AI: Threat or Opportunity?

AI can be a bit scary and will be disruptive, but it can also create tremendous opportunities to provide value. Professionals across different industries are trying to understand what that means for them.

For example, my wife is a freelance copyeditor. Some members of her community are becoming increasingly frustrated by two trends. First, the quality of editing seems to be decreasing. We've all seen this. How many times do we come across typos or grammar mistakes, or even copy-paste errors on the web? Second, AI-based tools are increasingly used instead of real, live, human copyeditors. 

It is easy to understand these frustrations and to see how the profession is getting squeezed. But is it really? I hear about this, and I am reminded of something Mark Kurlansky observed in his book Paper: Paging Through History:

“Studying the history of paper exposes a number of historical misconceptions, the most important of which is this technological fallacy: the idea that technology changes society. It is exactly the reverse. Society develops technology to address the changes that are taking place within it.”

So, what are the changes in society that are driving this need for AI-based editing tools? One of the main reasons that the quality of editing and writing has deteriorated is the massive increase in the volume of writing itself. The web and self-publishing has vastly expanded the opportunities for authors to get their material out and to express their points of view. Ebook self-publishing has become a $1 billion industry. However, most of these authors don't make any money, or they make very little money. So there isn't a lot of room to pay professional editors. 

At the other end of the spectrum, top authors and publications still use human editors but are demanding more from them. So there is a continuum of emphasis on quality and the ability to pay.

Here is where AI-based editing tools come into play. These tools fit somewhere on that continuum. I'm not sufficiently grammatically smart to really know where, but they fit somewhere. The professional copyediting community isn't impressed with the quality of these tools, so clearly they won't really replace high-quality human editors. 

The opportunity I see for editors is to figure out new business models and innovative ways of working to use these tools as a lever, or as a multiplier. They can have the best of both worlds. By using these tools, a good professional editor can be five or ten times more productive, earn more, and improve the quality of writing. 

The challenge for many professions is to recognize both the threats and the opportunities posed by AI. They need to work with technology and technologists to re-examine the value they deliver and the way they work. The technologists can’t and won’t do this for them.

The professions must seize these opportunities and drive their own disruption.