Will AI Take Writers’ Jobs?

Here’s the theory that people are subscribing to. Artificial Intelligence (AI) can fulfill all your writing needs. You tell it what you want it to “write” about and how, it scrapes data from the internet, and bang! You’ve got the copy you want. Will AI turn out to be a better and cheaper way of getting your stuff written? Here’s why AI isn’t putting writers out of work anytime soon.

What AI Says About Itself: Can You Spot an Inconsistency?

As an AI language model, Chat GPT is a remarkable technological achievement, but it still has some significant limitations that prevent it from fully replacing human writers. Here are some of the most notable limitations of Chat GPT:

Lack of Creativity and Originality: While Chat GPT can generate texts that are coherent and grammatically correct, it lacks the creativity and originality that human writers possess. It is not capable of developing new ideas or creating something truly unique.
Inability to Understand Nuances and Emotions: Chat GPT is programmed to recognize and respond to certain patterns of language. However, it struggles to understand the nuances and emotions that humans express in their writing. It cannot read between the lines or interpret non-verbal cues like tone, body language, or facial expressions.
Dependence on Input Data: Chat GPT’s responses are limited by the quality and quantity of input data that it has been trained on. If it has not been exposed to a particular type of language or subject matter, it may struggle to generate a coherent response.
Limited Domain Knowledge: Chat GPT’s knowledge is limited to what it has been trained on, which may not be sufficient for certain specialized or technical topics. It may not have the domain-specific knowledge that a human writer would have, which could result in errors or inaccuracies in the generated text.
Lack of Moral and Ethical Judgement: Chat GPT lacks the ability to make moral and ethical judgments. It cannot make decisions based on values or principles, which are essential to many types of writing. It also lacks the ability to understand context and make judgments based on it.
Dependence on Technology: Chat GPT’s performance is heavily dependent on technology, such as computing power, storage, and network connectivity. Any disruption or failure in these areas can significantly impact its ability to generate text.

In summary, while Chat GPT is a powerful tool for generating text, it still has significant limitations compared to human writers. It is important to recognize these limitations and use Chat GPT as a complementary tool rather than a replacement for human writers.

Inconsistencies

The first one should be easy to spot. Writers don’t ordinarily rely on cues like body language. Instead, we’re hammering away at our computers. Secondly, believe me, human writers rely on technology. In theory, we can work offline, but that’s going to be a serious limitation. The ones you can’t spot occurred because I made it answer my question twice.

In it’s first answer, the AI noted that it is incapable of creating engaging texts because it lacks understanding of the emotional impact of it’s work. That’s a very important limitation indeed. It sort-of said the same thing in the second version, but it wasn’t quite as clear about it.

It noted that it lacks “human experience” and struggles to identify finer nuances that a human can. Again, it’s sort-of there in answer two which you can see above. It also told me that it can’t “join the dots” between pieces of information in the same way a human writer can, and it stated its ability to say things that are outright wrong rather more strongly.

Let’s move on to my impressions, made before I even tried it. I didn’t do too badly!

AI Looks Cute, But it’s Actually Not Very Bright

Here’s the biggest flaw. AI gets its data off the internet. So, why’s that a problem? Isn’t that what human writers do? So it is. But here’s the difference: AI isn’t capable of critical thinking. If, like me, you spend a lot of time researching stuff on the internet, you’ll know that not all sources are created equal – and some of them are downright inaccurate.

Even before AI, I often noticed how fallacious statements made by one source get repeated over and over again by others. Why? Because it’s a high ranking “authority” source. So, false facts propagate even more false facts and not all human writers are capable of spotting inconsistencies. However, some of them are. AI can’t do this.

Just watch this John Oliver show to discover some of the pros and cons of using AI.

So, what if you’re super careful about choosing data sets for your AI? That could work, but by the time you’ve found enough sources for your AI to come up with a piece, you may as well have hired a writer – either to find sources, or do the job of writing.

Might it be Used as a Tool? Or Even, as Is?

Here’s where AI might have a role to play, but also won’t be able to do it all. Use it as a tool, and then fix its shortcomings. As a writer, I can confirm that if I have to fact check carefully and edit, it takes me longer than it does if I start with a clean sheet. Maybe other writers are less thorough with their fact checks. If you’re going to hit one or two sources when fact checking, it simply isn’t enough. There’s just too much bullshit out there.

I do see a role for AI in the “grunt” work of writing content for content’s sake. “Top 10 Ways to Keep Your Kids Entertained on Rainy Days,” for example, is a bit of fluff I’d trust even a machine to do. And there are a lot of articles written purely for SEO including link-building. They’re never meant to be read. In case someone finds them, they just need to make some kind of sense. Sure, AI can do that.

A lot of low-paid, less skillful writers probably will find themselves out of work. Skilled ones won’t get as many “easy” projects. That’s a pity because some of them were quite fun and the work that does get assigned to human writers is going to be harder. Time for a price increase?

It’s Not Copyrightable

Copyright laws require a minimum level of human creativity. If something is created by non-human means, you can’t copyright it. Of course, anyone challenging your right to ownership would have to prove the work was AI-generated. If it was, and if all you did was to feed in sources, you can’t own the copyright. Does it matter? In most commercial writing contexts, it probably won’t.

I do have a theory though: every writer has a “fingerprint.” Will the next step in tech be a move to identify AI’s writings? I’m sure a lot of teachers and professors would like something like that since kids and young folks are using AI to do their homework. When there’s demand, supply is the next thing to happen.In fact, people are working on it already. Apparently, there are no breakthroughs – yet! But there’s more.

You’re Not Going to Reach Any Novel Conclusions

Hoping to reach a novel conclusion? It’s not going to happen with AI. You need to “teach” it what you want it to know, and if what you want to say isn’t reflected in previous works, you’re going to struggle to get the result you want. To create new ideas, you need people. Machines can’t think for themselves. They might pretend to. They might even look somewhat convincing, but for the real thing, you need a real person.

You’ll Probably Need to Edit Any Halfway Usable Result

Editing takes time. It’s often tougher trying to improve something that’s already there than it is to write from scratch. With AI “creativity” being a big trend, there are a lot of jobs board ads for people who are willing to edit AI-generated articles.

Of course, freelancers are willing to take these jobs, but you’ll pay for their time. Add that to the time you spent finding relevant sources for your AI to use (unless you just let it loose, in which case, heaven help you), and you just lost the cost saving you were hoping to realise. It may even work out more expensive than just doing things the old-fashioned way – unless you just want content for content’s sake. If so, good luck to you!

Is AI Currently Affecting Freelance Writer Demand?

For now, AI is definitely affecting the demand for freelance writers. All the “cheap” and “easy” work is going to machines – and so it should. If you want cheap and easy, by all means, use AI. It frees real writers up to do work that requires more thought, more precision, thorough fact checking , and a degree of creativity.

One can’t help feeling a bit sorry for content mill writers who got by with a minimum of writing skills or factual accuracy as long as they said what their employers wanted them to say. The quality of the content didn’t matter. If it doesn’t matter to you, sure! Get a machine to do the job.

Will AI Use Affect Search Engine Rankings?

It’s worth being aware that SEO is a field that continues to advance. The quest for relevance and quality guides these advances. Will search engines be able to spot AI generated copy? I believe they will. After all, AI should be able to recognize AI. Will it harm search engine rankings? It seems likely. Caveat: this one is just a guess. Time will tell.

Meanwhile, I suppose it’s possible to teach AI to use search engine optimisiation tools and you might do pretty well if SEO is all you want. However, having used SEO Surfer, and having taken an hour to optimise an already-written article that took an hour to research and write, it’s either going to be a tall order for the AI, or a relief for writers.

New Tech is Exciting: But What Happened to Self-Driving Cars?

We’re always in love with the latest tech, and we often have inflated expectations for what it might be able to do. The idea of creating self driving cars first surfaced early in the 20th century. They’ve come a long way since then, but they still require human supervision. From promises made by the likes of Elon Musk, we should have had highways full of them by now. Nobody should be driving. But it hasn’t happened.

While bad AI-written articles are unlikely to kill anyone, they’re still not as good as the real thing. And if you want the real thing, it’s going to cost more than it did before because demand for originality will be high and time is valuable.

In my opinion, it’s a fad – at least, for now. The many shortcomings of AI, including its ability to “learn” entirely the wrong things should see to that. You’ve probably heard of the saying “garbage in, garbage out,” and if you want to find garbage, there’s plenty of it on the internet – which is exactly where AIs do their learning.

To all my “friends” who have gleefully been telling me I’m out of work: what do you think I do? Recycle internet trash? Think again! Heck! Technology hasn’t even managed to come up with an absolutely reliable spelling and grammar checker yet. At the very least, AI is going to take human supervision – and if you want really good, original work, you’re still going to need a writer.