AI - will it take our jobs?
June 2023
Peter Nock has been a member of TechCommNZ since he started his Graduate Diploma in Information Design in 2014. He was a TechCommNZ board member for 6 years. He enjoys trying new tech (physical or software), seeing what it can do and helping others to see what is possible with it.
Peter shares his experience with AI and his insight into what that might mean for our jobs as technical communicators.
Wow! Since the November 2022 launch of ChatGPT the AI world has blown up with possibilities and ways that generative AI can be integrated into software. I am in the tertiary education sector (Te Pūkenga) and the focus has been on learners using ChatGPT to write essays or answer questions. Authenticity of learner work was a challenge before ChatGPT arrived. A recent upgrade to Turnitin (a software tool that checks if content has been copied from the web) will detect AI-created content… for now. It works by checking for 'randomness' – people write more randomly than AI. However, this is an arms race that can never be won – especially as big companies and tech billionaires pour billions of dollars into AI.
One question that weighs on people’s minds is, 'Will AI take my job?' The answer now seems to be, 'AI won’t take your job… but someone using it will.'
An example of this is creating videos for YouTube.
The Next 5 Big YouTube Trends in 2023 (Think Media)
ChatGPT can write a script for you, generate a title, edit the video, do voiceovers – Adobe has 50+ AI enhancements to help with this alone. To quote Sean Cannell from the video, 'AI can design your thumbnails, write your script, do the voiceover of your script, write the description of your YouTube video, write the title of your video and edit the video for you… are you even necessary anymore?' He mentions a tweet he saw that said, 'AI will never replace content creators. But there are AI tools that can supercharge your content creation process.' He then goes on to provide the analogy that you (content creator) become a conductor – conducting people in their teams using AI tools – like an orchestra conductor you need someone that has the vision and can pull all the parts together. This should lead to an increase in productivity. For example, if it normally takes 20 minutes to write the description of a YouTube video and a tool like vidIQ can do that in 20 seconds, and you spend another minute editing it (human touch!) then you have saved 18 minutes of time off the task!
ChatGPT and other AI tools are being hyped up now. They are useful and can support rapid content generation – if only to test ideas out. Human abilities such as critical and creative thinking are still important – if not more than ever. It could be that as these tools and our use of them evolves, our skills as technical communicators lie with ideation and end user/product testing – a lot of the 'donkey work' could be done by AI. So, we produce the idea, the AI does a chunk of refining with us and then we ensure the final product is fit for purpose – usually fit to meet the needs of fellow humans.
What is becoming clear is that we need to engage and understand as best we can the use and implications of AI. The 'genie' is out of the bottle now and companies will face increasing pressure to utilise it for efficiencies and productivity gains.
This will also cause businesses to re-think their business models. For example, in the design world, work is usually charged at the per hour rate. Say it takes our team 20 hours to produce a website design (branding etc) at $100/hr and we charge the client $2000 for the work. But what if you can use AI tools and generate the desired outcome in half the time or less? Do you have to reduce your fee? Does this mean you can take on more work/clients than in the past? Rapid generation and iteration of designs will certainly be a feature – ie speed is King!
Consider too the recent National Party ad campaign – there will be a temptation to just grab some AI tools and do it yourself rather than contracting a design firm to do the work for you. There are already AI software tools that can take a sketch drawn on a napkin or a text prompt and turn it into a functional and testable webpage prototype.
Sigh! Where does this leave us then? My view is this is very much like the COVID pandemic in the early days. A big, rapid change has happened and is continuing to happen and change and we are all scrambling to keep up. For myself I am connecting and leading groups inside our organisation to learn and understand how this impacts on our work and what the opportunities and risks are in using (or not using) these AI tools. I am following various groups and individuals on LinkedIn and news websites to see the latest developments. I would encourage you to do the same if you can and would highly recommend that if you are not talking about it in your work that you should be!