The False Debate Over AI-Assisted Writing
I’ve been following discussion on social media about writing in ChatGPT vs writing without it. This narrative is that writing, struggling through writing, by yourself, is inherently more valuable than writing with ChatGPT, letting the AI help you get unstuck.
Years ago, circa 2008, there was a lot of discussion about what it meant to be a journalist.
The answer then and now is that it doesn’t matter.
That may be a controversial take to some.
I work in digital solutions. I believe that digital solutions should solve customer problems, part of my job is to evaluate who the customer it is and what problem it solves for them, then work from there to establish business value.
Journalism solved a problem of helping people to get information. In a world where publishing costs have dropped next to nothing and everyone with a smartphone has access to the entire world, journalism can functionally come from anywhere. The idea of a professional journalist class has become muddled. Why take on the cost to hire professional journalists when you can access information from nearly anyone? The problem of information access has been solved by a different solution, the smartphone and social media.
Now you can debate whether it’s been solved well (I think it depends) but the customer has found a different solution, a solution that is essentially free, and so journalism as a solution has increasingly lost their customer base.
Back to ChatGPT writing.
Writing solves the problem for readers of acquiring information and entertainment (the joy of reading, etc).
In a world where reading books is already deteriorating as a place that people go to solve their problem of acquiring information and entertainment, increasingly that problem is also being solved by social media, I find it hard to believe that “I wrote this myself” is going to matter much to a sizable group of people.
What will matter is whether it solves the problem of being informative or entertaining to the customer.
So the right question (i almost typed “write”) question is whether the content is good, in the consumer’s eyes?
Not to mention, there’s ample data out there already that people are lying about not using ChatGPT. So do you even trust the people that say they don’t?