Indicators that writers will need to scramble lest they find themselves replaced by a robot in coming months or years were out in full force in Q2.
Those included a warning that some big news outlets are simply dying to replace writers with robots.
Says Dan Kennedy, a journalism professor at Northeastern University: “Let me introduce you to the two most bottom line-obsessed newspaper publishers in the United States: Alden Global Capital and Gannett.
“If they could, they’d unleash the algorithms to cover everything up-to-and-including city council meetings, mayoral speeches and development proposals.
“And if they could figure-out how to program the robots to write human-interest stories and investigative reports, well, they’d do that too.”
Still other reports of automation’s relentless push into professional writing include:
*15% of news stories are now auto-generated at news outlets that use AI
*Renowned author Stephen Marche cautions that AI-generated writing is poised to fundamentally automate the world of writing
*The job description of ‘automation editor’ is now a thing
*Poet Jukka Aalho believes AI fiction analysis programs could become the next arbiter of cool for all new fiction
*An Australian professor says it may be time to make auto-writing software a key element of college writing courses
Of course, not everyone is buying the ‘AI Takeover’ theory, including John Horgan.
He’s a long-time science writer who believes job automation fears are overblown.
But no matter what your perspective, the stories on automation’s growing influence over professional writing keep popping-up.
Here are the details on those change milestones for Q2:
*AI-Generated Writing: Its Threat to Writers: Dan Kennedy, a journalism professor at Northeastern University, believes AI-generated writing represents a real threat to writers.
Specifically: the growing use of AI to automate the writing of sports, real estate, traffic, weather, financial and other data-intensive news stories.
Observes Kennedy: “It sounds innocuous enough, given that much of this work would probably go undone if it couldn’t be automated.
“But let’s curb our enthusiasm.
“Let me introduce you to the two most bottom line-obsessed newspaper publishers in the United States: Alden Global Capital and Gannett.
“If they could, they’d unleash the algorithms to cover everything up-to-and-including city council meetings, mayoral speeches and development proposals.
“And if they could figure out how to program the robots to write human-interest stories and investigative reports, well, they’d do that too.”
Bottom-line: Kennedy warns writers and others to dismiss the sugar-coated evangelism of AI writing, which only presents the upside of AI.
In a very real sense, Kennedy predicts AI — for all its benefits — is also robbing current and future writers of jobs and opportunities.
Observes Kennedy: “The highly skilled people whom I used to pay to transcribe my interviews no longer have those jobs.
“High school students who might have gotten an opportunity to write-up the exploits of their sports teams for a few bucks have been deprived of a chance at an early connection with news — an experience that might have turned them into paying customers or even journalists when they got older.
“And local news — much of which is already produced at distant outposts, some of them overseas — is about to become that much more impersonal and removed from the communities they serve.”
For an in-depth, 2021 look at how robots are replacing editors and writers across virtually all writing genres, check out, “The Robots Cometh: How artificial intelligence is automating writing jobs,” by Joe Dysart.
*Study: 15% of News Stories Now Auto-Generated by AI at Key News Outlets: A new academic study finds that 15% of news stories are now automatically generated at leading news outlets using AI.
Most of the 130 AI implementations pinpointed by the researchers were found at larger news organizations — heavy hitters that have the deep pockets to hire AI experts and experiment with the technology.
John Conway, vice president, WRAL Digital, Capitol Broadcasting Group — interviewed by the researchers — says the work AI can do is “work that reporters could do without machines, but it would take much longer.
“I see a big benefit of AI as the reallocation of resources, especially for smaller newsrooms.”
*For All Writers, Automation Looms: Renowned author Stephen Marche warns that AI-generated writing is poised to fundamentally automate the world of writing.
Observes Marche in “The New Yorker” Magazine: “Whatever field you are in, if it uses language, it is about to be transformed.
“The changes that are coming are fundamental to every method of speaking and writing that presently exists.”
Marche’s perspective was triggered, in part, by his use of Sudowrite.
It’s an AI-generated writing tool designed to mimic the style of any author.
Marche put Sudowrite through its paces, prompting it to imitate the style of novelist Franz Kafka — and was dazzled.
Observes Marche: “Brute computational power is why Sudowrite can write like Kafka.”
*Brave New World: Automation Editors: In a sign of the times, AI-generated writing pioneer Narrativa is redefining what it means to be a news editor.
Instead of seeking more traditional expertise, Narrativa is on the hunt for an editor “who can create, supervise and review automatic content generated by artificial intelligence.”
Key ‘automation editor’ skills Narrativa prizes include:
~Participation in the natural language process establishing linguistic connections between data and words
~Data interpretation for its future application in practical cases
~Creation of domains for automated content
~Preparation and synchronization of automated content for customer service
*Style and correction revisions
Apparently, the glory days of the ‘ink-stained wretch’ are officially over.
*New Fiction: Will AI Be the Arbiter of Cool?: Jukka Aalho, a poet who published a book of poems written by GPT-3 — a powerful AI-generated writing tool — believes the rise of automated writing could change the way creative writers forge fiction.
Like their brethren in advertising and marketing, fiction writers may start turning to AI for analytical help to improve their writing.
AI can help fiction writers determine, for example:
~What is the best title for my novel?
~What formula should I use in the first pages of my book to hook a reader?
~What books do readers finish — and what features do those books share in common?
Observes Aalho: “There will eventually be an editor AI — let’s call it HemingwAI — that scores your text based on some fancy machine learning.
“Maybe HemingwAI can suggest a few ways of optimizing your opening scene.
“Maybe you look them through and say — well, this could work if I do it like this.
And perhaps chillingly for many authors: “Maybe your book deal states that you have to abide by the suggestions made by your editor — or HemingwAI,” Aalho observes.
(For an in-depth look at GPT-3, check out: “GPT-3 and AI Writing: Stunning, if Imperfect,” by Joe Dysart.
*Education: Age of the Hybrid Writer Beckons: Given that students already have easy access to AI writing tools, it may be time to legitimize the tech’s use in the classroom, according to Lucinda McKnight.
McKnight is a senior lecturer in Pedagogy and Curriculum at Deakin University.
Observes McNight: “Many student writers are already using AI writing tools.
“Perhaps, rather than banning or seeking to expose machine collaboration, it should be welcomed as ‘co-creativity.’”
Indeed, professional writers who have mastered one or more AI writing tools are generally seen as more valuable by employers.
Observes McKnight: “AI writers work lightning fast. They can write in multiple languages and can provide images, create metadata, headlines, landing pages, Instagram ads, content ideas, expansions of bullet points and search-engine optimized text — all in seconds.
“Students need to exploit these machine capabilities, as writers for digital platforms and audiences.
“Perhaps assessment should focus more on students’ capacities to use these tools skillfully instead of — or at least in addition to — pursuing ‘pure’ human writing.”
Of course, the question is, once AI writing tools are broadly accepted in the classroom, how — as a practical matter — can original writing still be taught?
*Doubting the AI Takeover: News of the impending demise of flesh-and-blood types at the hands of AI has been greatly exaggerated, according to John Horgan.
Horgan — who is featured in this piece — is a long-time science writer and the author of a number of science-related tomes.
Adds Mind Matters News: “We don’t hear much about failures, stalls, and dubious claims around AI because, generally speaking, media follow a special standard when covering it: Progress is simply assumed.
“Outrageous hype is forgivable. Astounding claims are not queried. Stalls and failures are minimized rather than highlighted.
“And the possibility that some prophesied advances may be impossible in practice because the problems are not computable is seldom entertained — possibly not even understood.”
*China Releases GPT-3 Crusher: Chinese firm Huawei has released a competitor to GPT-3 — one of the world’s most powerful auto-text generators.
The contender, dubbed PanGu-Alpha, sports up-to-200 billion parameters — 25 million more than GPT-3 — and auto-renders text in the Chinese language.
Observes Kyle Wiggins, a writer for VentureBeat: One crucial difference between GPT-3 and PanGu-Alpha “is the number of tokens on which the models trained.
“Tokens — a way of separating pieces of text into smaller units in natural language — can be either words, characters, or parts of words.
“While GPT-3 trained on 499 billion tokens, PanGu-Alpha trained on only 40 billion — suggesting it’s comparatively undertrained.”
*With Brain Implant, Your Thoughts Become Words: Researchers have come up with a prototype brain-to-PC transcription system that grabs words you imagine and projects them on a PC screen.
Jamie Henderson, a professor of neurosurgery at Stanford University, says users of the system simply need to imagine that they’re writing with a pen and the system does the rest — rendering their words on-screen.
The system works by using small arrays of sensors, which are implanted just under the surface of the brain, according to Matthew Sparkes, a writer for New Scientist.
Those sensors are specially designed to grab neuronic brain signals associated with the act of writing — and send that data to specially designed software that translates the signals into words.
Currently, the system operates at a speed of 90 characters-per-minute.
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–Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.