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People seem to think that OpenAI’s ChatGPT, a chatbot powered by artificial intelligence, is going to put many writers out of business or make writing bland—or both. But perhaps that’s not a bad thing.
With the rise of the internet, we’re inundated with more writing than ever and most of it is mediocre. On social media platforms like Twitter, everyone gets a license to be a short-form editorial writer, uninhibited by an editor or boss riding them for accuracy and relevance. Are public debates over ideas and policies any more informed or enlightened for having these truncated opinion pieces? You know the answer.
Journalism has the opposite problem. Journalistic writing once had to fit into a set number of column inches. Now, the digital-news hole is infinite, so most news stories go on and on without a sense of restraint—but with dwindling quality. No wonder ChatGPT’s most immediate application is on digital news, tech and social-gossip sites desperate to keep readers engaged with whatever content sticks to the wall.
And look at corporate writing: It’s either cliché-ridden, meaningless fluff or rife with jargon. Either way, most of it is utterly forgettable.
Academics aren’t much better. Their writing—especially in the humanities and social sciences—is so arcane and technical that most of it is never read, even by other academics.
Maybe robots should get a shot at taking over some of this workday prose. Who wouldn’t mind a robot-generated statement that clearly articulates a company’s strategy without referring to the time-worn clichés of “paradigm shift” or “optimized performance”? What’s so bad about an academic paper written in language that any keen learner could understand? Would you turn your nose up at concise, fact-rich reporting on recent news?
I think people fear robot-writers because they do their job well, maybe even better than humans do.
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