Last week, I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about ChatGPT that legit made me sweat.
According to the article, publications like Men’s Journal are using AI technology to successfully generate new articles by mining past coverage from the publication’s content library. It was the latest addition to a bouquet of semi-insulting think pieces with headlines like “90% of Online Content Could be Generated by AI by 2025” and “AI is the end of writing.”
As a person who produces content for a living – and often formulaic content at that – the end of writing actually feels more like the end of the world.
I know what comes next: You’re going to tell me there’s no cause for panic because AI tools like the ones mentioned in the article will never be trusted to operate autonomously. A real person will always need to review and verify the work the tool does before it ever sees the light of a laptop screen.
But that is precisely what puts me on edge. By that logic, I won’t be out of a job, I’ll simply be demoted from writer to proofreader.
Maybe you don’t care about ChatGPT because you’re not a writer and therefore it doesn’t affect you. But I would argue that the way we’re using this technology has implications for every member of the workforce, regardless of industry.
Traditionally, we’ve been told to embrace technology because it will be used to automate tedious and repetitive tasks that people don’t want to do in the first place. With a bit of training, these people will now be free to do higher-level, higher-value, more engaging work.
But in this particular application, the technology seems to be used in the opposite way that we’ve come to expect – and accept. The AI will do the “fun” part of the job – the writing itself – while I – the actual writer – is tasked with the tedious job of making sure it uses commas correctly and doesn’t cite a problematic source. That’s not a job I’ll take, even if it’s the only one still available.
The more realistic part of me hasn’t hit a full panic yet mostly because I know that even if the technology is ready, the world probably isn’t.
Many companies like to talk about bleeding edge technology without really using it at scale themselves. They will pilot and test but I doubt they will ever fully replace the content team with a bunch of well-trained computers. Besides, as one executive recently pointed out during a meeting, those computer programs are outrageously expensive – and that’s to say nothing of the unexpectedly high costs of training the algorithms and operating the cloud-based assets needed to run them.
To my fellow writers, I offer you this peace of mind: The content industry won’t be automated by 2025. In fact, you’ll probably never lose your job to a computer. Not because people respect our craft or value our skill, but because it’s simply not practical to replace us. Writing won’t be automated for much the same reason that companies still rely mostly on people to pack online orders and serve food and drive buses and clean floors – because it’s simply more cost-effective to have a person do it than buy and train a computer.
I ask you this: Who’s happy to be notoriously underpaid now?
I haven’t trusted technology since we went from electric typewriters–and I mean the most basic electric (nothing with a memory) to desktops. I stubbornly hand-wrote all my notes and first drafts and then hand edited it all until the last ten years or so. Even in grad-school forever ago. What’s scary is that technology will soon outpace us. These nibs who drool over AI and its applications are idiots and were obviously dropped on their head or suffered a brain-oxygen deficit when the common sense neural pathways were developing prebirth. Of course, if you believe Elon Musk, whom I adore on many levels but not this one, we may already be in a simulation, so all these little fears about technology have already occurred and we lost and are just data points that think we are worrying. I ready too much (if you want to get really irritated, read a book about simulation theory–the writer I’m reading is actually excited about it). Hopefully, there will always be someone who needs us, simulated or real.
phew! well, first things first, i no longer take points from elon musk. but seriously: i’m not against technology, so much as i am concerned by this particular application since it seems to run counter to the promise. and per the comment above, i think if you rely on tools taught by people and then people stop teaching the tools new things then the result will get pretty old, pretty fast. long story short, i think there will always be a need.
Oh Nova. I have the same concerns as a graphic designer. The AI algorithms come up with some highly-creative images that will also replace my freelance work. I was so inspired by your journey a few years ago, I quit my day job and became a “contractor.” It has been a very lucrative move that allowed me to move to the country and start a whole new life. I can be replaced in the next few years with AI. I will admit to you that I used the Google Chrome “Quilbot” add-on this past week to rewrite some copy for me. It was scary how intelligent the writing came out. I don’t know a lot about the subject for which I was creating this particular graphic, but I needed a short paragraph about the subject to sell the concept. I put in a few sentences I found about it and Quilbot rewrote it for me. My client was excited I finished the project without input from the engineer. (EEK!) I truly understand your feelings about this subject. It’s just crazy.
i’m sorry to hear. even if i don’t totally believe that the end is imminent, it’s still not comforting to know that a computer can do my job and sometimes even outperform me. the same, i suppose goes for you.
but here’s the thing.. i’m not against technology. when a designer uses a text tool to help them do something outside their normal scope and the result is faster, cheaper and better, then that’s great. It would be the same if i used a cheap template to create a fact sheet instead of hiring a designer (for a project that doesn’t matter much). the issue is when companies, when publications, outsource entire departments to a computer. THAT i think is not a good use of technology. because at the end of the a lot of the work we do is more insightful, more creative than what the computers can do. so yes, AI can come up with what something based on what it has been taught… but it is people like us who produce the content that teaches the tools in the first place. if you take away us, you will just have the computers doing the same thing over and over, stagnating. even if that happened, and i don’t think it will, it’s not sustainable. at the end of the day, there is no replacement for originality.
i hope you continue to live your very best life doing what you love. xx
What do you know! Well. Ummm…. I for one simply cannot find the words to explain exactly how comforting that really is.
glad to hear. in the end, our salaries will save us.
I lead a team of tech writers. Luckily for us, a lot of the technology we write about is new, so ChatGPT et al can’t write about it. But I can certainly imagine them making inroads into more creative forms of writing. Why pay an author when you can feed a few plot points into an AI and get a satisfying story back? I don’t like that idea. I like knowing that a person wrote the content I read.
But overall, the thing that worries me most about these AIs – and it definitely worries me – is the question of who owns knowledge. We already let Google and Facebook’s algorithms decide what information we see; now AI may be the creator of that information too. Do we really want to hand over stewardship of knowledge to AIs, or to the companies that own those AIs?
Wow – really good point! ownership is a big issue… and i agree that just knowledge in general is not something that corporations should be managing. i think it’s been proven time and again that they slice the data to suit them… and if they return only the results they want people to see, well that’s a big problem. I can’t think about this much, because i will actually go into a tailspin.
Overall, as a professional, I don’t like it. But I do see a good use for people who are intimidated about writing and communication is a relatively minor but important part of their job… like, for example, when people bend themselves in knots replying to a difficult email. I would love if they could just type in a version of what they need and have the AI give them a draft to start with. Over time, I think it could even help them build confidence and improve writing skills. Because so often – and i think the tool will draw this out too – when people start a conversation with me with “So what I want to say is….” that’s actually what they should write. That’s it! That’s the secret!
Glad you wrote this because this AI stuff is scary. Also, I’ve just written a book (still going through the edit process) and all I can think of is — I picked a helluva time to become a would-be author. I guess if I get a contract, I need to make sure there’s language in it that protects me from AI type stuff. Mona