Why AI Won't Take My Job

The technology is no match for felt experience in the real world.

- Rana Foroohar

I'm not an early adopter of new technologies, but I am a self-interested economic actor. I'm also under a tight deadline on my next book project. So, I decided to use this opportunity to see how much—or how little—artificial intelligence (AI) could do for me as an author.

Could I outsource some of my book writing to AI? Would anyone notice the difference? The short answer is no, I can't, and yes, they absolutely would.

As my book editor breathes a sign of relief, I'll also say that my experiment with the literary boundaries of AI yielded some more nuanced conclusions about when, how, and if writers should consider using the technology.

Over the past few weeks, I've run trials with what ChatGPT can and can't do creatively by pretending to be me. While the technology is constantly evolving, what I've seen so far has made me much more confident that my own job as an opinion columnist—which involves data procurement and analysis but also personal style, emotional acuity, and a lot of on-the-ground reporting—won't be technologically disintermediated anytime soon.

It has also opened me up to the potential of a close human-large language model (LLM) collaboration that yields more than either party could alone.

I started by giving ChatGPT Plus a road map of how to work in collaboration on a book, a template developed by a technologist friend who is likewise experimenting with AI's creative capability. The template laid out in detail what long-form narrative writing is and how to expand on an author's existing ideas and/or body of work.