My editor recently asked if I would be interested in writing a piece on whether AI will replace writers. As someone who recently found out that their work had been stolen to teach an AI model, I have some thoughts.
The short answer
Unfortunately, yeeeeaaaaaahhh, probably.
The longer answer
It’s complicated? Obviously, human beings will always create art — and many will continue to do so regardless of whether they can profit from it. Furthermore, some very lucky and/or talented and/or connected human beings will manage successful careers from their art no matter what happens. But it’s currently not looking great for everybody else.
The much longer answer
While I’m grateful that my editor values my work enough to not replace me with AI for this article about whether writers will be replaced by AI, her opinions sadly do not reflect the current climate when it comes to the world of content creation.
But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself here. I should probably organize my thoughts a bit…
First, what exactly are we talking about when considering the question of whether AI will replace writers? We're not wondering whether poetry will Still Be A Thing, or whether your favorite “magazine of ideas” will continue to publish ridiculous articles, or whether colleges and universities across the country will cease to charge hundreds of thousands of dollars to teach students how to workshop short stories.
The question is one of economics, not art: we’re wondering whether the current slate of large language models that have been integrated into virtually every facet of our world will take over the type of content creation that writers now handle.
I won’t bother going into technical jargon or the specifics of one AI product vs. another; this is a practical (as well as existential) discussion, not a technical one. I also won’t shout out specific AI models — they don’t need the additional press.
In the grand scheme of things, predictive text is the same as chatbot customer service is the same as AI-generated responses coming up first in your search results is the same as someone asking a computer to type up a book report. And any of these digital products can arguably produce longform written content like books, articles, news stories, or screenplays.
What would replacing writers with AI even look like?
It’s easy to imagine an exhausted college student asking AI to write up their essay assignment on 19th-century labor movements among English textile workers. Educators are no strangers to combating new trends in plagiarism each school year, after all.
It also makes sense, on the surface, for a researcher to assign AI with tedious tasks like summarizing loads of files within an archive. Assuming that the AI is capable of such a task in the first place, it isn’t the kind of thing that automatically leads to real-life humans losing their jobs.
In many ways, these are exactly the types of things that AI could be doing for and/or alongside humans to make their lives easier. Not every student can readily put into words the information they have in their brains. Not every researcher has the time or resources to sift through mountains of documents relevant to their field.
But functionally, there’s no difference between those examples and someone using AI to write an entire article or book or TV show. All that an editor, publisher, or TV executive would need to do is provide the AI model of their choosing with a specific enough prompt. In fact, some outlets are already doing exactly that.
Like I said, this is an economic question. Any time you ask AI to produce written or visual content you can’t create yourself, you are replacing a writer or visual artist with a computer. When enough people do this, it starts to impact the livelihoods of professional writers and artists everywhere, even those for whom art might not be their main source of income.
When corporations do this, it signals a massive shift in the job outlook for those creatives.
But why would you want to do this? AI art sucks.
While it’s true that much of what AI is currently capable of producing is not necessarily Good, there’s no way around the fact that it’s substantially Cheaper and Faster than hiring a human being to create the same content. (As the saying goes, “Good, fast, cheap. Choose two.”)
If a media outlet employs ten writers and one editor, and that one editor is already responsible for reading through all ten writers’ assignments and cleaning them up, what’s stopping that outlet from firing those writers and asking that one editor to clean up AI-written content instead? Nothing.
This isn’t theoretical scaremongering, either. For every major outlet like Sports Illustrated caught up in a huge scandal for publishing “writers” who don’t exist, there are countless smaller outlets that have openly stopped hiring writers altogether and have instead moved towards tasking editors with corralling AI-written content.
LinkedIn is crawling with editor job postings that now include descriptions like “Utilize AI tools to assist in content outlining, drafting, and idea generation” or “Test evolving AI tools for style guide conformance.”
There are small companies using AI to generate press releases or marketing content, medium-sized companies asking AI to create articles to fill out their homepage and increase clicks, and large companies hiring writers and editors only so they can train AI to replace them. And what do they all have in common? They want to cut costs and increase profits.
I keep harping on about this being an economic question more than anything because there’s a ton of historical precedent to suggest we already know how companies are going to use this new technology. Under capitalism, new technologies are rarely utilized to make the lives of workers easier. If innovation allows for the same number of products to be made in significantly less time, capitalists have always opted to produce a significantly larger number of products instead — preferably while employing fewer workers.
This was true for 19th-century textile workers, for 20th-century auto workers, and it’s true now for 21st-century creatives.
That makes sense, though, right? Why wouldn’t a company want to maximize profits?
Think what you want about capitalism. I’m not here to convince you that its worship of profit and growth is destructive to human welfare. All I’m saying is that there are patterns to these things.
Under the current system, increasing profit is more important than employing workers. That won’t always mean that existing employees will be fired and replaced with AI. But many new jobs simply won’t be created. It amounts to the same thing.
So, does this mean we’re all screwed?
There are some people who would take the cynical view that no one is owed a job, that “Freelance Content Writer” is not some sacred occupation that has existed since time immemorial and must be protected. Times change! Industries change! Grow and adapt! The benefits outweigh the drawbacks!
To those people I say: Go to hell.
The issue is not that these are special jobs that must be preserved. Writers are always going to write, whether they are paid for it or not. Look at us poets. Nobody’s paying us, but we keep on poeming. (Oh by the way I’m a poet.) The issue is that artists are just as much workers as teachers and plumbers and all the other little animals in the Richard Scarry books, and our society does not adequately protect workers or provide meaningful support when massive changes like this occur.
There isn’t going to be any government-led retraining process for all those who lose income or careers because of the shift to AI, just like there wasn’t any support during that whole “pivot to video” phase we all suffered through. Couple that with successive government administrations that have shown zero interest in regulating these new technologies, and it doesn’t look great for anyone trying to support themselves financially through writing.
Which brings me back to the original question…
Will AI replace writers?
Yeeeeaaaaaahhh, probably.
But there’s hope, right? You’re going to end on a positive note?
Uhhh…
You’ve got some inspirational advice in your back pocket, right?! Come on, didn’t you say you’re a poet?!
Yeesh, fine. Let me think about it…
All right, so, the cotton gin: new technology; increased production capacity; slaves had to work that much harder. They dealt with that by — oh, the Civil War, sorry, let me try again…
Okay, so those 19th-century textile workers! They organized, destroyed a bunch of machinery, rioted and went on strike until their demands were met, and… were brutally crushed by the English military. Didn’t think that one through.
Coal miners in Appalachia? No, they literally call that conflict the “Coal Wars” now. Auto workers in Detroit? I mean, have you seen what they did to Detroit after those folks started unionizing?
Yeah, I’m struggling to find the hope here. I guess there’s always revolution? Not sure what the other options are.
Anyway, be sure to check back soon for the newest “Culling the Classics” installment, Das Kapital!
About the author
Brian McGackin is the author of BROETRY (Quirk Books, 2011). He has a BA from Emerson College in Something Completely Unrelated To His Life Right Now, and a Masters in Poetry from USC. He enjoys Guinness, comic books, and Bruce Willis movies.
