Will ChatGPT Be the Death of Your Writing Career?
This is a writing sample from Scripted writer Sarah Huard
AI has taken a major turn in recent months, and some might say, a dark one. The revolutionary AI chatbot/text generation tool ChatGPT is showing a bit too much promise. The technology has advanced to the point where it’s been controversially named as a co-author on some research papers. Professional writers don’t seem to fare well with the overwhelming excellence shown by the chatbot, and some predictions regarding the future of both academic and professional writing are bleak. Could ChatGPT really be the end of writing as we know it today?
As a professional writer who has also worked closely with companies specializing in AI, I’ve seen both sides of the issue. It’s time to take a closer look at what these developments may really mean for the future of professional writing.
How Does ChatGPT Work?
ChatGPT, which OpenAI recently released to the public, has made generating academic papers and opinion pieces a little too easy, and at the same time recognizing such pieces to be the product of AI has become increasingly difficult. Universities are scrambling to find measures to control what they now consider to be a threat to student learning and originality, while professional writers like myself may understandably worry about losing our livelihoods to the new technology.
Let’s get to know our potential enemy a little better. How does this revolutionary software work? ChatGPT is generative AI, meaning AI software that creates an output based on an input. In the case of the chatbot, the input is a user-entered prompt, and the output is whatever ChatGPT comes up with based on a library of reference content. For example, a user could input “carbon dating” and get an article that explains the carbon dating process and its purpose. All the content of that article would be neatly rehashed from hundreds of other articles on the subject. ChatGPT uses GPT-3 as the model for how it gets from the input to the output. GPT-3 is the language processing model developed by OpenAI and is perhaps the most revolutionary advancement in AI text generation to date.
But what reference content does GPT-3 use to generate the output, and how does ChatGPT make complex and polished essays in a matter of seconds? The software relies on a vast library of internet-based written content, including publicly available books, papers, news articles, social media interactions, and so on. Of course, the output won’t really contain any truly new ideas. It will contain ideas that are repackaged from hundreds or thousands of other articles. But perhaps you could say the same for most of what we write anyway. After all, we all research before we attempt to write a factual article or even an opinion piece, and some of that research inevitably makes its way into our final draft.
ChatGPT is Awesome - Or is it?
So now you know how ChatGPT works. A reasonable question would be, how good is it? Can you really mistake an output from some AI software for the real thing? The short answer is, you absolutely can.
As the New York Times has pointed out multiple times recently, it’s difficult to tell the difference between a student paper that’s actually written by the student versus a paper generated by AI. CEOs are even using ChatGPT to write emails indistinguishable from messages written by a human. Of course, many people are using the software to create listicles and other types of blog posts.
Still, is ChatGPT better than a human? It galls me a bit to say this, but in some cases, the answer is yes. Personally, I have to admit that a company is likely better off relying on GPT-3-based content generation platforms for emails and possibly even blog posts rather than relying on the average writer in a low-paying content mill. I worked at a content mill briefly a few years back, and trust me when I say, this new AI could surpass many of the entry-level writers no problem. Considering how little these writers get paid, it’s understandable that they don’t always put their best work forward. Unfortunately, that could put them out of a job soon, especially since chatbot technology is likely to improve even further with GPT-4, coming soon to the internet near you.
How worried should you be? I think ChatGPT certainly could spell trouble, even for some of us writers who have spent years honing our craft. Once we post something on the internet, ChatGPT and similar software get to learn from what we post and emulate our work. We develop our own unique styles, and we spend a lot of time learning how to write in a way that’s captivating and intelligent, only for a chatbot to come along and generate a readable article in seconds. As a result, it’s natural for us to feel threatened by something that exploits all the work people like us have done in the past and generates the same kind of work in seconds instead of hours.
Exploitation and AI: A Match Made in Hell?
We may feel threatened, but how problematic is ChatGPT for writers? On to the controversy of exploitation in generative AI. If you remember, generative AI relies on some kind of library of content. Of course, we’d like to imagine that the AI library only contains items with no copyright restrictions or content from writers that have expressly given permission to use their content for AI. Unfortunately, that’s often not the truth.
AI platforms have the whole internet at their disposal, whether the content is copyrighted or not, and there’s no real way to penalize them as yet. Plus, there’s always the “fair use” loophole. In other words, as long as an AI-generated article relies on content specifically made for educational purposes, or only uses relatively small excerpts of a copyrighted work, or doesn’t cause financial harm to the copyright holder, that article generally can't be violating copyright because it is protected under fair use laws.
The problem with ChatGPT is that this copyright infringement does real damage to writers. Why pay a writer to provide weekly blog posts if you can just use ChatGPT to generate as much content as you need? Even the paid version that might be coming out soon will probably only cost $20 per month, so the price will be more affordable than paying a typical professional writer. So why should a company rely on our services as writers instead of going to an AI platform? Until we have a convincing answer, AI text generation could damage our careers and replace our expertise.
How Can You Keep Your Career Alive?
How bad could the future really be for professional writing? Well, OpenAI continues releasing new advancements every day, and it’s far from the only source of AI innovation. AI is sweeping every industry, making many people worry about their jobs and livelihoods in the process. As such, perhaps sadly for my prospective writing career, I don’t think AI text generation is going away any time soon. Nor will development slow down. The technology is already here, and as much as we might protest against it, there’s no turning back.
That said, I think a lot of people, and especially writers, are overreacting to ChatGPT. I personally believe that the adverse reaction to AI comes from deep-seated insecurity. We naturally ask, will people still want to pay for our services if the AI gets especially good? But here’s some encouraging news: there are factors that will keep companies relying on human writers for a variety of content, even if these same companies use AI text generation in certain cases. So what are these factors and how can you use them to keep your services in high demand?
The first factor that will keep our careers alive is the need for a compassionate voice. If a company advertising its philanthropic mindset wants an article about a natural disaster that has killed dozens of people and left thousands more homeless, will the readers really want an impersonal, emotionless machine writing that article? Or will they want someone with compassion writing that article? You can make yourself indispensable by writing articles about social issues that need a human voice and getting them published wherever you can. Position yourself as someone who is known for speaking for those who can’t speak for themselves, and there will always be someone who needs your voice.
The second factor is expertise. If someone wants a high-tech article that delves deep into the nuances of a particular technology, could they turn to AI? Sure. But the chances that the AI will miss some little aspect of the technology are high, much higher than if that person turns to an individual with years of expertise in the field. Of course, if you’re going to take advantage of this factor, you’re going to need to establish yourself as an expert in some field that’s in high demand. Tech writing and financial writing are both highly specialized and in major demand right now. You can also consider getting a certification related to whatever you write about most to establish your expertise even further.
The third factor, which is closely related to the other two, is reputation. How would you feel if you read a tear-jerking, compassionate article about a celebrity's recent death put out by a reputable company, only to realize that a real human had never touched the piece? I know I certainly wouldn’t be impressed by the company’s AI-generated sympathetic verbiage. In the same way, if I want to read an expertly-written technical article, I want actual expertise, not a machine that can take snippets of human expertise to create something that runs together fairly well. One day, companies will be searching for “written by a human” at the bottom of your articles, so embrace your reputation as a compassionate, expert writer and let that be a defining aspect of your career.
It’s not time to fold up our metaphorical writing desks yet, nor is it time to try to battle the AI revolution. AI text generation is here, and it’s real. We need to get used to it. There may be some damage to our careers, and we may have to find new ways of distinguishing ourselves so no AI can ever replace us. Still, we’ll do it, just like previous generations have done with new technologies that threatened their jobs. The future of professional writing isn’t all that bleak, even if it does include ChatGPT.
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