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’
·
Google’s
‘Bard’
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
|
|
It is well known that if we
attempt to apply Maxwell’s electrodynamics, as conceived at the present time,
to moving bodies, we are led to asymmetry which does not agree with observed
phenomena. Let us think of the mutual
action between a magnet and a conductor.
The observed phenomena in this case depend only on the relative motion
of the conductor and the magnet, while according to the usual conception, a
distinction must be made between the cases where the one or the other of the
bodies is in motion. If, for example,
the magnet moves and the conductor is at rest, then an electric field of
certain energy-value is produced in the neighbourhood of the magnet, which
excites a current in those parts of the field where a conductor exists. But if the magnet be at rest and the
conductor be set in motion, no electric field is produced in the
neighbourhood of the magnet, but an electromotive force which corresponds to
no energy in itself is produced in the conductor; this causes an electric
current of the same magnitude and the same career as the electric force, it
being of course assumed that the relative motion in both of these cases is
the same.
|
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.
In summary, AI will not replace technical writers but will
assist them in their work by automating some mundane tasks and producing
helpful content to edit and refine.
=======================================
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.
