Graham Isador is a writer whose latest play, Truck, about the last truck driver in America, will be performed at the SummerWorks Festival.
My last day job was writing copy for a large tech company. The job mostly consisted of penning ads. Black Friday sales for smart devices. Podcast scripts championing sustainability. Occasionally I’d write a listicle for the company blog: five reasons you should think about solar power, reason number three will shock you – words I was positive no human would ever read, but apparently helped our search engine optimization. While the job didn’t fulfill my literary aspirations, I liked it just fine. I worked hard for the company and they paid me well.
About midway through my contract, my boss scheduled a meeting. The marketing team would be implementing new methods to streamline our efficiency. Copywriters would enter prompts into ChatGPT, a language-processing tool driven by artificial intelligence. With the help of AI, the team’s output was expected to double. Suddenly my day-to-day was no longer writing ads. It was editing the work of a robot. The meeting was a come-to-God moment. I felt like a cow being asked to collaborate with a butcher. When my contract came up, it was not renewed.
I think about the gig a lot. If I’m being honest, for most of the basic jobs, ChatGPT’s writing was nearly indistinguishable from my own. But anything more complicated than a holiday ad required extensive editing and fact-checking. It was work that took longer to fix than it would have taken to just write myself. I’m sure some higher-up was weighing the pros and cons, putting together a cost-benefit analysis of AI compared with real workers. Still, it’s estimated that last year the company I worked for had more than $185-million in revenue. Did they really need a robot to do my job?
Copywriting was never my passion. I did the job to supplement my creative work in journalism, film and television. The threat of AI casts a shadow over those industries, too. After dismantling their Pulitzer Prize-winning news division, Buzzfeed has been posting articles generated entirely by AI. Google is testing a new AI tool to write news stories, approaching executives at The New York Times and The Washington Post.
In film and TV, the existential threat of AI has been one of the major conflicts of the current WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Some studios have reportedly suggested that background performers be scanned, get paid for one day’s work, then have their likeness owned in perpetuity to digitally render how the studios see fit. They’ve also refused to accept the writer’s guild’s demand that “AI can’t write or rewrite literary material; can’t be used as source material.”
No one really believes that the creative work produced by AI is better than the stuff made by humans. At almost every turn, cutting corners with automated digital tricks creates a lesser experience. I’m not rallying against the creative use of tech or anyone making money – far from it. But when the goal moves from creating something great to creating something that maximizes profit, everyone loses out. While losing the copywriting work was a hit to my bank account, losing my writing career would be a hit to my identity. It’s not that I ever expected to get rich with words, but knowing the corporate class of my chosen professions are actively trying to replace workers makes it hard to stay motivated. If everything I do to make a living is either devalued or replaced by AI, how am I supposed to provide for myself?
A recent report stated that more than a quarter of all jobs are at risk of being replaced by AI. Many companies have bought into the idea that using AI is cheaper than paying real people. AI doesn’t need health insurance or time off; it won’t drink too much at the holiday party. From a human perspective, though, AI is a harder sell. Real people are being put out of work – losing steady jobs – for the sake of the bottom line, during a time when corporations have seen record profits. Adding to the controversy is the fact that AI is incapable of creating anything by itself. The programs learn by analyzing massive data sets of images, video and words: work that creators never agreed to offer the tech companies in the first place.
Left unchecked, it’s hard to see where all of this goes. If I had to guess, I don’t think it’s robots solving complex problems, freeing up more time for leisure and relaxation. I think it’s tech doing things slightly worse than humans used to – chatbots, automated voices on the phone, graphic design, photography, writing – and more people struggling to get by with limited options. There isn’t a great reason for any of it. If technology isn’t improving our quality of life, why are we bothering to use it?
I have work lined up for the next six months. After that, it’s hard to say. Part of the freelance life has always been jumping forward with the trust I’ll land on my feet. AI is making that feel like much more of a risk. Trying to place that anxiety, I penned a new play, set in an America where all long-haul trucks become self-driving. Staging the script live, in front an audience with real actors, feels fitting. Barring some major advancement in animatronics, it’s the one place I know our work won’t be outsourced to emerging tech.