Is AI Writing Rotting Your Brain?

✏️ Exploring the world of Centaur Storytellers ✏️

Hello Storytelling Heroes 👑,

Today, we are exploring a new kind of writer and my bold prediction that Centaur Storytellers will win BIG in the future (and already are today).

Before we dive in, let me first share why we are talking about this today 👇

Recently, this study from MIT went viral with the bold finding that folks writing essays with LLMs (such as ChatGPT) exhibited the weakest brain connectivity and ability to recall their essays compared to groups writing with the assistance of search engines and the brain-only group.

Before we jump to any conclusions, some really important notes:

• Only 18 participants were in each group in the study. It’s an extremely small sample size.

• An EEG (electroencephalography) was used to assess cognitive load. EEG measures electrical activity in the brain (aka brain waves). Do brain waves directly correlate to cognitive load or brain connectivity? Not necessarily.

• This study is the first of its kind and hasn’t been replicated. I love science (studied history of science and neuroscience in college), but if I was taught anything in my paper reading classes, it’s to be skeptical.

So what do I think of this study? It’s a great initiative, with interesting findings, but far from conclusive on any level.

However… this study went mega-viral. Written about in the New York Times and dozens of other publications. Clearly, whether or not this study provides us with answers… we all have a lot of questions about the impact of AI writing on our brains.

I do too.

Which brings us to the topic of today’s essay.

What Does it Mean to Be a Centaur Storyteller?

A Centaur Storyteller is a human working with generative AI technology to have any part of their writing or business process augmented by the output of a machine.

Typically, we call this AI writing or writers using AI.

However, this is an incorrect categorization.

AI writing implies that the AI is doing the work. You prompt the machine and then it does all of the storytelling.

You can do this, of course. Undoubtedly, many writers do.

But this will not give you the best story. And candidly, although the MIT study is far from conclusive, if you are outsourcing your thinking to a machine, it does make intuitive sense that, like any muscle, your ability to think and develop original thought would atrophy.

But here’s the kicker… not all use of AI is created equal.

To bucket all LLM writing into one participant group in an experiment is just… odd.

How specifically did people use these LLMs? What were their prompts and why?

From personal experience, I can tell you that many students writing essays DO mindlessly outsource the entire process to an LLM to just get a grade and move on.

Yet, as writers, we aren’t students.

Our primary goal is to create storytelling experiences that readers love.

Unlike in school or many work environments where a “passing grade” gets by, in the world of storytelling, 1% of the stories make the vast majority of the sales.

It’s not enough for us to ask: how do we use AI to get a story that passes?

Instead… we need to ask: how do we set ourselves up to WIN as storytellers? What does it take to climb to the top of the market from our creation, marketing, and operations? How do we make it into the top 1% and even 0.1% of all stories sold?

That’s where a career lies for us.

And when we approach this question with that singular goal… we get a very different answer on how to use AI and its impact on our brain.

But first… we must look at what’s happened in the world of chess.

What Storytellers Can Learn From AI in Chess

Meet Gary Kasparov. He was the world’s best chess player. Until he got beaten by IBM’s Deep Blue in 1997.

He could have given in to the machine. He could have resisted it.

Instead, he joined forces.

Gary pioneered a new form of chess, commonly called advanced chess, centaur chess, or cyborg chess.

The goal? Have humans work with computers to simulate opponents’ moves and make better decisions.

He quickly discovered that humans working with machines not only could beat humans… but could also beat other machines.

This is a groundbreaking mindset shift.

It’s not about AI writing vs. human writing.

It’s about something else entirely.

Why Centaur Storytellers Will Win The Future

Centaur Storytellers don’t outsource their writing to AI. They work with AI to make better stories, market their books better, and ultimately, serve their readers in novel ways.

Do you have to be a Centaur Storyteller? Absolutely not. Human-only chess is more popular than ever for viewers to watch.

But… Centaur Storytellers will have a great advantage, and it’s my prediction that within the next 2 - 3 years that the majority of best-selling authors will be Centaur Storytellers (and honestly… this is already very close to being true today).

So… if Centaur Storytellers are at a huge advantage… how exactly can we become one? Let’s break down the areas of Centaur Storytelling.

To be 100% clear, to be a Centaur Storyteller, you DO NOT have to do all of the following. But LLMs are a new operating system for creation. Just as nearly every part of the writing and marketing process was augmented by the internet and word processors, the same thing is happening at hyper-sonic speed with LLMs.

And ultimately, who will win is who does best for readers.

The Creation Process: The Centaur Writer

• Centaur Writers bring incredible context on readers’ core desires and Story Gaps in the current marketplace, mined from Story Spying and Reader Cities (two superpowers I discuss in detail in the Author Marketing Superpowers Deck).

• Centaur Writers understand engaging story structure and have impeccable taste for the voice, pacing, and style that will build trust with readers. In short, being great at craft and understanding the why behind the what is more important than ever.

• Centaur Writers use AI to help at all parts of the creation process, whether it’s drafting, outlining, or editing and beta reading. This doesn’t mean AI does all of the writing, or all of the work… but you are working with the AI at what it does best, taking your ideas and story instincts and producing it into drafts and then getting feedback on what could be better about those drafts by using a series of prompts to have AI role play as different reader personas that provide feedback on your stories. This is very similar to how Centaur Chess Players use the computers to simulate moves and then pick the best ones, as well as strategically feeding the computer information to make even better moves in the future.

The Marketing Process: The Centaur Marketer

• Centaur Marketers understand the first principles of the publishing business and what makes great marketing stand out. Yes, AI can help you be a great entry-level marketer. But entry-level is not good enough. (the Author Marketing Superpowers Deck is very helpful here).

• Centaur Marketers use AI to help them repurpose content using a series of prompts that take newsletters and make them great content across all platforms. You can use one piece of content and turn it into a thread for Threads and Substack Notes, short-form videos using AI video tools for Instagram Reels, TikTok and YouTube Shorts, and more (we teach you how to do this in Make Your Own Movies). You no longer need to be an expert at every platform or have an army of virtual assistants to post to every platform. You can turn one piece of marketing content into tons of different options to post everywhere.

• Centaur Marketers build rock-solid content matrices that allow them to work with AI to come up with endless ad and content hooks. A Content Matrix is a collection of proven content formats (such as slide show background, POV content, character vlogs, etc.) along with hooks for your story that work. You can then mix and match this content matrix to come up with hundreds and sometimes thousands of different content variations and test them all using ads. AI is incredible at being able to take this context in and produce high-performing content. The key is developing a great content matrix designed to engage your target readers.

• Centaur Marketers use AI for market research and sentiment analysis. You can now feed reviews of your own books and competitors into AI and start to understand how readers are feeling about stories and what they might be desiring in a new book. Instead of you having to digest thousands of reviews yourself, you can have the AI do it and summarize it. Pro-Tip: when feeding lots of information into an LLM, try to use markdown language. It’s a programming language that AI understands much better. You can put all of your text you want to feed into AI into a Google Doc, then upload to this site for free to convert it to Markdown automatically.

• Create automations using n8n that allow you to both analyze, post and create new content based on triggers. It’s not just about creation anymore. All that back-end work of posting that eats away time? A lot of it can be automated now by building semi-agentic systems. Think of it like Zapier on steroids.

There’s *way* more here. I could probably write 30-50 articles on this topic alone: how AI is changing the way we market our stories.

If you are interested in more along those lines, please leave a comment on this post. This is more of a high-level mindset shift in how we approach AI as Centaur Storytellers. As such, I can’t go insanely deep on everything.

The IP Expansion Process: The Centaur Imagineer

• Centaur Imagineers understand that the book is just the beginning, and the raw material of the Storytelling Economy is… your stories. You are an expert at strategizing how to turn your story into different formats, whether it be movies/shows, games, audiobooks, comics, merchandise, and other products. All of you here are ahead of 99.9% of writers in this pursuit. This is what I focus on in the Beyond the Book Podcast and in real-time am building a revolutionary technology to help writers turn their books into movies with AI. You can learn more about that here (we wrote a free book on it).

• Centaur Imagineers use AI to expand their IP into formats that previously would have been cost-prohibitive. For $10 a month you can make a soundtrack for your stories with Suno. Creatorwood (releasing into beta soon) will make it possible to produce movies and shows from your books within hours and cost 10,000x less than it would in Hollywood (we are talking typically less than it would to produce an audiobook with human narration). Companies are now going live to help storytellers turn their books into games. You can translate your books with ScribeShadow into most major foreign languages. It’s just an insane, insane world right now. And all of it is powered with AI.

• Centaur Imagineers create immersive experiences for their fans that engage readers beyond the story. Examples include help with designing merchandise and other print-on-demand products as well as making custom chatbots based on your characters. I made one of myself for paid subscribers of this Substack trained on all my knowledge to help authors build empires.

And of course, there’s more here. But before I spin out with excitement… let me end with a closing thought.

Storytellers Rule the World. That’s the mission.

To me, being a Centaur Storyteller is empowering. You get to choose what parts of your process you want to merge with AI and how… and the entire time, you remain in the driver’s seat.

I understand the ethical concerns. I understand that some of you may hate me for saying this.

Honestly, that’s fine.

The bigger crime… would be not sharing what’s possible. And not sharing that how we think of ourselves as storytellers is evolving.

There’s a tremendous opportunity ahead.

When we are all sitting here fighting over a pot of Kindle Unlimited money and eBook sales that have largely slowed in growth (still growing, but far from the boom days), this disruption feels scary.

When this feels like another power grab from the tech elite over our everyday lives, this feels enraging.

These feelings are valid.

But they don’t have to be our future.

Together, as Centaur Storytellers, we can win the future. It already happened in chess. And it will happen in storytelling, too.

A future where it’s not just about books anymore, but about the entire storytelling economy from movies to games, and more.

The pie available to indie storytellers is going to grow by 100x in the next 10 years. I’m dedicating my life to making this happen – bringing together the smartest people in the world to fight for one mission: a future where Storytellers Rule the World.

I hope you join us: as Centaur Storytellers, the future is boundless. We don’t need to rely on the CEOs of Netflix, Disney, Hollywood Studios, Game Studios, and more.

You get to be the CEO. You get to be the storyteller.

You get to rule the world.

And who said a great CEO has brain rot just cause they aren’t getting their hands dirty doing all of the work? (mind you, some CEOs suck and certainly have rotted brains 😂)

This is the beginning of the biggest shift ever in storytelling. Just about 100 years ago, Disney was born.

This century is going to have new storytelling kings and queens.

Those people are you.

So… are you a Centaur Storyteller?

I’ll be back with another episode of Beyond the Book, all about breaking into physical retail stores.

In the meantime, don’t forget…

Together we are boundless,

Michael Evans

The Author Sidekick