Students used to pay me to help them find their voice. This year, they found a chatbot instead.
I’ve been AI’d out of a job.
Not in journalism (yet) but in a side gig I do to supplement the big bucks I make as a freelancer. (I did not say that with a straight face.) For a few years now, I’ve been helping students with their college application essays. Along the way, I’ve met some remarkable kids, including a brilliant pair of twins who ended up writing the same essay but in different guises (they’d never discussed what they were writing!).
Each year, I’ve had maybe 10 students. It’s seasonal and the kids show up at deadline crunch time. This year? One. I had one student.
I asked someone at the college prep company I work for what was going on.
“AI,” she said. “The kids are using AI now.”
Last week, I was in New York. On the subway, I noticed two women looking lost. They did that thing where their heads were swiveling from the train’s map on the wall to the stations we were passing, clearly unsure whether they were headed in the right direction. We started talking and it turned out they were both college admissions counselors. I asked them if they’re catching a lot of essays written by AI — were they using those AI detection programs?
No, they weren’t, they told me. They said that occasionally they saw certain giveaways like an excessive use of em-dashes or cringey transitions, but that was really the only way to know, and even then, did they really know?
“So basically,” I said, “you have no idea whether you are admitting students who know how to write at all.”
Yes.
As if the learning crisis was not already bad enough in this country, now we have to deal with robots taking over our self-expression and creativity, in addition to our jobs.
I have no doubt that as a writer and editor, more of my work will be made redundant. The question is, does pushing people like me out of our jobs benefit society? Will AI journalism offer the same depth and feeling that humans produce? Will our AI overlords condemn us to hiding in our home offices like outlaws, writing pieces that will never see the light of day?
The scary future, I believe, starts now.