AI Writing and You

We’ve all seen images of people created with AI, Artificial Intelligence. Maybe they look like folks you’d hang out with—until you look closer and see that the cute woman has eight fingers on her left hand and a scary number of upper teeth. Or the hand holding the guy’s beer is perfectly normal, but he has an extra eyebrow next to his ear.

Now imagine letting the same sort of AI do your writing for you, as some people are starting to do. Why not? It’s easy. But you may end up with the verbal equivalent of the guy with three eyebrows.

Ah, but, AI proponents will tell you, there’s a human factor involved. And indeed I came across a company hiring for just such a job: “Personalized Internet Assessor.” They’re looking for people to “review and rate” computer-generated content. They want “dynamic and creative people who have strong communication skills”—and a high school diploma.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with having only a high school diploma—one of my relatives never got past 10th grade, and he did just fine with his life. But you probably want your business writing to be well-reasoned, sophisticated, interesting. Not exactly the adjectives that spring to mind when I think of most 17-year-olds.

Bear in mind that whatever goes out in the world with your name on it as author will—like those frat party pictures you tried to scrub from Facebook—live on the internet forever. And if you work for a company, AI writing could tarnish its image, too. Your writing should represent you as you want to be seen, you at your best. Don’t let that AI-written article or speech set the bar.