Artificial Intelligence, Part Two

 Last Friday I ranted about artificial intelligence. That post was written several weeks ago, its publication postponed due to other, more time-sensitive pieces. (Sleuthfest and the launch of The Spread.) In the interim I was alerted to an article titled, “I was fired by a client for using AI. I'm not going to stop because it's doubled my output, but I'm more clear about how I use it,” by Tina Sendin, which, if nothing else, shows she’s badly in need of a title editor. I gave her article a read to see if Ms. Sendin had thought of anything I missed in last week’s post. Her piece is a little under a thousand words, and I realize not all of you have the time, so I’ll digest it:

 

Ms. Sendin works full-time in marketing, and part-time as a freelance writer. A long-time client came to her with more work than Ms. Sendin could do in the time allotted. In her own words, “Since I couldn't clone myself, I tried what I thought would be the next best thing: I used AI…. Jasper did most of the work and I did minimal editing. AI lost me a longtime client.”

 

To which I say, “You go, client!”

 

Ms. Sendin continues:

“I learned a valuable lesson the hard way — AI is a tool, not something that should replace you.”

 

Duh.

 

“Looking back, I know things weren't right when I was letting AI do the work and not communicating this to my client.”

 

She should have known “things weren’t right” when she “[let] AI do the work.” Failure to communicate that to her client wasn’t the crime; it was the cover-up.

 

Having seen the error of her ways, Ms. Sendin now discusses her use of AI with prospective clients before starting work. She claims she no longer uses AI to write the draft, only to “enhance” it by “using the paragraph generator to expand a sentence into a paragraph,” among other things.

 

She might want to consider getting into political consultancy, as she appears to have at least a Master’s Degree in obfuscation. “Using the paragraph generator to expand a sentence into a paragraph” is not “enhancing” the draft. It’s writing significant portions of it.

 

Among her other dodges:

 

“I use AI to give me ideas on sources and statistics.” Or, as we used to say back in the day, “research.”

 

“AI helps with the tone of voice and brand voice.” In other words, “the hard part.”

 

“AI helps with condensing large volumes of text.” Also known as “editing.” (Some of which would have helped her title.)

 

“AI has cut my writing time in half.” Goddamn right. She’s doing less than half as much writing, since it takes her half as much time and AI is doing a goodly portion of that. Hopefully that “level of effort” on her part is reflected in her rates.

 

“AI still scares me sometimes, but early adopters of new technology have historically reaped more rewards than punishments.”

 

Writers have always been our own worst enemies. We work for peanuts because we will. Publishers take advantage because they can. You don’t like it, there are a hundred others who’d love to have us screw them the way we’re screwing you, if not worse.

 

Now we have writers who think they’ll get ahead of the game by using AI. It’s not unlike athletes using steroids. Steroids don’t allow you to do things you couldn’t do before; they just allow you to “enhance” your physique so you can do better than you could have done without them. It’s still cheating.

 

I realize this is a “Get off my lawn” post. So be it. This is the hill I’m willing to die on as a writer.

 

(Full disclosure: I used Word’s “Check Document” function to proofread this piece before posting, after Word read it aloud to me. Everything prior to the reading and proof is all mine.)