BONUS: 5 Bullshit Arguments About AI

A rant.

AI is coming. It’s going to steal all the copywriting jobs, replace novelists and put poets out of their misery for good. According to some pundits, we’re supposed to just suck it up, set dreams ablaze à la Viking funerals and find something robots can’t do. Well, in my opinion, these blasé arguments need to be shot down one by one. 

“AI might kill some jobs but will create others.” 

It’s true. AI companies are creating new jobs. I could get a job as an AI editor, training chatbots to write more like people. But I’d have to take a 54% cut in pay, so excuse me for not seeing the upside. Moreover, I think when people make this argument ignore the fact that while God might be closing doors, he doesn’t always open windows in the same place. Sure, when flour mills in Minneapolis closed and moved to Buffalo, New York, the milling companies created new jobs for people in the City of No Illusions, but where did that leave Minneapolis mill workers? At the Mill City museum, you can hear stories about how workers cried when they learned the mill was closing.  

If you’re arguing that we need to look at both sides of the ledger, you need to acknowledge that things may not balance out for people on the losing side of it. It’s just callous to ignore that fact. 

“I’ll be fine because I have a brand.” 

I’ve heard more than one podcaster make this argument, and my first thought is, “People can get tired of you, you know.” Even the Beatles lost some of their popularity after they grew mustaches. 

A day may (and likely will) come when people are no longer entertained by the branded elite’s “takes,” particularly as those takes become more and more predictable. Professional contrarians beware. What’s more, if you’re sitting there saying it’s fine if I lose my job, you’re accelerating the timeline of my exhaustion with your smug ass. Finally, the first expense people trim when they lose a job is subscriptions, so AI could indirectly cost you money eventually, no matter how popular your brand seems to be. 

“You just have to adapt to changes.” 

Not all changes are good. See: Grocery stores. In Northeast Minneapolis, there used to be 100 small groceries that were part of the urban fabric. Now when you buy groceries, you have to get in a car, get on a bus, or pay 30% more to have a delivery driver bring it to you. Walking distance groceries are almost nonexistent unless you have just happen to live right near one. Is that better? Neighborhoods are less vibrant. People are forced to use cars. Carbon footprints are higher. Big box stores, with their long rows of fluorescent lights, self checkouts and impersonal service are depressing to shop in, especially when you could have a long-standing relationship with a neighborhood grocer instead. Will AI stealing jobs from writers and graphic designers really make the world better for anyone other than people run AI companies and employers who want to cut costs? 

“If a robot can replace you, your writing sucks and you deserve to lose your job.”

This infuriating argument misses the fact that employers often don’t value good writing in the first place and have to be sold on the benefits of hiring a skilled writer. Evidence lies in the fact that many large employers in the past were willing to farm out large amounts of work to vendors who paid their writers — usually people overseas or living in rural areas — very little. (Note: AI probably will wipe out those jobs.)

When I worked for one employer, part of my job became to edit some of the projects that the vendors created. Because these projects were turnkey websites that clients could lease, and not the custom sites we created based on client interviews, the company decided lower-cost vendors should create them. The work didn't matter enough to put top talent on it from the jump. 

At another company, I was part of a team of copywriters whose job it was to write product descriptions for the company’s website. Essentially, the descriptions we wrote were samples; a vendor would handle the lion’s share of the work based on our samples. The company had planned to do this even before we were hired; it’s not as if they saw our work, said “never mind,” and chose the cheaper option. Our boss kept making the argument that to have our team do all the work, they’d need 80 full-time writers. Instead, they had a team of eight writers who often didn’t have enough to do because we had to wait around for departments to approve things before we could start new projects. I’ve always thought they could have given us a crack at it instead of going with an inefficient, bifurcated model. They could have valued us enough to make us full-time employees, give us benefits and keep us permanently. After all, we were talented enough to create the samples that the less expensive writers would copy. But ultimately they valued the bottom line over talent. 

“It’s fine if AI uses other people’s intellectual property.” 

Speak. For. Yourself. You may be fine with AI companies training chatbots on your work, but nobody else has to be. If people creating AI had to pay to use the content they train their programs on, it would be too expensive to do at all. Doesn’t that tell you something? That they have to steal from artists and writers to make it profitable? Why should anyone be OK with that? How would you like it if your employer decided it was more profitable to stop paying you, and you had no recourse at all? 

Maybe the future of copywriting isn't no copywriters, but copywriters who know how to use AI to their advantage. Fine. But if you think it’s fine for writers, translators and other creatives to lose their jobs because you'll be fine? Look in the rearview mirror. One way or another, AI is coming for you too.