This comment is not meant to be unsympathetic to anyone who loses their jobs, but from what I get from this article it sounds like those hit the hardest are those producing SEO blogspam. Miller...
This comment is not meant to be unsympathetic to anyone who loses their jobs, but from what I get from this article it sounds like those hit the hardest are those producing SEO blogspam. Miller even mention that himself. Many companies have these rather pointless blog sections. Not all complete useless, but seems to mostly be made for SEO boosting and not really intended for human readership. With that in mind, how much is really lost? This can of course go two ways. With AI replacing the cookie cutter text industry that is barely read by anyone, and at best AI summarized because the output is so verbose that you need an AI summarize to extract whatever information might be hidden in a generated text. Then maybe we could value text written by humans for humans more? Or will everything be sucked into a hole of generated input/output that there isn't much left for an actual human audience.
Stories coming out of this AI situation regularly reinforce my sense that for an AI to replace a creative person effectively, the world has to first reduce the person to a 'content machine'. In...
Stories coming out of this AI situation regularly reinforce my sense that for an AI to replace a creative person effectively, the world has to first reduce the person to a 'content machine'. In this case, skilled writers churning out articles to chase an algorithm to try to go viral, and it turned out an algorithm is better at chasing algorithms.
I know the whole "They came for the X" poem has been completely perverted by the modern internet discourse, but given how the slope is already slipping: I worry a lot less about blogspam being...
I know the whole "They came for the X" poem has been completely perverted by the modern internet discourse, but given how the slope is already slipping:
I worry a lot less about blogspam being automated so much as I do when critical systems like law, medicine, and engineering. The power it brrings is great, but we're in that "honeymoon phase" where it's thrown at everything and people pretends it's better than highly skilled humans at the same task. in some 5-10 years we'll probably find a happier medium of skilled labor being assisted by AI, but this business pressre + near recession economy will bring about many sacrifices in the meantime.
Then maybe we could value text written by humans for humans more? Or will everything be sucked into a hole of generated input/output that there isn't much left for an actual human audience.
that's what the ideal form of SEO was supposed to be doing. Showing users the most relevant, accurate,and quality result for your query. But we know how that ended up.y
I imagine this will simply be SEO v2. big compnies doing what is demonstrated here to look "human enough" for as low a cost as possible vs. a bunch of spam that has no such reservations. And honest human bloggers further buried by the increased output of slop.
I think search engines are going to need better ways of evaluating quality than what the page looks like and what links it gets. How that could happen is hard to say. Do a deal with some other...
I think search engines are going to need better ways of evaluating quality than what the page looks like and what links it gets. How that could happen is hard to say. Do a deal with some other company, maybe? That’s what Google did eventually for lyrics.
From the article: This reminds me of skilled mechanics building things one at a time being replaced by an assembly line. Replacing 60 workers with one will look like a 6,000% increase in...
From the article:
Writer Benjamin Miller – not his real name – was thriving in early 2023. He led a team of more than 60 writers and editors, publishing blog posts and articles to promote a tech company that packages and resells data on everything from real estate to used cars. "It was really engaging work," Miller says, a chance to flex his creativity and collaborate with experts on a variety of subjects. But one day, Miller's manager told him about a new project. "They wanted to use AI to cut down on costs," he says. (Miller signed a non-disclosure agreement, and asked the BBC to withhold his and the company's name.)
A month later, the business introduced an automated system. Miller's manager would plug a headline for an article into an online form, an AI model would generate an outline based on that title, and Miller would get an alert on his computer. Instead of coming up with their own ideas, his writers would create articles around those outlines, and Miller would do a final edit before the stories were published. Miller only had a few months to adapt before he got news of a second layer of automation. Going forward, ChatGPT would write the articles in their entirety, and most of his team was fired. The few people remaining were left with an even less creative task: editing ChatGPT's subpar text to make it sound more human.
By 2024, the company laid off the rest of Miller's team, and he was alone. "All of a sudden I was just doing everyone's job," Miller says. Every day, he'd open the AI-written documents to fix the robot's formulaic mistakes, churning out the work that used to employ dozens of people.
"Mostly, it was just about cleaning things up and making the writing sound less awkward, cutting out weirdly formal or over-enthusiastic language," Miller says. "It was more editing than I had to do with human writers, but it was always the exact same kinds of edits. The real problem was it was just so repetitive and boring. It started to feel like I was the robot."
This reminds me of skilled mechanics building things one at a time being replaced by an assembly line. Replacing 60 workers with one will look like a 6,000% increase in productivity, assuming they charge the same amount for the output. But the assembly line worker doesn't like it so much.
In some cases, most famously in Japan, assembly line workers are empowered to help improve the system, but that's still different from custom work. And this writer's corrections are training data that could in theory be used to improve the machine somehow.
But this story doesn't end well:
Miller's time humanising AI ended abruptly. After months of repetitive editing work [...] he was laid off. The company decided that Miller was just another unnecessary layer of human intervention.
Productivity statistics: divide by zero error.
Miller doesn't look back fondly on his time in the AI-humanisation mines. "I contributed to a lot of the garbage that's filling the internet and destroying it," he says. "Nobody was even reading this stuff by the time I left because it's just trash." Ultimately, Miller assumes the company will just take down the AI articles he worked on. "It'll be like it never even happened."
I guess if the customer stops paying for it, it's 0/0.
Another example:
Cowart says the AI-humanising often takes longer than writing a piece from scratch, but the pay is worse. "On the job platforms where you find this work, it usually maxes out around 10 cents (£0.08) a word. But that's when you're writing, This is considered an editing job, so typically you're only getting one to five cents (£0.008-£0.04) a word," she says.
Seems like that's doing it wrong? If it were actually productive, they could pay more.
Also:
Matter says the transition to the AI world has been smooth for most of the writers she knows. In fact, it's become such an inherent part of the copywriting process that many writers now add personal "AI policies" to their professional websites to explain how they use the technology.
Rebecca Dugas, a copywriter with nine years of experience, says AI has been a "godsend" that lets her turn out the same high-quality work in a fraction of the time.
"I use AI whenever my clients are comfortable with it," she says. "Whether it's brainstorming, market research, reworking paragraphs when I'm banging my head against the wall, it's been an incredible co-creative partner."
...
A great deal of copywriting work comes from website owners who want articles that will generate more traffic from Google. However, Google made a number of dramatic announcements in the last year about its effort to remove "unhelpful" content from search results. That sparked fears that the tech giant may penalise websites that host AI-generated content. Google maintains that AI-writing is fine if the content is high quality, but these reassurances haven't dissuaded concerns.
As a result, it's become a common practice in some parts of the copywriting world to run text through AI detection software. Over the last year, a wave of writers even say they've lost jobs over false accusations from AI detectors.
According to Cowart, many of the same freelance writing platforms that have AI detection software in place are simultaneously hiring people to edit content produced by chatbots. That means in some corners of the copywriting ecosystem, almost everything revolves around efforts to avoid the appearance of artificial intelligence.
I work in the translation/editing/copywriting field and so the threat of AI is like a black cloud constantly over my head. I've built and sustained my business over the last 15 years and I...
I work in the translation/editing/copywriting field and so the threat of AI is like a black cloud constantly over my head. I've built and sustained my business over the last 15 years and I consider myself quite lucky to have been successful in what is quite a difficult sector. I'm now at a very difficult crossroads in my life where I could keep plugging away at it and hope to keep doing what I love, or try a career change before AI possibly takes my job.
I wish there were a clear answer. We are already seeing AI take some work away, but equally I'm also seeing some pushback and clients telling me that they still value human-created content. Some clients have suggested that they do not ever intend to use AI for their content, citing privacy, security and authenticity concerns. I'd be a fool to fully believe them, but I still think it's possible that AI won't actually replace humans in the way that I fear. But AI in 10 years could be so much better that all of the problems we are currently seeing will be ironed out? Or will it be dumber from having been seeded with even more sub-par content?
It's such a difficult decision, especially because every single sector will be affected by AI. Which jobs are safe now? Ironically, it seems the manual labour ones might be, which were the ones we thought robots and machines would take back in the day.
Maybe generation Z, who are already embracing vinyl, film cameras and birding, will not embrace AI as once feared, and will instead fight to keep humans central to whatever we do. I think the answer is that there will always be a demand for human-created content, but it will become more niche and artisanal. The question for me and others like me is: do we want to stay and fight to be in this niche? Because there will be fewer jobs and clients. I think that is inevitable.
That is indeed a trillion dollar question. For my part, as a software adjacent person and a parent, what I'm doing is (1) limit debt (2) learn a trade. I'm teaching my kid hands on stuff far more...
Which jobs are safe now?
That is indeed a trillion dollar question.
For my part, as a software adjacent person and a parent, what I'm doing is (1) limit debt (2) learn a trade. I'm teaching my kid hands on stuff far more so than coding. She's not going to need to code the way I do and frankly I don't feel qualified to teach her anything that might be relevant 10 years from now other than the highest level theory of how tech works. I can imagine myself going full time into trades within my lifetime, whether out of necessity or because it's become easier than cycles of layoff. Either way my toilet needs fixing.
Staying and fighting is well and good, but we can't fight anything when we're starving and fainting.
I too want to steer my kids in this direction. For me though, I would need to find a trade that isn't too physically demanding because of some issues with my body I have developed in middle age,...
(2) learn a trade
I too want to steer my kids in this direction. For me though, I would need to find a trade that isn't too physically demanding because of some issues with my body I have developed in middle age, and also something that doesn't require lots of money to learn / gain credentials. I simply can't afford to go back to school now.
Yeah no kidding, stuff like roofing isn't for everyone....and maybe honestly maybe should be done in a way that hurts people for life :'( My local college got some kind of funding for free courses...
Yeah no kidding, stuff like roofing isn't for everyone....and maybe honestly maybe should be done in a way that hurts people for life :'(
My local college got some kind of funding for free courses on a few topics, including land surveying for those who are apprenticing. But I guess for most of us it's time off from work that's the real price crunch.
I feel like Im a step or two behind you. I do copy work, tech adjacent. Im not learning a trade outright yet but I'm also not unseriously considering whether I'll need to retrain. I do have a...
I feel like Im a step or two behind you. I do copy work, tech adjacent. Im not learning a trade outright yet but I'm also not unseriously considering whether I'll need to retrain.
I do have a physical labour skill (not a trade) + connections I could fall back on for the short term, but that specific work is so incredibly demanding on the body (like, not a typical trade) it's not a viable long-term option.
Out of curiousity, how are you learning a trade while you (presumably?) have a day job? I'm learning a lot of DIY on my house but that's pretty basic stuff.
Extremely basic stuff over here as well. Youtube and older, actual books, plus the local towns people as resources. My partner is doing the heavy lifting on the more intensive learning front while...
Extremely basic stuff over here as well. Youtube and older, actual books, plus the local towns people as resources. My partner is doing the heavy lifting on the more intensive learning front while I keep a regular desk job and try to pitch in a bit on the weekends.
My partner brews beer and we have egg laying animals: apparently having something to trade is sometimes as good as knowing how to do something yourself.
Ahh, nice, good luck, it's overwhelming sometimes! I've been watching a lot of youtube, reading forums. Good idea on the books. I had it in my mind to find proper manuals+codes for some of the...
Ahh, nice, good luck, it's overwhelming sometimes! I've been watching a lot of youtube, reading forums. Good idea on the books. I had it in my mind to find proper manuals+codes for some of the more intensive work Im hoping to learn eventually, but it never crossed my mind to seek out older physical training materials for some of the stuff Im learning now.
I feel similar. I still have some freelance sidework, but I've mentally categorized it as a bonus while it lasts (seems to have stabilized after the initial 2023 bloodbath, at least). But, I...
the threat of AI is like a black cloud constantly over my head.
I feel similar. I still have some freelance sidework, but I've mentally categorized it as a bonus while it lasts (seems to have stabilized after the initial 2023 bloodbath, at least).
But, I jumped ship from purely freelancing when grammarly first got big. Not because it was especially good, it just felt like the writing on the wall.
I still do copy work, now at a large, highly regulated org., which feels like I have some buffer in terms of security and... possibly... ability to pivot. We'll see.
I felt SO stressed at the beginning of 2023 when I first saw the effects of chat-gpt on my sidework, but Im tired of feeling that bad constantly. For now, I have a job. Maybe I'll retrain sooner or later, all I can do is adapt and try and keep a few doors open.
Do you mind saying what sector you now have a job in? I've even been daydreaming about being a mail carrier because I just want to stay active and make a steady income rather than feel the stress...
Do you mind saying what sector you now have a job in? I've even been daydreaming about being a mail carrier because I just want to stay active and make a steady income rather than feel the stress of what my yearly salary will be. My income has not really changed in about 10 years, but 2024 may well be different. I would earn a lot less as a mail carrier, but maybe I'd be happier...
Oh, I was maybe not super clear (Im off the clock, write terribly outside work :D): Im still a writer in content design/ux writing/however you want to brand it, but I'm in-house at a bank. It's a...
Oh, I was maybe not super clear (Im off the clock, write terribly outside work :D): Im still a writer in content design/ux writing/however you want to brand it, but I'm in-house at a bank. It's a decent gig.
I know a couple people who are or have been mail deliverers (for canada post, Im in Canada). I think largely it sounded like a pretty sweet gig, with good benefits once you get hired fulltime. The most difficult part, iirc, was getting the shittier work as a new/temp hire, and working your way into a permanent route with consistent hours, and even then a GOOD permanent route. But that's not really unexpected for any job.
(Edit- Actually, since you mention income one person I know left because the starting earnnings were only soso and they got work elsewhere)
Thanks for the info. I'm only half serious about the mail carrier gig, but still half serious (I'm in Canada as it happens). But moving from quite a creative, intellectual job to one almost the...
Thanks for the info. I'm only half serious about the mail carrier gig, but still half serious (I'm in Canada as it happens). But moving from quite a creative, intellectual job to one almost the opposite might be a problem I'm not prepared for. My thinking is that a steady job with set hours might leave time for my creative pursuits after work. I didn't consider that it might be difficult to get the permanent gig and going through a temp period. But I've not even started looking at anything else seriously yet. Still deciding whether to stick my current job out as best I can. I have some loyal clients who would hate for me to leave. The decision all boils down to whether I'll have enough income until I retire.
Privacy and security are only concerns when using someone else’s AI — if it’s one you’re running in-house on your own hardware, those concerns go away. So yeah, I definitely think you’re right to...
Some clients have suggested that they do not ever intend to use AI for their content, citing privacy, security and authenticity concerns.
Privacy and security are only concerns when using someone else’s AI — if it’s one you’re running in-house on your own hardware, those concerns go away. So yeah, I definitely think you’re right to be skeptical that those concerns are enough to prevent future adoption.
I’m in government and it’s been interesting hearing the discussions around information security, personal information, unauthorised access, accidental leaks etc and how quickly that vanishes if it’s all run on government hardware with all the security that’s already in place. Suddenly it opens up feeding all kinds of sensitive documents into the AI for various processes. That’s all still theory at the moment, there hasn’t actually been an in-house model built or tested, but it’s been interesting to see discussions on those kinds of worries and their solutions.
What I took from that is some effort spent either fine-tuning the model or even just prompt engineering might be able to replace his job too.
"Mostly, it was just about cleaning things up and making the writing sound less awkward, cutting out weirdly formal or over-enthusiastic language," Miller says. "It was more editing than I had to do with human writers, but it was always the exact same kinds of edits. The real problem was it was just so repetitive and boring. It started to feel like I was the robot."
What I took from that is some effort spent either fine-tuning the model or even just prompt engineering might be able to replace his job too.
This comment is not meant to be unsympathetic to anyone who loses their jobs, but from what I get from this article it sounds like those hit the hardest are those producing SEO blogspam. Miller even mention that himself. Many companies have these rather pointless blog sections. Not all complete useless, but seems to mostly be made for SEO boosting and not really intended for human readership. With that in mind, how much is really lost? This can of course go two ways. With AI replacing the cookie cutter text industry that is barely read by anyone, and at best AI summarized because the output is so verbose that you need an AI summarize to extract whatever information might be hidden in a generated text. Then maybe we could value text written by humans for humans more? Or will everything be sucked into a hole of generated input/output that there isn't much left for an actual human audience.
Stories coming out of this AI situation regularly reinforce my sense that for an AI to replace a creative person effectively, the world has to first reduce the person to a 'content machine'. In this case, skilled writers churning out articles to chase an algorithm to try to go viral, and it turned out an algorithm is better at chasing algorithms.
I know the whole "They came for the X" poem has been completely perverted by the modern internet discourse, but given how the slope is already slipping:
I worry a lot less about blogspam being automated so much as I do when critical systems like law, medicine, and engineering. The power it brrings is great, but we're in that "honeymoon phase" where it's thrown at everything and people pretends it's better than highly skilled humans at the same task. in some 5-10 years we'll probably find a happier medium of skilled labor being assisted by AI, but this business pressre + near recession economy will bring about many sacrifices in the meantime.
that's what the ideal form of SEO was supposed to be doing. Showing users the most relevant, accurate,and quality result for your query. But we know how that ended up.y
I imagine this will simply be SEO v2. big compnies doing what is demonstrated here to look "human enough" for as low a cost as possible vs. a bunch of spam that has no such reservations. And honest human bloggers further buried by the increased output of slop.
I think search engines are going to need better ways of evaluating quality than what the page looks like and what links it gets. How that could happen is hard to say. Do a deal with some other company, maybe? That’s what Google did eventually for lyrics.
For Google Maps, they collect their own data.
From the article:
This reminds me of skilled mechanics building things one at a time being replaced by an assembly line. Replacing 60 workers with one will look like a 6,000% increase in productivity, assuming they charge the same amount for the output. But the assembly line worker doesn't like it so much.
In some cases, most famously in Japan, assembly line workers are empowered to help improve the system, but that's still different from custom work. And this writer's corrections are training data that could in theory be used to improve the machine somehow.
But this story doesn't end well:
Productivity statistics: divide by zero error.
I guess if the customer stops paying for it, it's 0/0.
Another example:
Seems like that's doing it wrong? If it were actually productive, they could pay more.
Also:
...
I work in the translation/editing/copywriting field and so the threat of AI is like a black cloud constantly over my head. I've built and sustained my business over the last 15 years and I consider myself quite lucky to have been successful in what is quite a difficult sector. I'm now at a very difficult crossroads in my life where I could keep plugging away at it and hope to keep doing what I love, or try a career change before AI possibly takes my job.
I wish there were a clear answer. We are already seeing AI take some work away, but equally I'm also seeing some pushback and clients telling me that they still value human-created content. Some clients have suggested that they do not ever intend to use AI for their content, citing privacy, security and authenticity concerns. I'd be a fool to fully believe them, but I still think it's possible that AI won't actually replace humans in the way that I fear. But AI in 10 years could be so much better that all of the problems we are currently seeing will be ironed out? Or will it be dumber from having been seeded with even more sub-par content?
It's such a difficult decision, especially because every single sector will be affected by AI. Which jobs are safe now? Ironically, it seems the manual labour ones might be, which were the ones we thought robots and machines would take back in the day.
Maybe generation Z, who are already embracing vinyl, film cameras and birding, will not embrace AI as once feared, and will instead fight to keep humans central to whatever we do. I think the answer is that there will always be a demand for human-created content, but it will become more niche and artisanal. The question for me and others like me is: do we want to stay and fight to be in this niche? Because there will be fewer jobs and clients. I think that is inevitable.
That is indeed a trillion dollar question.
For my part, as a software adjacent person and a parent, what I'm doing is (1) limit debt (2) learn a trade. I'm teaching my kid hands on stuff far more so than coding. She's not going to need to code the way I do and frankly I don't feel qualified to teach her anything that might be relevant 10 years from now other than the highest level theory of how tech works. I can imagine myself going full time into trades within my lifetime, whether out of necessity or because it's become easier than cycles of layoff. Either way my toilet needs fixing.
Staying and fighting is well and good, but we can't fight anything when we're starving and fainting.
I too want to steer my kids in this direction. For me though, I would need to find a trade that isn't too physically demanding because of some issues with my body I have developed in middle age, and also something that doesn't require lots of money to learn / gain credentials. I simply can't afford to go back to school now.
Yeah no kidding, stuff like roofing isn't for everyone....and maybe honestly maybe should be done in a way that hurts people for life :'(
My local college got some kind of funding for free courses on a few topics, including land surveying for those who are apprenticing. But I guess for most of us it's time off from work that's the real price crunch.
I feel like Im a step or two behind you. I do copy work, tech adjacent. Im not learning a trade outright yet but I'm also not unseriously considering whether I'll need to retrain.
I do have a physical labour skill (not a trade) + connections I could fall back on for the short term, but that specific work is so incredibly demanding on the body (like, not a typical trade) it's not a viable long-term option.
Out of curiousity, how are you learning a trade while you (presumably?) have a day job? I'm learning a lot of DIY on my house but that's pretty basic stuff.
Extremely basic stuff over here as well. Youtube and older, actual books, plus the local towns people as resources. My partner is doing the heavy lifting on the more intensive learning front while I keep a regular desk job and try to pitch in a bit on the weekends.
My partner brews beer and we have egg laying animals: apparently having something to trade is sometimes as good as knowing how to do something yourself.
Ahh, nice, good luck, it's overwhelming sometimes! I've been watching a lot of youtube, reading forums. Good idea on the books. I had it in my mind to find proper manuals+codes for some of the more intensive work Im hoping to learn eventually, but it never crossed my mind to seek out older physical training materials for some of the stuff Im learning now.
I feel similar. I still have some freelance sidework, but I've mentally categorized it as a bonus while it lasts (seems to have stabilized after the initial 2023 bloodbath, at least).
But, I jumped ship from purely freelancing when grammarly first got big. Not because it was especially good, it just felt like the writing on the wall.
I still do copy work, now at a large, highly regulated org., which feels like I have some buffer in terms of security and... possibly... ability to pivot. We'll see.
I felt SO stressed at the beginning of 2023 when I first saw the effects of chat-gpt on my sidework, but Im tired of feeling that bad constantly. For now, I have a job. Maybe I'll retrain sooner or later, all I can do is adapt and try and keep a few doors open.
Do you mind saying what sector you now have a job in? I've even been daydreaming about being a mail carrier because I just want to stay active and make a steady income rather than feel the stress of what my yearly salary will be. My income has not really changed in about 10 years, but 2024 may well be different. I would earn a lot less as a mail carrier, but maybe I'd be happier...
Oh, I was maybe not super clear (Im off the clock, write terribly outside work :D): Im still a writer in content design/ux writing/however you want to brand it, but I'm in-house at a bank. It's a decent gig.
I know a couple people who are or have been mail deliverers (for canada post, Im in Canada). I think largely it sounded like a pretty sweet gig, with good benefits once you get hired fulltime. The most difficult part, iirc, was getting the shittier work as a new/temp hire, and working your way into a permanent route with consistent hours, and even then a GOOD permanent route. But that's not really unexpected for any job.
(Edit- Actually, since you mention income one person I know left because the starting earnnings were only soso and they got work elsewhere)
Thanks for the info. I'm only half serious about the mail carrier gig, but still half serious (I'm in Canada as it happens). But moving from quite a creative, intellectual job to one almost the opposite might be a problem I'm not prepared for. My thinking is that a steady job with set hours might leave time for my creative pursuits after work. I didn't consider that it might be difficult to get the permanent gig and going through a temp period. But I've not even started looking at anything else seriously yet. Still deciding whether to stick my current job out as best I can. I have some loyal clients who would hate for me to leave. The decision all boils down to whether I'll have enough income until I retire.
Privacy and security are only concerns when using someone else’s AI — if it’s one you’re running in-house on your own hardware, those concerns go away. So yeah, I definitely think you’re right to be skeptical that those concerns are enough to prevent future adoption.
I’m in government and it’s been interesting hearing the discussions around information security, personal information, unauthorised access, accidental leaks etc and how quickly that vanishes if it’s all run on government hardware with all the security that’s already in place. Suddenly it opens up feeding all kinds of sensitive documents into the AI for various processes. That’s all still theory at the moment, there hasn’t actually been an in-house model built or tested, but it’s been interesting to see discussions on those kinds of worries and their solutions.
What I took from that is some effort spent either fine-tuning the model or even just prompt engineering might be able to replace his job too.