Nigel George is an educator and author of five books on technology and self-publishing. In the second instalment of his series on AI tools, Nigel examines the opportunities and challenges new natural-language AIs present to writers.
Challenges and opportunities for writers
In part one of this three-part series, I stepped back from the high-tech and described in layperson’s terms what AI is, and how dependent it is on us humans to sound intelligent when it really isn’t.
In part two, I will dive into the opportunities and challenges these new natural-language AIs pose to writers.
Personally, I believe there is far more opportunity than risk created by these tools. Given the volume of articles on the internet preaching the apocalypse, I unashamedly focus more on the positive side in this article.
Our news feeds contain enough reasons to be reaching for the vodka at 8am without me adding to the list.
Major technological breakthroughs always bring about significant change. And with change comes winners and losers.
We can be confident scribes were not fans of Johannes Gutenberg, and I know traditional publishers are not fans of professional indies leveraging digital publishing and print on demand technology to take a far greater share of the spoils.
What is that old saying? There’s nothing as constant as change?
In most discussions about the threats posed by AIs I have been following, it is believed that AI won’t replace humans, but humans will be replaced with humans that are good at leveraging AI.
In this context, the primary challenge to writers is not about AI replacing a particular job. It’s about identifying what activities AI is fantastic at, and then learning how to leverage those capabilities.
For writers, AI’s superpowers fall into two broad camps—analysis and synthesis of data, and algorithmic, or rules-based writing.
First, let’s look at data; again I am looking at broad definitions. Analysis is where we dig through loads of information to identify content related to the subject area we are researching. Synthesis is what we do with that content—are we comparing options? Looking for patterns? Summarising? Looking to support an argument, or refute one? Looking for inspiration or information for the next big novel?
As writers, working with information in this way is so fundamental to everything we do, it becomes a core part of our identity.
This is where the fear comes in. In a relatively short period, we have created tools that can access information at a scale well beyond the capacity of humans. These same tools can then spit out something useful a billion times faster that we ever could. It’s impossible not to experience moments of terror.
There is good reason for authors, journos, lawyers, accountants and analysts of all stripes to be concerned about how AI is going to affect their careers.
However, these challenges are where I believe the light of opportunity shines brightest. Most of this work pays rubbish (if at all). It’s highly commodified, it’s repetitive and is the sort of drudgery that often dials our procrastination dial up to 11.
Imagine a world where a journo can send the AI off to do background research for a major piece, freeing them to concentrate on telling the story in their own unique way?
Or a place where AI tools free a bright young lawyer from the punishing hours of writing briefs and administrative overhead. Imagine what could happen if they then had time to pursue crazy ideas like justice for all, not just those who can afford to pay?
Think of all the great things you could do if you could liberate yourself from the boring but necessary bits of your writing workflow.
The second camp—algorithmic or rules-based writing—is where AI is likely to make the biggest impact.
Formulaic is another term for this kind of writing. Any writing that follows a formula, whether it be in style or substance or both, is fair game for AI. Examples include:
- Most marketing materials—from headline click-bait, through product descriptions, listicles and other sales copy to full product briefs and reviews
- Business forms, policies and procedures
- Training materials
- Computer code
- Language translation and voice transcription
- Basic editing for spelling, grammar and style checking.
AI has been making inroads in these areas for years, and the tools are only getting better over time. But is that a bad thing?
These markets have been a race to the bottom for years. Those who see the opportunity will have the advantage as they leverage the capability of AI tools to build and enhance their offering, rather than scratch around low-bidding themselves out of existence.
There is one thing AI can never replace—you. Your view of the world and how you express yourself is unique, impossible to duplicate, and irreplaceable.
In my courses, I teach a concept based on the acronym WIBBOW?—Would I Be Better Off Writing?
I challenge writers to ask themselves, WIBBOW? every time they do something.
Your writing is not only how you communicate your unique perspective to the world, but it’s also your most valuable asset. Successful people spend most of their time building assets.
Other than non-negotiables like sleep, exercise, nourishment and spending time with the people you love, the answer to WIBBOW? should almost always be ‘yes’.
The exceptions will always be the things that are not writing, but necessary to support your writing. I covered many of these non-writing tasks earlier in the article.
So that is my challenge to you—forget about the risks. Every time you go to sleep, there is a risk you won’t get up again. Focus instead on how you can leverage some of these tools to spend more time building your most valuable asset and show the world why you are so much better than a dumb machine.
Next time, I will roll up the sleeves and play with some of the AIs targeted to writers. See you next month!
Nigel George is an entrepreneur and manager with 25+ years’ experience building and managing technology companies. He is the author of five books on technology and self-publishing. He has independently published his books since 2015 and is an expert on how to build and run a successful independent publishing business. Nigel is passionate about passing on his expertise to other authors, teaching them how to succeed as an independent author. You can learn more about his work on his website.
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