The controversies attending the invention and adoption of technologies that do jobs faster and even better than human beings are age-long. The controversies have ostensibly manifested as debates at their best, and violent conflicts at their worst cases, e.g. the Luddite movement of 1811–1816, when English workers protested against the introduction of a new textile machine which they believed would take over their jobs. They went on rampage destroying the machines until government suppressed the movement with the army and harsh laws, especially that which made machine-breaking a capital offence.
At a polar end is a school of thought that praises technological advancements as a boost to productivity and job opportunities. At the other end is another school of thought that frowns at the giant technological strides. The school contends that technological advancements engender robotization, and massive labour lay-offs.
If you believe the former or the latter, you are right! Autor (2015 in Kindberg-Hanlon, 2021) confirms this truism when he stated that new technologies have dual capabilities of substituting or complementing labour, and accordingly can boost or reduce jobs out there.
In the early days of introduction of improved tools in agro-productions, artisans and their low labour-skills were complemented. The shift to electric power substituted many artisanal jobs, and complemented the mid-skilled and high-skilled labour. In that period, feudal mode of production gave way slowly but surely to machine economy.
The new phase of the advancements in technology is now substituting the mid-skilled and high-skilled labour jobs as computers do cognitive functions. It has always been a source of worry but it is more of such today. To this, one of the founders of Open AI, Sam Altman had been thinking about the possibility of perfect automation where the Artificial Intelligent (AI) machine does all the jobs, and creates commonwealth for the needs of every member of the society.
Can AI Replace Content Writers?
If the Altman’s society becomes possible, then AI can replace content writers. But Alas! I don’t see the possibility of the Altman’s society becoming a reality. Machines have successfully replaced many (menial) jobs in the past but that cannot happen successfully on cognitive jobs. Content writing is cognitive job that requires many skills, many of which cannot be replicated by AI. Yes, the complexity of the human brain can never be ENTIRELY replicated.
It is given that AI is still evolving and could be more sophisticated in the future but it is most definitely going to be thrown to the dust whenever the human brain comes into play. There are many reasons to buttress this position as listed hereunder.
Artificial Intelligence versus Human Brain
Human brain benefits from experience, AI does not: First-hand witness of a subject is one thing that AI cannot replicate in content writing. AI makes use of curated training content and online resources. It has no capability to experience. This makes blog or website content written by human brain to be rich and natural to the syllables. This lack of capability of first-hand knowledge makes AI-generated texts to be bland and robotic. What is more? It makes the poor performance of the AI-generated content on the search engines quite understandable.
Content writing is a social activity, and AI cannot fit perfectly into it: It is not just about the writing, it is also about who is writing. It is an interactive activity. AI is capable of interactivity but not to the extent of a trusted persona with his or her fingers on the keyboard. It is also not to the extent of the sense of community of the readers. Sometimes, the community of content writer’s fans go by a collective name, and the content writer remains the rallying point.
There are as many unique human brains as there are human beings but there is only one AI concept: The sophistication of human brain is decked with its rich supply. This makes the creation of innumerable unique content possible. AI on the other hand is repetitive and heavily plagiarizing. The reason is largely due to the fact that the content is generated from a static or slowly changing database.
AI-generated content is already suffering distrust and contempt by the people while human created content is still revered: People nowadays take AI content with a pinch of salt. There are a thousand and one tools for checking whether a digital content originated from AI. This is largely for decision-making especially, to deciding the level of trust to be put on the information in the content. This distrust and contempt indicates that human-written content will persist and revered in the cyberspace.
AI will give human-cognition a fillip: I have discussed the superiority of human brain over AI but more importantly, human brain will become more superior to AI, with AI. Is it a huge surprise? Instead of falling by the strong AI high waves, human brain will ride on it and hit new heights. In this manner, AI will become a tool in content writing, and never the master of content writing.
Conclusion
Content writers are therefore safe from the job-substituting effects of AI. The reasons are because human brain has the capability of first-hand knowledge while AI has not; content writing is a social activity that AI cannot really replicate; human brain is unique on every individual person but there is only one AI concept; AI-generated content is treated with contempt and distrust while human-written content is still revered, and it has no sign of changing soon, if at all; and finally, AI will give the capabilities of human brain a boost. This discussion used content writing as a subject but the thought is extendable to all cognitive jobs.
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