Last month, a friend jokingly told me that blogging and copywriting are obsolete. He’s a software engineer so his stance wasn’t surprising. There is growing global concern that artificial intelligence (AI) will replace millions of jobs in professions such as office administration, law, architecture, engineering, finance, management, sales, healthcare, art and design over the next decade. This year, the latest version of ChatGPT passed the US medical licensing exam with flying colours. Experienced doctors may be pushed aside by sophisticated robots that can perform delicate surgeries more precisely and read x-rays more accurately than a human eye can. With that said, it seems both my jobs are in jeopardy, huh? However, here’s why I’m not worried. At least, not yet.
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Here’s Why Bloggers Are Safe For Now
1. AI writers such as Chat GPT are unable to produce original independent thought. AI writers can only generate replies based on the data and patterns with which it has been programmed and trained. That being said, AI may be able to identify patterns which humans might miss, and provide useful insight but it cannot think and generate original content, ideas and opinions the way a human can. It is currently unable to provide hypotheses or predictions of the future based on current or past events.
2. Information changes in real time so AI can be slow to catch up. For example, I recently tested the free Chat GPT software with some Jamaican article headlines I plan to write soon and the results were shocking. This software which is allegedly accurate up to 2021 recommended places to visit which have closed as long ago as a decade! For my medical colleagues reading, I asked it about heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) management too. The PARADIGM-HF, DAPA-HF and EMPEROR-Reduced trials have long revolutionized how we treat HFrEF yet ChatGPT is offering outdated information that is no longer standard of care, even in Jamaica. Where are the SGLT-2 inhibitors and ARNIs???
3. AI writers often produce inaccurate information. The latest Chat GPT version still makes stuff up. Called “hallucination,” this problem haunts all the leading chatbots. AI systems do not have a clear understanding of true and false so they may confabulate and generate text that is completely false, as opposed to admitting their paucity of knowledge on a particular subject. For example, when I asked Chat GPT about the top 5 things to do in Portmore, Jamaica which I wrote about earlier this month, it recommended fictional places like the Portmore Craft Market and Portmore Lagoon. When I asked for a list of the best 5 restaurants in Mandeville, Jamaica, two of the responses were located 90 minutes away (95km) in Kingston while a third was located 140 minutes (145km) away in Ocho Rios!
Another important reason why AI will lag behind in Jamaica is that we’re third world after all. Jamaica’s internet penetration rate stood at 68.2% at the start of 2022. We lack so many basic necessities in our hospitals, offices and workplaces that I guess we’ll always lag behind whatever is the status quo in the first world. Fancy a robot trying to deliver mail given how highly inaccurate Google Maps is in Jamaica. Many roads which exist cannot be found on Google Maps, while others which have been closed for years are listed as the route to get around.
How to Use AI to Your Advantage As A Writer
So you’re telling me humans couldn’t be satisfied after we built word processing and speech-to-text software? Sheesh! Writers are people who enjoy using language to tell a story and express themselves creatively. I fear AI writers will erode this fun past time, even though I’ve already shown here why blogging is still alive. But whether we like it or not, AI is here to stay. AI can be a good and inexpensive writing assistant when trained correctly– much cheaper than hiring a human unfortunately. Here are three ways to use AI writers for your blog and website content:
- Beat writer’s block! Use AI to brainstorm catchy headlines, article outlines, introductions and conclusions. This can cut your article creation time in half, improve productivity and allow you to put out content more quickly. In return, you can take on more clients and earn more money as a professional blogger. If you use AI to write the body of your articles too, make sure to fact-check it closely and add your personal voice in way of opinions, predictions, real-life experiences and advice. You can even take it a step further by using AI to write your email newsletters, FAQ page and the description of your products or services where applicable.
- Use AI to improve blog post structure and readability. Good structuring has a significant impact on your article’s readability and appeal. Use AI to split your article into smaller chunks, or do away with paragraphs altogether and convert your article into digestible bullet points!
- Improve SEO. AI can generate catchy meta descriptions, keywords and even alt text for photos which will allow your article to rank higher in search engines.
Wrap Up
AI writers are a double edged sword. We live in a fast-paced world of convenience but it’s making us more stressed, forgetful, prone to chronic illnesses and lacking in critical thinking and interpersonal skills. I predict the academic world’s issues of plagiarism, lack of integrity and eroded writing skills will continue to worsen as AI writers become more commonplace. I hope we manage to strike a balance globally between controlling AI instead of letting AI control us. Whether we like it or not, AI is the future.
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