I still remember when I first received notice about the ‘threat’ artificial intelligence and more specifically the likes of ChatGPT posed to my job as a blogger. It was in mid-January, 2023. This was around the same time that a couple of friends of mine were simultaneously applauding the advent of AI.
One longtime homey basically told me that he developed an emotional dependency on conversing with ChatGPT, and it helped to mitigate his loneliness. At first I thought that was kinda pathetic. But I guess that these days, we all emotionally depend on computers in one way or another.
The other friend is actually an academic. When I told him that I might eventually lose my job to AI, instead of sympathizing he rather started gushing over ChatGPT – how ‘everyone is using it’ and how he sometimes utilizes it to conduct small writing tasks, such as drafting outlines. He’s actually a successful businessman/entrepreneur, so I guess such a disposition on his part is understandable.
Back then, the argument I presented to my employer was along the lines of ‘don’t worry, we humans will prevail’. I made that assertion not only based on confidence in my own writing skills but also three predictions, one of which has come true, the other somewhat and the third, as it currently stands, not at all.
Prediction Number 1
First was that, having once been a computer science major myself, I knew that there would be issues once too many people started leaning on AI to write articles. That’s the prediction that has proven true as, in more recent times, it has been revealed that these artificial intelligence programs are biased or in some cases flat-out untruthful.
Also, there are issues with plagiarism, which is what I more specifically foresaw, because of course if you’re using a computer to write an article, it has to get its information from somewhere, i.e. human writers. And even if it does flip words around to avoid direct plagiarism detection, if you and a number of other people are using the same software to write about the same topic, how many times can it do so before it becomes obvious that you’re all generating content from the same source?
Prediction Number 2
So my second prediction, the one that sorta came true, is that people would actually prefer human-written content over that composed by a computer. And for a time, there was a notable backlash against AI, when it came to using the software to write articles.
There were even one or two occasions when I had personally written posts, and a dissatisfied reader would accuse me of being a robot. To me, that was affirmation that netizens – or our faithful readership at least – would not allow us to be replaced by software or prefer a competitor that relies on it. To some extent that was true, but at this point it’s pertinent to note that Google’s algorithms also played a role in the demise of my job, which is something I’ll get back to later.
Prediction Number 3
Third, as in the prediction that hasn’t come true at all, was my belief that AI would be a passing fad. Since then, it has become obvious that the powers-that-be intend for it to stay, and therefore it will.
Artificial intelligence being made accessible to the general public hasn’t necessarily had the type of revolutionary impact that some analysts foresaw.
And many of those in the know, i.e. the entrepreneurs and intellectuals who are actually developing it, seem to more vociferously warn about its potential dangers rather than its advantages. But they keep developing it nonetheless, not due to its benefits to mankind but because it’s less expensive than employing people.
My Job before AI
As for me personally, my job revolved primarily around analyzing songs, mostly contemporary pieces by popular musicians but also in some cases classics, even dating back centuries. I thought my employment was pretty safe because there are a couple of reasons why ChatGPT cannot be consistently depended upon to interpret song lyrics from multiple sources and ages.
And when it does, the output tends to be pretty generic, lifeless if you will, i.e. lacking any type of compelling analysis, thought-provoking or original conclusions. So even as I was progressively experiencing pay cuts, I thought that ultimately the job itself would endure.
I know there are people out there who like their coffee without milk or sugar so to speak, but I also know that there are others who prefer more in-depth, meaningful content.
Be that as it may, Google actually proved to be the deciding factor. From January 2023 all the way up until September of that same year, I had to deal with my employer constantly complaining about being unable to compete with rival sites that relied on AI, and my pay increasingly suffered as a result.
Being that I’m not really adept in SEO and things of the sort, I don’t know the intricacies of what transpired. But from what I can gather, it went something like this.
Writing a song analysis – complete with trivia, facts and taking into consideration the associated research – takes about two hours on average. If it’s some type of serious classic, like a Beatles’ or Michael Jackson hit, it can even take an entire working day.
Meanwhile, AI can compose an article about a song in a matter of seconds. I often visited those sites, i.e. the ones that used ChatGPT to analyze songs, and again, the output isn’t anything impressive and in some cases downright elementary. But obviously, that isn’t the point.
It’s more along the lines of, in the game of maintaining a website or webpage for profit, the more content you can pump out, the better. So you may notice that with some of your own favorite sites or social media pages even, the owner is always publishing material to maintain a competitive edge.
And besides the time it takes to compose an article, there are practical reasons why a human being cannot create as much content as AI, even if so desired. For instance, computers don’t have to deal with the health ramifications of overtyping or staring too long at a monitor.
But ultimately, what proved to be the nail in the coffin as far as my job was concerned was, once again, Google. My employer’s site had suffered serious losses in traffic, but still, they were hanging on, and I had my job, which by September 2023 was paying a third of what I was making in 2022. But then, I was informed that Google had modified their algorithm such that now, the traffic the site received was negligible, and the project became unprofitable to maintain.
I looked up the changes Google had made and again, not being an SEO man myself, couldn’t completely make sense out of them. I do recall that for a time, they were trending towards prioritizing human-made content but then, in September 2023, sort of reversed that course. And that was when I was more or less laid off for good, by the powers-that-be, if you will.
There’s Hope
I still believe that there’s a place for human writers. I visit multiple news sites daily, and most of the articles, from what I can tell, are still written by people. There are fundamental reasons why there are certain classifications of writers that AI will never be able to replace, at least not fully. But that does not negate the fact that as it currently stands, this technological phenomenon has contributed to me being cast into joblessness.
