The more I engage with artificial intelligence and apply it myself, the clearer it becomes: AI won’t replace everything. What it will do is radically change the requirements for many professions.
In my case — content creation — many clients will expect that AI makes the work much faster and therefore cheaper. I don’t think it’ll be faster, though. Not unless you’re happy with a quick generic slop. What we will get is significantly better results in a similar timeframe.
We’ll have far more time for careful thinking and for validating our assumptions. But we’ll also need more time to refine what the AI generates. AI is very good at extracting text, but the output isn’t always sensible. We’ll need to read far more carefully in the future. That’s a skill many have already lost, because everything has to be faster and nobody takes the time — or has the focus — to read something properly. But that’s exactly what’s required if we want to do anything useful with generated text.
Beyond careful reading, we need to be present and better able to focus on what matters, so we can feed the machines clear, precise instructions. That same clarity is then needed to tighten the generated output for our purposes.
What does a kilo of thinking cost?
If clients believe that working with AI support should be faster and therefore cheaper, they should try it themselves first. If they’re happy with the result, they won’t need service providers anymore (whether the actual readers are happy is another matter entirely). Those who realise the content is unbearably generic will need something more — someone who empathises with the content and the audience, asks the right questions, gives the right instructions, generates far better content via AI, and then polishes it for human readers.
As it turns out, it’s not about the tool — it’s about the craft. A saw only becomes valuable when there’s a project for it and someone who knows how to use it. Same with AI. Everyone’s trying to figure out what ChatGPT can do. But very few will get the maximum out of it. Experience, curiosity, and above all creativity are what it takes. I’m ready.