Figure 1 - Star Trek 1971 Text Game from CODE PROJECT site
Introduction
Will AI eliminate your job as a tech writer? From the research I’m doing and courses I’m taking, the answer seems an obvious ‘No’. Currently, AI is a hot topic with discussions ranging from ‘it is just another search engine' to ‘it’s alive and plans to kill all humans and take over the world’!
My personal hunch is that human creativity, expertise, and emotional understanding will continue to play a crucial role because, it is up to the user to ‘ask the right question in the right form’ and not delve into ‘forbidden territory’.
Although AI is a major technological breakthrough that will have widespread implications across most industries, it is not new. AI has been in our everyday lives for over a decade (think of Grammarly, Facebook/ Google ads, search engines, auto-fill) -- so why has it become such a hot and often scary topic recently? Two key reasons:
1. it’s being applied to creative industries (art, music, writing, video)
2. it has become generative, meaning it can create something from scratch.
However, AI is currently unable to write anything long-form. Example: GPT-4’s ideal length for a single response is typically around 200-300 words.
An Example from Previous Technology
But it took a lot of time to get to where we are today. Programming computers (let alone AI engines) is obviously complicated. It takes skill and patience to think through how something is done (something technical writers excel at doing).
Writing Code 101
I remember my first computer, a Model 1, Radio Shack, TSR-80. It used cassette tape cartridges to store data and, even with a home-made, expansion interface, the hulking machine would only provide about 1.77 Megahertz of processing speed with a limit of 52 bytes of storage on a cassette tape cartridge!
Most early adopters had no alternatives other than to key in programs themselves. BYTE or PC User magazine would publish code in the back section of the magazines. Here is an example of BASIC code for the Star Trek game.
From the densely-packed, printed pages, you would type each number, letter or symbol into your keyboard. Once finished, you launched (compiled) it and held your breath to see if it worked. If it did not, you spent more hours searching for the one letter, number or symbol that was typed incorrectly, corrected it and recompiled. Often it became an iterative process of check, fix and try again.
All this work, knowing that most of these games would be boring as all get out, For example my favourite game was based on the Star Trek TV series. The ‘Enterprise’ and ‘Klingon’ space ships were represented by bouncing letters and symbols on the screen – nothing slick. You could move the ‘ships’ around on never ending adventures through space with key strokes (W for up, A for left, S for down and D for right. There was no mouse or directional arrow keys).
All that said, it is obvious that computer programs are light years ahead of those early days. Creating a system to achieve ‘Artificial Intelligence’ is exponentially more complicated than programming. So we must be patient with the new tools.
The Difficulties with AI
Click on this poster to go to the TED Talk, ‘The danger of AI is weirder than you think’ by Janelle Shane. It highlights a few of the significant difficulties with AI and will give you confidence to keep developing your technical writing skills.
Language Model Basics
So, what are some tools you can begin exploring, if you have not already started. Here are links to some basic information about the most recognised examples of language models that can generate natural language responses based on user input.
· ChatGPT
· Microsoft’s Edge’s Bing - ‘Prometheus’
Their ‘conversational nature’ is powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that has been fed large amounts of data to ‘learn’ from. The tools can be used to answer questions, point out examples and references, generate content, provide feedback and spark creativity.
It is important that you know more about these tools so you can leverage them to your advantage, because interest in the potential of these tools is growing.
Obviously, the tools are imperfect and can sometimes produce inaccurate, misleading, or biased information. Therefore, it is important to use them with caution and critical thinking, and not blindly trust their outputs. These tools are only as good as the data and algorithms they rely on and the person asking the questions.
How AI Can Benefit Technical Writers
To illustrate one way AI can benefit writing, I’ve taken an excerpt from Einstein’s work to illustrate the benefits and challenges technical writers face when using AI. To create the AI version, I used a tool in Microsoft™ Edge through a ‘Discover’ extension setting the tone to ‘Professional’ and the length to ‘Medium’. (I did not edit the first two columns.)
The principle of relativity; original papers
By Einstein, Albert, 1879-1955; Minkowski, H. (Hermann), 1864-1909; Saha, Meghnad, 1893-1956; Bose, Satyendranath, 1894-1974
Table of versions
|
Original segment from The Principle of Relativity |
Professional and Medium version by Prometheus AI |
Tech Writer |
|
One of the problems with Maxwell's electrodynamics as it is currently understood is that it does not account for the symmetry of the observed phenomena when a magnet and a conductor interact. The outcome of this interaction depends only on their relative motion, not on which one is moving and which one is stationary. For instance, if the magnet moves and the conductor is still, an electric field with a certain energy level is created around the magnet, which induces a current in the conductor if it is present in the field. However, if the magnet is still and the conductor moves, there is no electric field around the magnet, but only an electromotive force in the conductor that has no energy by itself, but produces an electric current of the same size and direction as the electric field in the previous case. The relative motion is assumed to be the same in both cases. |
Maxwell’s electrodynamics is a set of equations that describe the behaviour of electric and magnet fields and how they interact with matter. They also describe how changing electric and magnetic fields can create each other, leading to electromagnetic waves that travel through space at the speed of light. One problem with how Maxwell's electrodynamics is understood today, is that it fails to recognise the lop-sidedness of this interaction when one or the other body is moving or still, the direction and speed of the movement. However, the common view, calls us to distinguish between: 1. A moving magnet with a stationary conductor - the moving magnet creates an electric field around itself that has a specific amount of energy. The energy generates a current when the conductor crosses the current. 2. A stationary magnet with a moving conductor - the moving conductor does not create any electric field around the magnet, but the magnet experiences an electromotive force with no energy of its own to cause a current in the conductor. Assumption: In both situations, the relative motion and current is the same in degree and direction. |
In the sample above, AI did not eliminate the repetitive nature of the writing, clarify some of the concepts and it did not break the writing into bite-size pieces for ease of reading which is why I believe technical writing will remain safe for a good long while because AI cannot yet think with ‘creatively and laterally’ and it does not yet have the understanding to:
- · know and appeal effectively to the audience
- · understand the purpose of the document
- · use words, and words in context, that will relate to the reader.
Conclusion
Today, Artificial Intelligence is being considered to replace all kinds of writing jobs from writing letters, resumes, term papers, etc. AI is also being used to compose music, create videos and unique art works.
Some applications are amazing, inspirational and revolutionary, such as using AI to quickly search mountains of data available in the medical or legal profession. As AI progresses, some professions will be more affected than others (see the lists of references below for additional reading).
Although Artificial Intelligence (AI) can and will affect our work as technical writers. It will do so more as an aid to our research efforts, write first drafts, and help us save time by taking a first crack at unravelling convoluted information. It will serve us by researching ideas, searching through data for answers and by combining everything into a smooth and palatable form.
Nevertheless, it will be our ability to ‘think outside the box’ and ask the right questions from AI that will be our saving grace. Technical writers are experts at reading, analysing, considering and thinking through what the most effective final form a document must be in to satisfy the requirement of the readers.
Just for fun, I asked one of the AI tools if AI would replace technical writers, here is the answer:
AI will not replace technical writers soon because it still can’t write like a human. AI can assist technical writers in their work by automating some mundane tasks and producing helpful content to edit and refine. However, AI will never replace writers who generate content with creativity and in a way that other humans can easily understand.
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For further reference
Geeks for Geeks, ChatGPT: 7 IT Jobs That AI Can’t Replace, 2 April 2020, sagarikabiswas.
Medium, 15 Jobs That Will Never Be Replaced by AI, 4 January 2020, Chan Priya.
L Makeup Institute, Top 10 Careers That Can’t Be Replaced by AI or Automation, 19 November 2020, ETS
Wired, A.I. Tries 20 Jobs, 18 March 2023 (Video)
World Economic Forum, These 6 skills cannot be replicated by artificial intelligence, 23 October 2020.
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