I was reading a recent article from Hubspot regarding what jobs are most likely to be replaced by AI. According to the writer, the general consensus of predictive opinion (note, I didn't say research), is that AI will have a significant negative impact on a number of service career paths, including advertising & marketing, customer service, delivery, and for some reason benefit administrators and bookkeepers (data entry). The more notable impact in my field of freelancing, of course, is writing and proofreading. While the writing side of things looks, actually, pretty rosy due to the light of reality shining quickly on the fact that computers so far stink as good writers, proofers are pretty much in the shitter.
There Are Some Benefits of AI in Practice
I won't argue that AI tends to be pretty good at spotting grammar mistakes. In fact, we've all been using some form of it for years ever since WordPerfect and Word, as well as Google Docs, started implementing grammar tools in their software versus just spellchecking alone. However, professional proofreading should be going beyond just checking for proper placement of commas. It is, after all, the review point that makes sure a written product actually meets the criteria of an assignment. Robots don't apply ambiguous or conceptual criteria very well. That's where a human already versed in what's expected via experience and multiple editing jobs has a better in-practice performance than AI will so far produce.
Repeating the Same Mistakes in Human Resources
However, the above gets completely ignored by business managers looking for ways to cut operating expenses. Given the fact that most managers stink at writing themselves and delegate it out, they have as a group no idea what it takes to proofread writing on a technical level. Additionally, many believe the role is redundant, just a glorified editor role that a manager who ends up responsible for the written product already has to do. So, they are cut. And then the same manager ends up realizing how much work it involves, and he or she ends up hiring a new proofreader. However, the damage is done; the expertise of the released proofer is gone, and the new one has to spend time getting up to speed. Quality drops, and you know the rest of the story. This is the problem with poorly-implemented AI in the workforce.
Focus on the Work No One Should be Doing Instead
AI definitely has a place and is a gamechanger. It's best advantage is being applied in redundant tasks that should have been handled by a computer a long time ago and continue to represent a waste of human energy. However, targeted areas where people excel in through creation, context, and interaction is a mistake which proves itself again and again. Unfortunately, these areas oftentimes involve so many workers to interact with so many more people, they are easily targeted as fluff and extra fat that can be trimmed with a nice-sounding piece of software. And trust me, software salespeople do the rest of humanity no favors; they will throw their own children overboard if it can secure a sale on a big account with the promises they make in sales pitches.
AI could easily be applied in areas that are often slugs of human workload and mostly share the aspect of being downstream from a human decision. That easily includes mass mailing, data capture and input, mass communication, and a lot more. However, where AI continues to fail is in the actual human role of interacting with other humans effectively. Following a script can't replace dealing with a real person.
