If you are a student, journalist, a customer assistant or content creator, you are probably wondering if ChatGPT is here to take your job.
Well, fear not. Recently, I have been trying to understand the buzz surrounding ChatGPT as someone who has a thriving writing career. What is it? Is it another chatbot? Is it like Grammarly? Is it yet another app? Google’s competition, a content creator’s competition? If it answers all questions, how comprehensive are its answers? Here’s everything learnt so far.
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Let’s start this from the top. What really is ChatGPT?
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What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is the latest technology in the Artificial Intelligence space by Tech company, OpenAI. It is a conversational agent like Iphone’s Siri, Apple’s Alexa, Android’s Bixby etc that is a lot more accurate. Billion dollars is being spent on this tech to feed it with highly sophisticated information so it gives exact answers on any topic, in any language (at least that’s the plan).
OpenAI was founded in 2015 by a group of tech powerhouses, including Elon Musk and former Y Combinator CEO, Sam Altman, with the goal of creating AI that is both powerful and for the ordinary person. in 2022, rights to ChatGPT were sold to Microsoft to enable a broader expansion of the AI.
Since it has been trained on an enormous amount of data from books, researches, articles and even social media posts, it is very beneficial for chatbots, content writing, creative production, customer service, research, academic dissertations etc.
In essence, ChatGPT can give you anything; your CV, business plans, design, summaries, blog posts, movie scripts, social media, email, ad copies, research assignment, depending on your input. It is a true game changer.
For example; I asked ChatGPT to generate a social media plan for this website and it got me this within 30 seconds:
Microsoft, the company with the rights to ChatGPT is also releasing updates gradually and recently released ChatGPT4 this year on the 15th of March. ChatGPT4 entails not only improved text intelligence but also text, visual and photo intelligence.
So What Happens to Writers?
For starters, ChatGPT aims to become useful in many walks of life. From household chores to business to Science and Technology. It’ll be like using Google but with smarter answers. So you’re better off using it than being wary of it.
So what will happen to your writing career?
Nothing!
For the following reasons:
1. Google Frowns on AI Content
According to Google Search Advocate John Mueller, Content generated automatically using AI writing tools is against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. This makes it impossible to rely entirely on bots to run the content of any business that requires visibility online.
“AI-written content has been against Google guidelines for over a decade,” Edward Coram, the CEO of Go Up marketing agency said to Insider. “The spam guidelines are the main offenders where Google says this isn’t really open to interpretation: ‘If you break any of these rules and we catch you, we will penalize you.’
“There are less than 20 such rules and one of them is don’t use AI-written content on your website. Just don’t do it.”
If users break Google’s spam policies, their websites “may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all,” the guidelines state.”
2. ChatGPT is not a Reliable Researcher:
Unless you know about the field you are asking GPT to write for you, or you’re able to fact-check, ChatGPT just can’t be trusted to make stuff up.
Medium writer, Zulie Rane writes on her experience with telling GPT to write a client-facing article that she knew nothing about which would have been submitted for payment. She would have been thoroughly embarrassed and aptly sacked had the AI-written article not been sent to an editor friend who faulted most of the “facts” from GPT.
“What ChatGPT can do is bullsh*t with confidence”, Zulie says.
Her experience does not stand alone. Online marketer Gael Breton also called out CNET for posting a bunch of GPT-written articles under the “CNET Money Staff” tag.”
Management at CNET must have been way too excited about the fact that they didn’t need to keep writers any more. Looking at the entire articles that CNET generated using AI, they rejoiced too early about machines replacing their hardworking staff.
“It turned out that the AI hadn’t managed to write error-free articles on simple, basic financial principles. And also it had freely plagiarised. CNET didn’t even bother to proofread the facts”, says Zulie.
3. ChatGPT Cannot Replace Human Complexity:
After asking GPT4 its likeness with humans, it identifies specific human characteristics that it could imitate such as language proficiency, critical thinking, attention to detail, and problem-solving.
For example, it answers very fast and accurate, it communicates people’s feelings, it pays attention to tiny details, it researches and organises information, it’s good with numbers, it can translate languages, it can analyze data and it can be creative.
While AI models are good at providing these insights and data, it will still be very difficult for ChatGPT to have that human touch.
Most jobs require human interaction, commonsense and problem-solving skills that may not be replicable by an AI program. Writing and researching takes into account such factors as culture and social implications, which AI models may not fully understand.
There are also ethical implications of replacing human workers with AI that may damage accuracy, allow bias, or misdefine boundaries.
For a stable society, humans will always be given top priority to navigate these considerations and produce work that is responsible.
AI engines like ChatGPT good as they are, are basically pattern matchers, not “thinking engines”. They actually do not create new knowledge nor are AI answers powered by background intelligence.
AI can only replace a subset of knowledge-workers who continue to apply redundancy. If that isn’t you then seek to improve yourself with and without AI. Here are 7 ways you can use ChatGPT for your writing career:
7 Ways to Boost Your Writing Career Using ChatGPT
1. Simulate Job Interviews: To get any job, you would have to be interviewed for the position. Preparing for a job interview is hard because while you know what to expect, you may not be familiar with the best answers. It’s helpful to consider potential scenarios and questions in advance. ChatGPT can help you do that.
For example, you could ask, “Can you simulate a job interview for a copywriter by asking and answering questions as if you are a potential employer?”
2. Come up with good SEO titles and inspiration: If you are struggling to come up with ideas for your next piece, GPT4 can provide prompts and inspiration by suggesting titles or generating random ideas.
For example, you could ask, “Recommend 10 SEO-worthy blog topics for my local horticulture website”
3. Write Your Email: One GPT user shared how he asked ChatGPT to write the perfect Email that would recover his money from a big debtor. Not only that, you could ask GPT to write to a potential client, a newsletter to your customers or come up with examples for email subject lines.
4. Customer Service: If you own a business, customer service is a must. You can set up a chatbot or automate a lot of common requests by either using snippets or ChatGPT4 voice commands. It will save both time and expenses. You could ask
For example: Act as a customer support assistant who is helpful and witty. Now answer this email for our candle-making company: [insert email]”
5. Write Your CV: Of course, we are not leaving this one out. A good CV will attract you to the right kind of people and jobs. ChatGPT can help you think in the right direction. Use this prompt to generate ideas:
“Write a CV for me, highlighting [qualifications/experience] in a way that is likely to get me into [Microsoft]?”
6. Create Engaging/Trendy Twitter Posts: If you run the social media for a brand, you may experiment ChatGPT suggestions. You can either ask it to come up with trendy topic suggestions or ask it to help you create content that is more likely to be shared. Give it tweets you want rewritten and instruct it to increase the likelihood of it becoming viral.
7. Article Writing: Finally, ChatGPT-4 Is The Ultimate Content Writer but only if you know what you want from it. It is trained intelligence so information coming from it may require thorough editing.
Still, GPT can:
- give you fillers to expand a paragraph
- Suggest a ton of topic ideas
- just get something on the page which you can then rewrite/edit
- Write the article which you can then fact-check.
