A business writer responds to Chat GPT

THE ROBOTS ARE COMING!! BE AFRAID!!

I’m a business writer. Professionals like me have had a restive couple of months. Not only have we been worrying, wondering, cuticle gnawing and fretting over Chat GPT, we’ve been getting asked by anyone who knows that we’re writers, how we feel and what we think about it. That’s really ratcheted up the pressure on me to come up with a cogent point of view.

The Threat to Writers Is The Upside that Businesses are Wondering About

In what has been years in the making, but seems like just an instant, Chat GPT presents a very real existential threat, just hanging there like the Sword of Damocles, waiting for my writing contracts to expire. Businesses aren’t seeing a bad thing though. They’re thinking that maybe there’s a way to cut costs, and Chat GPT might provide it for them. After all, it’s inexpensive, and it reads pretty well at first blush, right?

How you do Anything is How you do Everything

We’ve all heard the truism, ‘how you do anything is how you do everything.’ It’s the kind of truism that has been around for so long, it is part of the bedrock of western thinking and ethics. Aristotle once said that character is revealed by actions. It’s true. Of course, one big downside to automating the writing in your business is the risk of people finding out you’ve automated your writing.

Professor, meet Plagiarist. Warning: Strong Feelings Ahead

As a general reminder, professional writers think plagiarism is really bad. Google thinks plagiarism is really bad too. All of academia feels this way, including your sixth grade teacher, Ms. Webber. Steven King feels that way. So does Larry Fitzgerald. I recently saw an article about a hundred Stanford students being busted for using Chat GPT on their exams. Wow. Stanford University. Those kids are so smart that they got into Stanford, and so lucky to be there, yet they made the choice to cheat on their tests. Those kids are cheaters and plagiarists, which is so sad. I taught for a while at the college level, and I enjoyed it. I have just two things I want to say about plagiarists. First, their laziness and cynicism disqualifies them from membership in an academic community. Second, their successes decrease the value of every legitimately won college degree and advanced degree. So there’s that.

Autotune, Vinyl and MP3s

Writers who actually do the work should not fear Chat GPT. Talented singers do not use autotune, and discerning listeners want to hear beautiful voices. In the same way, talented writers craft their work to make it relevant and interesting, whose discerning readers want to read exactly that kind of thing. Robots simply can’t tell if something is interesting. If it is used to replace human talent, this engine will offer a mediocre and lazy way to try to trick Google and other search engines. At its heart, meaningful, timely, hand-written relevant content is, in a word, human. And that is enough. Business writing can be beautiful, in its ways, and when it's done well, it’s an art form.