AI Isn’t Taking Over Your Writing Job (Probably)
As a writer, I often get questions about AI, mainly about job security. While people are curious, it can feel negative. When generative AI surged in 2023, I wasn't worried at first, as AI has existed for decades but more as a parlor trick than for anything useful.
In 1997, IBM's Deep Blue famously beat chess champion Garry Kasparov, showing AI’s strategic skills. Then, in 2011, Watson won against Jeopardy champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, demonstrating its language understanding.
With the growing AI coverage in the media and significant investment, I decided to give it a try.
I used it for creating documentation, writing fiction, creating images, manipulating images, creating templates, building web pages, writing Excel macros… I spent more time trying to break it and test its limitations than I’d care to admit. I discovered that AI had value.
Gen AI excels at tackling repetitive tasks and overcoming the initial hurdle of starting. That is useful. After all, someone once said, “Every good piece of writing starts from a terrible first draft.” Let me use AI right now to look up who said that.
(typing)
Perplexity AI says it was Anne Lamott.
Gen AI is great at overcoming this hurdle and providing an initial draft. This isn’t nothing.
However, after creating the starting point, Gen AI falls short. AI does not think. It does not innovate. It just scrapes what has already been produced and tweaks according to prompts and perceived wants (which causes hallucinations and strange images that were not historically accurate).
“AI can create, but it is not creative. ”
AI is not a conscious being (even though you can talk to an AI therapist, an AI doctor, and even an AI Jesus); it doesn’t know when to focus on a task or make something up, hence the hallucinations.
Ironically, the people I believe should be more apprehensive about AI are the ones working hardest to profit from it in the next three to five years. It seems like every company is throwing whatever cash they have into any potential AI integration project that comes up during a roadmap review or C-Suite meeting.
But there will be fallout.
Developers write code, designers create mockups of websites, product managers create business cases and user stories, and marketing people create collateral to support the launch. VPs create decks, CFOs crunch numbers and predict consumer trends, and CROs identify the best markets. This is predictable and scalable work that Gen AI is great at learning and will soon do better than humans.
I suspect workers must have value beyond the repeatable and mundane to survive Gen AI. I’m not sure much of that is happening in business these days. I see a lot of “follow the leader” mentality and FOMO driving decisions. Of course, that is a generalization. Any position or job title can provide value (I wrote a blog article explaining the blueprint for becoming more intelligent).
But time will tell.
I advise embracing AI, learning AI, and incorporating it into your world, whatever your job is. Learn it. Become its friend. Use it for tasks you hate and enjoy. If it works and does the job better and more quickly than you can, accept defeat and move on, as I promise you that someone else in the company is already wondering as they eye your salary on the spreadsheet.
But in situations where Gen AI does it worse than you, gloat for a moment, as you’re human, but then stop and understand why. Is it temporary, and will Gen AI learn soon enough, or is it due to your creativity and ability to see patterns and solutions that a computer cannot? If the latter, communicate that to your manager and promote your value because they need an answer ready when the company bean counter asks if they need you anymore.
Gen AI will be the most disruptive technology to society since the Internet. It will change everything, whether you like it or not, whether you expect it or not. If you let it play out, you might find your badge doesn’t work when you try to return.