Quote from the author, a hight school English teacher: My life—and the lives of thousands of other teachers and professors, tutors and administrators—is about to drastically change.
The author doesn’t seem to know how writing is used in the real world. This is a good example of why “intellectual” is so commonly used as a derogatory term. Personally I always used it derogatorily.
When used in this way, intellectual does not mean someone who is smart. It refers to people who spend their lives in academia or similar intellectual environment. They sit in their ivory towers thinking about the world as viewed from their tower. They have little to no real world experience.
This teacher is teaching kids, apparently without an understanding of real world writing. An AI can’t possibly write a lot of real world text because the AI can’t possibly know enough about it to write anything that makes sense. Here’s a simplified example:
Person A: Honey, I’m going to the grocery store. Do you need anything?
AI: We need bread.
Person A: No we don’t. We already have five loaves.
AI: Oh. Well how am I supposed to know that? Did you forget to upload it to the Internet where I can find it?
You can apply the same thing in a business environment. If you correspond with your boss, co-workers or an outside vendor, an AI can’t possibly know enough to do it. One of the biggest complaints employers have about their employees is the inability to write.
Same applies with any interpersonal communication. Sure, I might be able to carry on a conversation with an AI. But why would I want to? I’d rather talk to a person.
In a way, search engines are a half step away from carrying on a conversation. They’ve come a long ways since the early days. Last night I typed in:
“Why do I need to skip the foam off the top when making jam?”
Instead of linking me to sites that explained it, the search engine could have simply copy-pasted the answer. In a way that’s what it actually did. Since it showed the first several lines, I didn’t even have to click the links - but I did just out of curiosity.
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