This is a labor problem, but it’s also one of art. Why the fuck do you want to read things that no one could be bothered writing in the first place? What does it have to offer you at all, at the consumer end? I’d like to say I don’t know why people are happy to read AI generated slop, but a lot of it is that good writing should be almost invisible, the content of it the focus not the way its delivered. It should be unobtrusive, especially when you’re doing non-fiction works that are meant to be informative, not evocative. So people just don’t spot good quality writing! It slips past them and they just take in whatever it is the writer is supposed to be delivering. Even good fiction has the same quality of the technique often being invisible and the story itself becomes the focus. It’s a particular joy of mine as a writer when I’m reading something with excellent technique – it’s an added layer of pleasure – so all this AI slop is like dragging a nail file across vagus nerve most of the time. It’s not even bad. Bad writing can be a treat in its own right, if it’s done with earnestness. I especially love writing from people who speak English as a second or third language, folks still learning the rules and coming to the artform from wildly different backgrounds that bring new light to how my mother tongue works. Kids too! Kids make such brilliant mistakes, things that are like rediscovering the bones of some fantastic beast for the first time.

And AI has none of this! It’s just the top of the bell curve, the most boring mediocre output with no vision, no understanding, and nothing new to offer. And the people at the hiring end have decided they have so little respect for what good writing has to offer they’ll chuck out people with actual love of the written word over an overgrown Autocorrect. Even a well written cereal box label has more love in it that whatever a gen AI is going to spit out. That’s what we’re losing – a key connection to language. Just a slow erosion of the art forms that make life worth living.

Jilder kirjoittaa niinsanotusta tekoälystä tekstin tuottajana vastauksena The Guardian artikkeliin ‘One day I overheard my boss saying: just put it in ChatGPT’: the workers who lost their jobs to AI. Lihavointi minun.