Copywriters Reveal How AI Has Decimated Their Industry
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The rise of AI is decimating the copywriting industry, and some commenters are drawing parallels with their own experiences in software development, where AI has also played a role in layoffs. While some see being let go as a preferable alternative to being forced to compete with AI by taking a pay cut, others argue that businesses often choose to prioritize cost-cutting over investing in experienced talent. A lively debate ensues, with some commenters insisting that AI is a valuable tool, but not a replacement for human expertise, and others warning that over-reliance on AI could lead to a "senior-free future." As the discussion unfolds, it becomes clear that the impact of AI on various industries is a pressing concern, sparking intense debate about the future of work.
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I can't even paint them in a sinister light. They couldn't afford me, and now they had a way to get all the work done with their other developers that were less senior. They were clearly sad to let me go, but they didn't see that they had any choice financially. They weren't a big FAANG company with jillions of dollars. They only had a couple dozen employees.
I do wonder how people are going to get to be senior anything in the future, though. It's only going to be people who are really into it that are willing to work that hard to make it happen. The alternative, AI, is just so much easier than it's hard to justify putting that much effort into learning it, unless it's your thing.
(Of course, I'm not being 100% serious, and your personal financial situation may be at odds with the tone of this comment)
The problem is that in most cases businesses can afford you, but they choose to be "unable to". It's called budgeting, and the ceiling only represents existential limits for small or dying businesses. The rest of the time, it is defined only to maximize profit, part of which means using their power to shift the impact of negative economic trends onto individuals as much as mathematically possible, rather than the business suffering proportionately.
No amount of "budgeting" was going to cover those unexpected circumstances, which they had already tried to work through in other ways.
I want to be mad, but I can't.
AI is a great assistant. Letting go the more experienced dev is a bad move.
We work in a field where you should understand what it is you're doing.
We had a wave of "dev" who where told that assembling libraries and API as Lego is the way. It's only a sub part.
Now with the AI fuzz, people think it's kind of magic and do everything by its own. It's not.
You can gain a lot of time with AI if you know how to prompt and are capable to understand what it spits out.
But beting the future of your business on less experimented junior for saving a couple thousand dollars is not a clever move.
(Again, my opinion)
This problem is acute with older hardware and manufacturing engineers who drank all the corporate propaganda they've been fed for decades. I once worked with a senior manufacturing engineer who didn't clock his overtime because he didn't want the huge, multinational corporation we worked for to go bankrupt.
Exactly, some businesses even do stuff like this:
> https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/4cfau7?rsrc=cshare&sm...
> How do the wealthy get so wealthy? Mostly by some form of cheating. One way that's relevant to one current case is depicted in Philip Roth's 2004 novel 'The Plot Against America':
> "Every subcontractor when he comes into the office on Friday to collect money for the lumber, the glass, the brick, Abe says, 'Look, we're out of money, this is the best I can do,' and he pays them a half, a third -- if he can get away with it, a quarter -- and these people need the money to survive, but this is the method that Abe learned from his father. He's doing so much building that he gets away with it..."
Nobody wants to stop using AI but people don’t want to admit that it is a way to senior-free future and people bored by AI. But as there will be an interrupted continuity the next generation will be…
Competition is hard so we have to use AI to stay competitive - last time I read similar was… testimonies of concentration camp guards when they were asked why they overlooked atrocities.
Can you tell me more? Everything I've read indicates it affects juniors/new devs more. Is that what you mean by a 'senior-free' future? One in which there are no seniors in 10-20 years because there are no juniors now?
Or something else?
If we don’t accept/hire juniors (as companies think they are inefficient) to their first positions then how can they become seniors in their branch?
TBH I don’t have a solution for that.
Framing it as "AI" only leads to ignoring the responsibility of those who are making those decisions. It's exactly the same argument behind justifying things as "market forces": it allows everything and makes nobody responsible for it.
What people seem to be against is progress, or at least the rate of progress. We certainly should stop and think and assess the repercussions of the rate of progress and the response we should have were it to threaten to destabilize society. I don't think we should say, oh, A.I., this is where I will fight. We need to be rational and assess the consequences and find rational answers to ensure social stability (we don't want famine or Hoovervilles).
It also rubs me the wrong way since "AI" quite literally means everything from LLMs to how the ghosts in Pacman move.
Like, you don't hate AI. You hate the way it's being used. It would be weird to say "I hate that computers have the ability to transpose spoken language to text". Or "I can't stand the ambient listening tool being used to treat my father's UTI's while he has Alzheimer's". Or even better "I hate that my credit card company is trying to determine whether someone is fraudulently using it".
And what's worse is that it treats this is a relatively new problem. But rich people abusing the system to make more money at the cost of making others poor is hardly a new thing.
In my opinion it’s unfortunate and inaccurate to frame this as most likely being a problem with the quality of the work of a person who was let go or who can’t find a job. It’s also very possible that it’s an issue with the level of quality those in management are willing to accept.
You're assuming "Writer laid of must be because org did not find them to be a very good writer".
The issue,
#1, unless you're yourself an editor or a former writer, you really can't distinguish between moderate and excellent writing. (I know someone personally who's very experienced, and I struggled while actively trying to make out the tells in the quality of writing. The difference between good and great writing can be very subtle.)
Bigger issue #2 is, the board DGAF about any of this.
If they can get a sloppy write up for free with their chatgpt subscription instead of a fair human price, who cares if the quality and brand value drops and the company goes bankrupt? That's an issue 5 years from now, good thing the CEO's already retired by then, right?
Do I think that this is a good thing? No. I don't think most people have taste (tm) nor that we should live in a world where only the most distinguished have work. I'm just observing what happens in my world. Maybe it's going to burn us all to the ground, but it is what it is if you wanna make money.
Only thig is I'm not sure how many CEOs/orgs care about writers going above and beyond. A small firm run by a sensible person, sure. But I don't think most of these jobs are from small players.
Agreed. Writers are kind of artists and we lose something when we lose them. Same for sensible people doing business.
For example what seemed crazy to me that as a country Greece somehow had and still has ~half of their households *primary* source of income being pensions.
The job has changed. At the same time, the quality and quantity expectations are changing as well. You don't get away with doing the same amount of documentation anymore. AI tools enable more documentation and more comprehensive documentation. So, having that now becomes the norm.
But if your job is getting paid per word for text, then yes, that market is a bit smaller now. But it's not all gone and people still get hired to coordinate the documentation writing process or for high quality journalism.
But if you were writing filler content for a news paper or low value (it has to be there, but nobody cares) documentation for some software component, then yes, your job is definitely at risk.
Yeah, I'd built a whole lifestyle around armed robbery, and the cops had the gall to arrest me. It was dramatically disruptive!
Seriously, you do not have a "right" to keep doing whatever you've been doing, even if it wasn't destructive. Nobody owes you that. People aren't your serfs.
“The influence of the automobile has driven the horse from the city’s streets,” according to the article. “The blacksmith now earns his livelihood by straightening automobile axles, repairing broken springs and welding frames.”
https://www.americanfarriers.com/articles/8921-examining-the...
Nobody would miss washroom attendants disappearing either. That is different from automating away the stuff that makes life interesting. Like AI startups telling you that their robot will spend time with your friends and family, so you don't have to. Being disgusted by that is not being a luddite, it's being a well adjusted human with aspirations beyond doomscrolling AI slop on tiktok/youtube.
I also had this feeling during the 2020 crash... and during the 2008-2012 crash...
Riveting stuff. Hard to see how he could be replaced.