Since my family had once been in the business of brewing beer, I chose that for my subject. Armed with nothing but a manual typewriter, the Cincinnati Public Library, and the library at the Cincinnati Historical Society, I set to work. On weekends, I drove to the library or historical society and pored through the card files, pulling out relevant books. I’d skim through a potential book source, find some nugget of information about the brewing industry in Cincinnati, and make notes on 3 x 5 index cards. After a few weeks of this, I had enough notes to put paper into the typewriter and start writing. If I made a typing mistake, I had to re-type the offending characters using special correction tape or the newfangled Liquid Paper. My thesis had no illustrations or photos—including such content was technically beyond my capability.

In two months’ time, I made the deadline and turned in my report. For expository writing on a given subject, that’s how it was done.

Google and the Internet

Fast-forward forty years, to 2011. I’m still writing non-fiction, only now I’m creating full-length books for global clients. The internet has arrived, and in particular the powerful search engine, Google. By now, most public records, magazines, newspapers, and peer-reviewed journal articles are available online, if you know how to search for them. No more driving to the library, pulling books off the shelf, and reading through them. No more typewriter or 3 x 5 index cards—now I’ve got a laptop computer. No paper necessary. My productivity has multiplied. Now, to research and write 5,000 words of non-fiction, expository text takes me a week, or even less if I’m pushing on a deadline. The big time-saver is that I can search for, and locate, source material in mere seconds. It still takes time to sift through material, and some sources are tucked away in obscure recesses of the internet. And every word of the finished product must be written by hand, just like in 1971.

But the bottom line is that working alone, my time to research and write 5,000 words has dropped from two months to one week.

AI and Large Language Models

Now we’re in 2025—just 14 years later. The game has changed again. Basically, artificial intelligence and large language models such as Chat GPT have supercharged the process of research and writing. We still have the internet and Google, but the addition of AI is like strapping a rocket to the back of your Kia: you’re going to go faster than you ever thought possible. For a non-fiction writer, AI is like a tireless and efficient research intern who will instantly scour the internet for the exact subject you’re looking for or question you want answered, and produce a rough draft of the text. But make no mistake: the text Chat GPT produces is boring and full of clichés. It’s easy to spot AI text because it repeats the same stylistic choices over and over again, just like an unskilled human writer. To bring it up to a professional level, you need an expert to provide heavy editing and re-writing. And you also need to fact-check.

But even with these chores, the time to produce 5,000 words of finished, ready-to-publish text has dropped from one week to just a day or two.

This AI benefit only applies to expository writing from source material on the internet. It does not include any primary source material from people, such as interviews. It does not include narrative fiction, unless you’re writing nothing but the most common genre fodder. It does not include persuasive writing with a point of view. And for descriptive writing, AI tends to be full of clichés and baroque ornamentation, so it’s not much good there, either.

You also need to run your text through a plagiarism detector, such as Copyscape.

But given the opportunity to have an eager and tireless intern at my beck and call, for a professional non-fiction writer like me, it’s a good deal because I can maintain my high standards while increasing my productivity.