Why AI won't take our jobs

A very brief note

AI can write! Therefore it will take over the jobs of people who write for a living…

So goes the worry. It is wrong.

If AI can create high quality written work, it will in fact increase the demand for high quality written work. Basically, no-one will bother to ever read anything shitty ever again. Now when real people desire to convey their ideas, they will be forced to write them extremely well (with AI’s assistance, perhaps), because otherwise, no one will give them a second look.

This way of thinking about it comes to me from my experience as a translator. When I started, there weren’t many good Chinese>English translators around. As time went by, there were more. They didn’t threaten my business; rather, they made it possible for me to do business, because more customers started to expect and be willing to pay for good translations.